|
Volume CXXXIII, Number 3 |
 |
Playoff predictions: Red Sox & Yankees battle for league title
NICK ORDWAY
CONTRIBUTOR
Well, it's that time of year again. The weather gets a little bit cooler, we all start writing papers, and the Cincinnati Bengals are mathematically eliminated from the NFL playoffs. Yes, it's September, which means that the Major League Baseball postseason will soon be underway. As your resident die-hard Red Sox fan…ahem, "baseball expert," here's an "unbiased" preview of the 2003 American League playoffs.
As the final week of the regular season winds down, the playoff picture in the American League is more certain than the results of a Darryl Strawberry drug test. The AL East Champion New York Yankees (oh, how I hate that phrase) will be matched up with the AL Central Champion Minnesota Twins, while the AL West Champion Oakland A's will battle the AL Wild Card winners, the Boston Red Sox.
Now, I'd love to sit here and tell you that the series between the New York Yankees and Minnesota Twins will be competitive one, but unfortunately this won't be the case. The Twins have really turned it on to end the season by winning ten games in a row (clinching the Central Division in the process), but they still don't have much of a chance against Satan's….er, Steinbrenner's Children. The Yankees swept the season series between the two teams 7-0, crushing the Twins with a combined score of 49-13.
Although they have had stretches of shaky play throughout the year, the Yankees will defeat Minnesota in four games because of their playoff experience and superior talent (which might have something to do with the $90 million difference in the salaries of the two teams' player. I don't know, call it a hunch). The only reason that I'm giving the Twins a game is because the Yankees still have Jeff Weaver on their roster, and I'm sure he will find a way to lose at least one game in the series. (Excuse me, Mr. Steinbrenner? If I have a career record 12 games under .500 and an ERA over 4.50, will you pay me over $4 million a year, too? Idiot.)
The fight between the Oakland A's and Boston Red Sox will be a much more entertaining one. The A's took the season series 4-3, but the Red Sox actually outscored the A's in those games by the combined score of 36-30. Oakland's pitching staff, starring Tim Hudson, Barry Zito (last year's AL Cy Young Award Winner), Mark Mulder, and Rich Harden is clearly one of the best in the league. So the A's are going to win, right? Well, Mulder is out for the year due to a hip injury, Zito's record is a mediocre 14-12, and after a sizzling debut, Harden has come crashing back down to Earth faster than Vanilla Ice's career.
Their offense won't carry them either, as their lineup doesn't have a single everyday player hitting over .285. The Red Sox, however, have rounded more bases this year than Jenna Jameson. By the end of the year, they will have eight players in their line-up with over 80 RBIs, seven players with more than 20 homeruns (if Bill Mueller goes deep one more time), and could still have four players in the top ten of the American League in batting average (Mueller, Manny Ramirez, Nomar Garciaparra, and Trot Nixon). Sure, the bottom half of the Sox pitching staff has been unstable at times, but the A's pitchers will have to bring their best stuff every night because if the game becomes a slugfest, the Sox will win. That's why the Red Sox will take this series in four games.
This brings us to the American League Championship Series, and it's the match-up that we all have been waiting for (well, maybe it's been just me); the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Do I even need to analyze this one? I'm pretty sure that everyone is quite aware of who the better team is. Red Sox in six.
So it's as simple as that; the Boston Red Sox will be this year's American League representative in this year's World Series. Will they be fortunate enough to end their 85 year drought? It could happen. Just as long as Bill Buckner doesn't enter any games as a defensive replacement.
Now, where did I put that Vanilla Ice CD?
|
FastCounter by bCentral |