Friday, October 5th, 2012
American League Playoff Preview
Wow, I’ve been sitting here for 10 minutes thinking of the best way to describe this season and that is the best way I could think to do it, just wow. Mike Trout had possibly the greatest rookie season in the history of baseball, Miguel Cabrera won the first triple crown since the great Carl Yastrzemski (spelled that right on the first try) we saw a record 3 perfect games and too many no-hitters for me to even remember and despite all of this we still have yet to be treated to the best part of the MLB season, the playoffs.
This is the first year that MLB has instituted their two Wild Card system in each league which now allows for two teams to make the playoffs as Wild Card teams and then play each other in a one game playoff to move on to the next round and the first year result is the surprising playoff runs by the Oakland Athletics and the Baltimore Orioles. Many people have argued that adding another playoff team will take away from how difficult it is to make the playoffs in the MLB while in the NBA and the NHL over half of the teams make the playoffs, but I think that with winning your division means that you do not have to play in the one game wild card makes the division races much more competitive and is able to keep more teams in the race for the division and for the Wild Cards and have more teams playing meaningful September games, which everybody enjoys, and their also is the added bonus of getting 2 one game playoff games every year. If you may recall, last season we were treated to the best end to a regular season that I have ever had the good fortune to witness, with the added first round of the playoffs we will have the opportunity to see this every year and it starts tonight with the Orioles and Rangers playing later tonight.
The American League was a ton of fun to watch this year, going into this season who would have thought that not only would the Oakland Athletics win the division over two powerhouse teams like the Rangers and Angels? And even more surprising, how the hell did Baltimore Oriole’s manage to finish just one game behind the Yankees? Ahead of teams like the Red Sox and the Rays? Just mindblowing….
Tonight’s game will be the first one game wild card playoff in the history of baseball and it couldn’t be more exciting, the Oriole’s will send Joe Saunders to the mound to counter the Rangers who will send Rookie phenom Yu Darvish, the winner of which will move on to play the New York Yankees. This year has a great mix of powerhouse team’s like the Yankees, Tigers and Rangers, mixed in with a couple of surprise team’s the Oriole’s and Athletics and at this point in the season not a thing would surprise me, but I believe that this will be one of the most excited and drama filled postseasons we will ever see. And this is just the American League…
Every team in the playoffs has a legitimate chance to win the World Series this year but I’m going to take the team that has both the best pitcher and the best hitter on their team, the Detroit Tigers, to go to the World Series.
And to all of you who read my article I did at the beginning of the year, let’s just ignore the fact that I picked the Angels to win the pennant. Enjoy.