The Angels beat the Yankees, the Twins beat the A’s. Are teams that depend on
the single and the stolen base better in the post-season than teams that play
for the three run-home run?
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.
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.
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.