Round One

So, we lost the AL East title. Am I disappointed? Yes. But I’m over it; the most important thing is that we’re in. We’re where we need to be, and that’s really all that matters.

Now that we’re here, what can we do? That’s an easy question to answer. We can do anything that any of these other teams can do. As I look at the post-season entries, I do not see any one team that stands out above the others, I think this thing is completely up in the air and any one of these teams (except the Padres) has the ability to win 11 games. It’s all going to depend on who gets what, and when they get it.

Here’s my prediction for round one, starting with the NL and ending with the Sox:

Cardinals-Padres

The St Louis Cardinals have done it again. They put together another very good team that does everything well, starting pitching, bullpen, offense, and defense, and they took advantage of, and dominated a weak National League. Only 7 of the 16 teams had winning records and of those 7, 2 were only 4 games above .500 and 1 was only 2 above. Not only that, but they also get to take advantage of the fact that the Wild Card Astros are in their division, so they get to face the worst team that I’ve ever seen make the playoffs, the San Diego Padres.

If there were ever a reason to change the way teams make the playoffs, the 2005 NL West is it. This division is absolutely pitiful. It’s so bad that the Padres managed to win it by 5 games with an 82-80 record. As punishment for being so bad, they get to be crushed by the Cards in the first round. They really have no business being in the playoffs, but I’ll be rooting for old friend Dave Roberts anyway.

The Cards should not only win this thing in 3, but they should completely dominate every game. The Pads might be able to steal a win in game one, with Jake Peavy starting for them, but it’s not likely to happen in St Louis.

Astros-Braves

There’s only one team that really scares me in this post season, and that’s the Houston Astros. They’re the only team in this entire post season that has 3 starting pitchers, Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt, and Sox killer Andy Pettitte, that are completely capable of dominating every game they pitch. No other team in this thing has 3 pitchers like that. They also have Brad Lidge at the back end of the pen, and as far as finishing off games goes, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Unfortunately their offense isn’t very strong, it cost them a lot of games this year, and most likely cost Clemens another Cy Young. But they’ve been scoring more runs lately, and with that pitching, they won’t need to score a lot of runs. If they can get a few runs and their starters can get to Lidge, they could very well win the entire thing. As it is, I think they will definitely beat the Braves.

The Atlanta Braves are a great story, probably the best in baseball this year. Bobby Cox will win NL Manager of the Year hands down, for leading this team to it’s 14th straight division title, while using 17 rookies in doing so. But this is not the Braves of old that was known for their dominating rotation. After John Smoltz and Tim Hudson, the rotation drops off severely. Hampton is done for the season, and although Jorge Sosa has done a nice job filling in for him, he’s a little short on experience. Their offense is led by MVP Andrew Jones, but doesn’t have a heck of a lot after that. Their other Jones, Chipper, is having an off year marred by injury, and after that it’s a lot of mixing and matching, and I don’t see it standing up to the Astros pitching.

I think most of these games will be close, but the Astros should take it in four.

Yankees-Angels

The Yankees did it to us again in the regular season. And the amazing thing is they managed to do it despite the fact that only 1 starter, Randy Johnson, managed to stay in the rotation all year. Now they go into the playoffs with a rotation of Mike Mussina, who has a bad elbow, Chien-Ming Wang, a rookie who just came back from a sore shoulder a month ago, Johnson, and Shawn Chacon, a Rockies castoff, who ended up pitching very well for NY. Wang and Chacon could be flip flopped, and Aaron Small goes to the pen.

We all know how many ways they can hurt you with their offense, so that won’t be a problem. Their problem is going to be whether or not the starting pitching and bullpen can get them to Rivera. It’s questionable at this point, Johnson is really the only one who is capable of dominating a good offense and there’s a good chance they will find themselves in quite a few high scoring games.

Fortunately for them, they get the Angels in round one. The Angels have a decent offense, a very good defense, a good starting rotation (according to the stats anyway), and probably the best bullpen in the post season. I don’t think it will be enough to beat the Yankees. They really only have one starter with the capability of dominating a game in Bartolo Colon. Although Jarod Washburn, John Lackey, and Paul Byrd have put up pretty good numbers in the regular season, none of them are good enough to handle an offense like the Yankees, same with Ervin Santana if he ends up starting in place of Byrd. It doesn’t matter how good the Angels bullpen is, they’re going to find themselves too far behind in the late innings of most of these games and are not going to be able to make up the difference.

They probably have their best chance at winning the game 1 match-up of Colon against Mussina, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they get swept again. I’ll give them one game and say Yankees in four.

The Battle of the Sox

The Chicago White Sox are damn lucky to even find themselves in the playoffs, let alone having the best AL record and gaining home field advantage throughout. They came very close to blowing a 15 game division lead, seeing it shrink all the way to 1 ½ at one point, and only ended up being 4 games better than the Red Sox, Yankees, and Angels. This is a good team, but it’s not as good as their record shows. They took advantage of playing 37 games against the Royals and Tigers going 27-10 against them. Jon Garland, Mark Buehrle, and Freddy Garcia have all pitched a lot of innings this year, and they’ve shown some signs in September that it might be wearing on them. Although Jose Contreras had a dominating September, but he’s never been able to pitch well against us.

They have some pretty good arms in that bullpen, but there is no one that can come in and slam the door. They don’t make many mistakes on defense, and that offense, lead by Paul Konerko can put up some runs.

On the other hand, we have the same problems that have been plaguing us all year, pitching, both starting and the pen. We just have no idea what we’ll get from any of our starters, Clement, Wells, Wakefield, or Schilling. All are capable of going out and handling that offense. Arroyo strengthens a pen that is right now being anchored by Papelbon and Timlin. That might be all we have out there, but it also might be all we need, plus Myers to get the lefty out.

We can’t expect the offense to go out there and score the kinds of runs they did all season, but we can expect them to grind it out against the opposing starter and get into the pen. We’ve already done it this year to all of the starters Chicago will throw against us.

I think this might be the most evenly matched series in the first round. Most of it will depend on what each team gets from their starters. I think our offense will be able to grind out just enough from their pitching, and our pitching will be able to keep their offense down enough to win it in four.