Ok so whats all on every baseball fans minds at this point? Who is going to the playoffs, thats what! Well there are some obvious teams that are going to the playoffs, however there are still some battles for division 1st place or wild cards still going on that means a lot so in essence I'm going to give you what teams I think are going to be going to the playoffs and whose going to go how far.
AL:
East Winners: Tampa Bay Rays - Now the reason I think the Rays will take this division is because in my honest opinion, the Boston Red Sox having been playing over their heads for the entire year, that is to say EVERYTHING has gone right and nothing has gone wrong. So overall I think they will slip back and the Rays will win the division, I mean their only 2.5 games back at the moment so it's not all that farfetched idea to begin with.
Central Winners: Detroit Tigers - Now this is an obvious one but honestly for ages I've been in the group that has considered the Tigers INSANELY overrated. Now before you get your pitchforks for me going against Miggy and Verlander you have to remember that usually they aren't the top placed team in terms of win-loss record in the AL and several years they haven't even been 2nd. That of course means that their percent win-loss was below that of the AL West and/or AL East winners and thats even more disturbing when you consider that about half of their games are against division rivals, and honestly do you think that a team would have a harder time against the East teams (Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, Rays and Blue Jays) where all the teams are in hitter friendly parks and with high end teams or Central teams (Twins, Royals, Indians, Tigers and White Sox) who are balanced in terms of pitcher parks vs hitter parks. Now after looking after looking at that and considering the amount of talent that the Tigers have and the weak schedule they have, them finishing with less than the highest W-L percentage in the AL is disturbing. Anyhow Tigers should take the Central no problem.
West Winners: Texas Rangers - Not much discussion here, there is a bit of a close call with the Oakland A's right now but considering that the Rangers have been on a roll lately and have a better rest of the schedule than Oakland I expect they will be the ones to stand atop the AL West.
AL Wild Card Winners: Ok so the wild card winners I've picked up are the other two teams I spoke about in the West and East winners, that being the Oakland Athletics and the Boston Red Sox.
NL:
East Winners: Atlanta Braves - No question here as the the Braves have been dominating the NL East and they have a 13 game lead on the 2nd place Nationals so there is no hope of anyone catching them during the rest of the month.
Central Winners: St. Louis Cardinals - Now again this seems like a no brainer but the main reason I think the Cardinals are going to take it over the Pirates is because as I previously mentioned in my Last Month post, the Pirates have a series of games against the Reds in the last month and some middle of the road or somewhat difficult opponents where as the Cardinals have games against nearly all below .500 teams.
West Winners: Los Angeles Dodgers: Now this seals up the National League and just like the East the Dodgers have nearly a 10 game lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks and considering how the Diamondbacks have been playing over the last couple weeks it is unlikely that they will be able to catch up to the Dodgers, especially since they will be having Kemp come back into their lineup soon enough.
NL Wild Card Winners: More obvious ones though surprising that both of them are coming out of the NL Central as thats usually the worst division over several years and wild cards usually came out of the East (Phillies or Nationals). So in this case I've got Pittsburgh and Cincinnati taking the Wild Card spots for the National League.
Wild Card Round:
Ok so for the wild card game I think that for the AL Oakland is going to come out on top and for the NL Pittsburgh is going to come out on top. Now again the reason I think Pittsburgh will win the NL is because they are honestly more of a complete team as they have a good blend of players and there bullpen and starters are solid where as the Reds have a bit of an issue with their bullpen, with exception to Aroldis Chapman. In addition to this their going to be getting back Starling Marte, Grilli and a few other star players back from the DL prior to this game. Now why do I think the Athletics are going to beat out the Red Sox? Well first off I'll point back to the fact that again I think the Red Sox have been playing above their actual talent level all year as most of their players are not nearly as good as they've been playing over the last 2-3 years, mainly guys like Johnny Gomes, Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, and a couple others. But like the Pirates the Athletics are getting some important players back from the DL before this playoff game, namely Bartolo Colon who has been a horse in their starting rotation and Brett Anderson.
ALDS Rounds:
Ok so in the ALDS I believe that the match ups are going to be Tampa vs. Detroit and Texas vs. Oakland. Though to be honest all of the top teams are currently within 1.5 games of each other for beat W-L record in the AL so it could go any way. But anyhow I expect that the winners of these two series are going to be Tampa and Oakland and the reason I believe that is because recently Miguel Cabrera has had to leave games with injuries, whether they are serious or not is irrelevant because if those things nag him into the post season the Tigers will be without their best player and on top of that the Tigers starting rotation has started to show signs of being human (that is Scherzer and Sanchez) as Scherzer almost lost the last game pretty badly if not for a very late game rally. Now why I think Oakland will win over Texas is for a couple reasons, the first being the people their getting back from the DL and the fact that Texas is missing a key player in Nelson Cruz thanks to the Biogenesis suspensions. The second reason is because of Ron Washington, who in my opinion is probably one of the worst managers in all of baseball and yea go ahead and harp on me for saying it but if you watch the Rangers World Series performances, Washington seems to lose his shit when they are a game or two away from winning the whole thing and just starts to make ridiculous moves, like bringing in Tommy Hunter to relieve despite the fact that he was supposed to start 2 days down the line.
NLDS Rounds:
Alrighty, so here I figure it's going to end up Atlanta vs. Pittsburgh and St. Louis vs. Los Angeles. Now the winners of these series is a bit more difficult as all teams have been playing amazingly but sadly I have to. SOOOO I think that Atlanta is going to win against Pittsburgh firstly and thats because they have pitching depth to spare and despite the injuries to their key bullpen guys they have managed to stay dominant pitching wise in the late innings. In addition to this their starters have been great and having really dominant young starters who hitters have little experience against is a god send, those being Alex Wood and Julio Tehran, not to mention the potential greatness of Brandon Beachy if he goes full force into the post season. As for against Pittsburgh they have been less active on the offensive than Atlanta has and given that plenty of Atlanta's starters are so key the Pirates will likely not get many opportunities to score runs. Now on the other side I'm going to take the less likes side and say the Dodgers are going to win it. Now for a long time I was convinced that the Cardinals were going to go to the WS and take it without a problem, however after seeing what the Dodgers have in their starting 3 pitchers and what Kershaw has been doing stat wise I have changed my mind because like Oakland the Dodgers are getting guys like Kemp and others back right before the post season kicks off and Brandon League has taken to his position in the bullpen instead of when he was closing earlier and the mightier strikeout machine Kenley Jannsen has taken over as closer.
ALCS Round:
Ok so after the ALDS that would make the ALCS a series between Tampa and Oakland and I think that Tampa will come out on top because of their stellar pitching that has been on since the beginning of the season and the trades they've recently made that have already been turning dividends and getting them more runs in must win games. On the other hand, despite Oakland having more players coming back off the DL they haven't really bolstered their offence or defence so I imagine that since the Rays have done the exact opposite they will have a fair advantage over them.
NLCS Round:
Ok well heres the NLCS and I'm guessing if this match up does come to fruition I expect that the Dodgers will win, however it honestly depends on some of the Atlanta hitters as most of them are fairly streaky and can be top 5 hitter level production one month then bottom 250 hitter production the next. Though because of this inconsistency and the consistency of players like Crawford, Puig and the entire pitching staff of the Dodgers I think they'd take the NLCS from the Braves.
World Series Matchup:
Ok so this makes the final match up for the WS the Tampa Bay Rays vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now my personal opinion would be for the Rays to win as I always love seeing lower budget teams succeed, especially when a brilliant manager like Joe Maddon is at the helm of the team. However I believe that if this does come to fruition that the Dodgers will take it as when you look at the teams it's going to come down to a duel of the pitchers and while Price, and Cobb could take on the starters for the Dodgers, Kershaw, Grienke and Ryu, the other Rays pitchers, Archer, Moore, Hellickson and Hernandez, have yet to show that they can be consistently good over a long period of time and I think that is what would be the downfall of the Rays as they lack the hard hitting offence that the Dodgers have.
Ok guys, hope you enjoyed this one, so I'll put up another post late next week as things have been picking up on my end and it's getting pretty busy.
-Eric
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