The regular season has now come to an end, with the playoffs starting tomorrow. A couple weeks ago the baseball season was all but over, all of the division races have been clinched and Boston and Atlanta had big Wild Card leads. Well that was before Boston went 7-20 in the month of September to squander a nine game lead to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Boston Red Sox were undone by injuries, to pitching especially, Becket, Lackey and Lester couldn't win a game down the stretch, big-ticket players (Crawford) not preforming and not playing hard nosed baseball. The Atlanta Braves had an 8.5 game lead at the beginning of September and lost their Wild Card to St. Louis. I haven't watched the Braves as closely but their pitching looked tired. With both the Red Sox and Braves blowing huge leads (epic collapses), we are reminded that baseball can be a crazy game and anything can happen.
We now go into what should be an exciting post season. In the American League the New York Yankees play the Detroit Tigers, in which the Yankees have some untested pitching behind Sabathia and both teams have explosive line-ups which can hit the ball out of the park. In the other AL series a hot, young Tampa Bay Rays team goes into a series with Texas with a chance to win. In the National League the Philadelphia Phillies have all the pitching, going into a series with the Wild Card winning St. Louis Cardinals. In an interesting series the Milwaukee Brewers face the upstart Arizona Diamondbacks. All of these Series can go either way. the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies and the two best teams (the betting choice as well) and the two are expected to meet in the World Series. The question is can the Yankee pitching hold up behind Sabathia, their going into the ALDS pitching Nova (rookie) and Garcia behind him.
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