The Sport Authority: Baseball Playoffs 2006

MLB Baseball Playoffs 2006

by Craig Dolan

Divisional Series

Now that I am a Sacramento resident I have to be careful to whom I admit my dark secret. But like a geeky teenage boy fueled by the liquid courage of his first beer to give him the push to awkwardly ask a girl to dance, I am emboldened with the giddiness of my favorite time of year to admit it: I don’t like basketball. And what little interest I had in hockey was snuffed out by the strike of two years ago. Having to put up with spoiled athletes is difficult enough under normal circumstances, but when those athletes have unpronounceable names and/or are Canadian, it becomes intolerable. That means, at least for the sports fan in me, I enter a dark period of depression and boredom that begins the day after the Super Bowl and does not end until Baseball’s opening day. I have found myself flipping the channels to Arena Football during these interminable days of February and March, and it is at those moments I know I have a Problem.

But, thankfully, there is a flipside to those terrible sports days of winter and early spring, and we are in the Sweet Spot of those days right now. The unrelenting heat of this past summer is finally dissipating, football has cranked up, and baseball is transitioning from exciting September pennant races into the October postseason from which even Fox Sports and Joe Buck cannot suck out the suspense. As a lifelong baseball fan I admit that baseball’s season is about two weeks too long, and the specter of The Word I Will Not Write here, (begins with an “s” and ends with “roids”), still hangs over the proceedings, not yet done doing damage to the game, I fear; but I can put that aside for the next month and enjoy the fact that baseball still gets one thing right: after a grueling 162 game season only 8 teams earn the privilege to play in the postseason. It has been a strange and exciting season for baseball and there are enough interesting stories in the playoffs to make me excited for the games to begin tomorrow, even though as a Giants and Pirates fan I don’t have a team of my own to root for.

Of the eight teams in the playoffs, two nearly suffered collapses of historic proportions (Tigers and Cardinals); two didn’t collapse but lost key pitchers down the stretch making them appear vulnerable in October (Mets and Twins); and 2 are facing strings of playoff futility in their recent history (A’s and Padres). That leaves the two teams I dislike the most, but whom I would have to predict are the favorites to meet in the World Series: Yankees and Dodgers. For the next month I will watch every game pulling for Whoever Is Playing The Yankees and Whoever Is Playing The Dodgers; if they do play in the World Series, I will watch and sulk, as the suits at Fox relish the glory of the matchup they desire for much-needed ratings.

Odd Fact: Thanks in part to the Tigers being swept by the lowly Kansas City Royals the last weekend of the season, the Twins became the first team in Major League history to reach 1^st place for the first time on the last day of the season.

History: Twins defeated the A’s in a classic 5-game divisional series in 2002, part of the A’s string of playoff futility.

A’s: The Return of the Big Hurt. Not even self-proclaimed genius and A’s GM Billy Beane would admit they expected the numbers (39 HR, 114 RBI, .545 SLG) 38-year free agent Frank Thomas has produced for Oakland this season.

Twins: A month before the season started retired Twin fan favorite Kirby Puckett died prematurely before his 46^th birthday. Despite disturbing revelations about his personal life in the past couple of years, they still revere Kirby in Minnesota after playing his whole career for the Twins and being the heart of their only world championship teams in 1987 and 1991.

Prediction: I understand the need for Fox to reach larger audiences with the Yankees and Mets, but it is too bad that this series will be buried on TV with most games beginning at 10am here on the west coast, because this may be the most interesting opening series. The opening game will have the best pitching match up of aces when Barry Zito of the A’s faces Johan Santana of the Twins; the teams are evenly matched and probably have the two strongest pitching staffs in the playoffs. But even without their second-best pitcher in Francisco Liriano, sidelined by a elbow injury, the Twins staff is strong and they enjoy the best home field advantage in baseball in the ugly and awful Metrodome. If this were a 7-game series I would probably pick the A’s, but in 5 games they will likely get 2 wins from Santana and that means the A’s need to win all 3 of the other games and that is too much to ask. The A’s first round woes will continue in 2006. (Special Note of Bitterness: as a Giants fan it has been excruciating watching the Twins success this season with the three young pitchers the Giants sent to the Twins in the worst trade in Giants history. In return for Boof Bosner, Francisco Liriano and Joe Nathan, the Giants received A.J. Pierzynski, a mediocre catcher who was hated in the clubhouse and only lasted one season in San Francisco. This trade is the single reason the Twins are where they are this season and the Giants are where they are right now: at home. If the Twins win the World Series they should award a ring to Giants GM Brian Sabean)

St. Louis Cardinals vs. San Diego Padres

History: The Cardinals have twice swept the Padres in 5-game divisional series, most recently last year when they scored 21 runs in 3 games against a San Diego team that was perhaps the worst to ever reach the postseason.

Cardinals: It’s fun to watch 5’7” David Eckstein play shortstop; he looks like a little leaguer chucking the ball over to first.

Padres: Any team that is named after a purveyor of dog food, whose historic color scheme looked like the ultimate product of that dog food, and whose history of futility in the postseason is rivaled only by the A’s, deserves a break.

Prediction: As exciting as the Twins – A’s series looks going in, this one may be just as uninteresting. This match up looks like the resistable force against the precarious object: the Cardinals’ starting pitcher Chris Carpenter is the only bright spot on the Cardinals’ beat-up staff and on the other side the Padres scored the fewest runs in the regular season of all the playoff teams. On the other hand, the Cardinals have limped into the postseason and other than Pujols their lineup is not much more powerful than the Padres, with Scott Rolen slumping and Jim Edmonds dealing with concussions. With the deeper pitching staff starting with Jake Peavy, who despite an off year still has the stuff to shut a game down, the Padres should reverse the string of playoff sweeps and beat the Cardinals in four games, earning the right to be humiliated by the Dodgers or Mets the NL Championship.

Detroit Tigers vs. New York Yankees

History: Never met in the postseason. The Tigers haven’t been to the postseason in almost 20 years, long before baseball went to the wildcard format.

Tigers: Where to start? A hungry young club carrying the banner for all the small market teams battling against the evil empire of the Yankees. A team that has not been to the playoffs since the Gipper was president. But my top reason: manager Jim Leyland – I loved him when he was leading my Pirates to their final winning seasons in the 1990’s and I love him now. Only if you qualify golf as a sport and count John Daly can you find another chain-smoking sports figure and that has to be worth something.

Yankees: There are NEVER any “feel good” stories about the Yankees. That’s like saying Microsoft is the sentimental favorite in an anti-trust battle.

Prediction: Any right-thinking American outside the states of New York and New Jersey wants to see the Tigers beat the Yankees. Question is, can they? Short answer: no. Somewhat longer answer: put aside the way the Tigers limped through September and were swept by the lowly Royals to end their season. Even if Randy Johnson is not able to throw a single pitch the Yankees have at least as good a pitching staff as the Tigers, who other than Cameraman-Killer and old vet Kenny Rogers are very young and inexperienced. And then you look at the hitters. The Yankees could drag 78-year old Whitey Ford out to the mound and still probably win every game by a score of 14-12. As much as it pains me to admit it, there is not a team that can be favored to beat the Yankees right now, least of all the Tigers who are the embodiment of the cliché “happy to be here”. I hope I’m wrong.

Los Angeles Dodgers vs. New York Mets

History: The two teams met in the NL Championship in 1988 in a classic 7-game series that the underdog Dodgers won. They went on to upset the A’s in the World Series that year when the injured Kirk Gibson hit one of the most famous home runs in baseball history.

Mets: 1^st baseman Carlos Delgado finally makes the postseason in his 14^th season in the big leagues, ending the longest playoff drought for a player.

Dodgers: The only way I will ever root for the Dodgers is if they play the Yankees in the World Series.

Prediction: A Mets fan would probably tell you the Pedro Martinez injury last week was overblown in the media; after all, he had spent long stretches on the DL all season and only won 9 games for a Met team that didn’t seem to notice his absence during the regular season. But there’s no doubt that when healthy Pedro is their best starter and they would certainly have a better chance with him than without him. And now, the night before the start of their series against the Dodgers the Mets announced that Martinez’s replacement Orlando Hernandez had injured his calf earlier today and would not be able start tomorrow. Not a good sign for the Mets, who come in to the playoffs with the best record in the National League, but whom stumbled to the finish line in September. On the other side, the Dodgers were the hottest team in the past month and have gotten steadily better as the season progressed, culminating in one of the most painful moments for a Giants fan: they swept the Giants in San Francisco the last weekend of the season and celebrated making the postseason at AT&T Park. Every year there seems to be one hot wildcard team that surprises everyone and although I again hope I’m wrong, the Dodgers look like that team this year. LA in 5 games.