The exploding gas tank that is interleague play just toasted one team’s playoff hopes, launching a less successful team into the post-season.
We missed all four division series predictions here at Baseball Prospectus. I predicted
that the A’s would beat the Twins in “Three. Four max.” The email immediately started to flow in.
With the Twins in the ALCS and these two teams in the NLCS, there are some eerie similarities between today and 1987.
So here we are, in the “underdog” series, in no small part because this series is the one featuring the two American League playoff teams that New Yorkers don’t know about. One team wasn’t supposed to be able to beat the Yankees, and the other wasn’t supposed to beat the team that was supposed to beat the Yankees. Dominant provincialism is so cute, isn’t it?
The Week in Quotes, September 30-October 6.
The scene outside Edison Field Saturday following the Angels’ first playoff series win in its 42 years of existence was unlike any I’d ever seen.
During the regular season, I can see where MLB might fail to get the national deal they’d like. But what’s happening this post-season is a disaster.
Watching the playoffs the last two nights, the Prospectus staff sounds off. We pick it up at the end of Angels-Yankees, Game 1.
Recently, BP’s authors got into a heated debate over the merits of Shea Hillenbrand. Hillenbrand, you may remember, started the 2002 season on fire, setting Red Sox Nation hearts aflutter and confounding statheads everywhere.
Watching the Mariners crawl their way toward respectability like the first fishes onto the world’s beaches, I never would have believed that Ken Griffey Jr. might ever not be the best player in baseball, much less that he would end up being considered junior to his dad. It’s happening, though.
Unstoppable force, immovable object, best hitter of all time versus…well, if not exactly the best, one of the game’s best rotations.
This is my favorite playoff series, if only because it’s going to finally put the lie to Bud Selig’s constant lament that no team in the lower half of payroll has ever advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs. The Twins and the A’s were respectively 27th and 28th in ESPN’s Opening Day payroll tally. I’m surprised that the right Honorable Commissioner didn’t intervene and ‘fix’ the matchups in what he might see as the best interests of baseball. One of these teams will win three games and advance, only to be immediately heralded as an aberration, no matter what happens when they face the Yankees.
There are some obvious storylines specific to the Arizona/St. Louis matchup, as derived from the generic list above. Let’s lay those out, and address them one by one:
The Diamondbacks would really prefer to have a healthy Luis Gonzalez.
The Diamondbacks are backing into the playoffs.
The Cardinals are peaking at exactly the right time.
This is a match-up of opposites in many ways, not the least being the teams’ post-season histories. The Yankees have won the World Series 26 times, including four of the past six years. To achieve a similar level of dominance, the Angels would have had to win 10 championships in their 41 years of existence. Instead, they enter the playoffs with the most meager post-season tradition of any Divisional Series participant, with three first-round exits in as many tries.
“I really have no timetable. The good Lord has blessed me with the health. I’m not going to give it up if I can still perform, compete and enjoy the game.” –Rickey Henderson, Red Sox outfielder, asked how much longer he’d go
Having resolved that pesky AL West issue, one of the most interesting races left is in Milwaukee. Brewers shortstop Jose Hernandez is fighting inconsistent playing time and a fickle manager to set the all-time strikeout record; as of today, he’s stuck on 188, just one shy of Bobby Bonds’ major-league season record.