Baseball Playoffs Providing Great Drama

For years we’ve heard how there is an ‘east coast bias’ when it comes to sports, and it is usually most closely associated with baseball. While I don’t believe it to be true, it is easy to see where it comes from as the oldest, most profitable franchises (New York and Boston), as well as the most competitive franchises (New York, Philly, Atlanta, Tampa, Boston) are all east coast teams. This year in the championship series, not only is there not a single team from the east coast, but their isn’t a single team from a major city. Despite the lack of a true ‘marquee’ team, these league championship series have been a display of fantastic baseball, and shows why this is still ‘America’s Past time’.

Texas vs Detroit- The Rangers have been in control of this series, but the Tigers aren’t out of it yet. Detroit has been in every game, but has had their bullpen fail them in a pair of 11 inning games. The Rangers offense has been giving the Tigers pen problems, but really that has been Detroit’s only downfall. During the 45 regularly scheduled innings of these 5 games, the Tigers have actually outscored the Rangers 20-16, extra innings though the Rangers have outscored Detroit 8-0, which is the difference in this series. The series will close out in Texas, giving the Rangers an advantage, but the Tigers have shown that they can match-up with Texas (at least until the bullpen’s come in).

Brewers vs Cardinals- Not many people really thought the Brewers had a chance in this series, as the Cardinals have more experience and bigger name players. But Milwaukee has held their own, as it is 2-2 right now. Early on it looked like this would be a slugfest as their were a combined 30 runs in the first two games. Since then though, there have only been a combined 13 runs scored, showing that good pitching will likely determine the NL pennant. The Brewers I think have the advantage here (not to mention the homefield advantage) as their hitting has been slightly better, and they appear to have have the pitching advantage these next two games. The Cards are still very much alive, but I think the Brewers edge them out in a close 7 game series.