Baseball Skills

In the world of baseball prognostication, I rate an F and couldn’t be happier about it. A week ago I thought we were looking at a rematch of the 1998 World Series. Now, the Yankees are out and the Cardinals are still in. I don’t expect St. Louis to get to the next round, but I thought San Diego would take care of them and we saw how wrong I was there.

In fact, I picked all four series wrong. I was fairly well spoken about the Tigers-Yankees series as well as the St. Louis-San Diego series. Given the way both Detroit and St. Louis limped into the playoffs, I don’t think anyone would have blamed me.

The other two were more up in the air. Oakland-Minnesota I was giving the edge to Minnesota because of how hot they came into the playoffs and Oakland’s history of collapsing in the first round. Obviously someone in Oakland figured out how the change the vibe and Minnesota looked like they ran out of gas.

On the Dodgers-Mets front, I thought New York was the better team, but that all the injuries to the Mets pitching and LA’s strong trio of starters would put the Dodgers into the next round. Obviously I failed to reckon with the Mets’ bats. The pitching wasn’t as bad as everyone thought it would be and the Mets’ hitters took great strides forward and vaulted themselves forward.

Now we have Oakland-Detroit starting tomorrow and New York-St. Louis starting on Wednesday. It would be most fitting if the Tigers and the Mets met in the World Series, as these were the two teams that clearly dominated their leagues for most of the year. I do expect the Mets to take it to the Cardinals. St. Louis might be able to stretch things out to a game 6, but I just think that the New York hitting will overpower St. Louis. I’m not so sure about the AL. Detroit beat Oakland 5 games to 4 in the regular season, but Oakland had better stats. I also feel a little more comfortable with the state of Oakland’s pitching right now. I would expect the Tigers to suffer a little bit of a hangover from their battle with the Yanks, but I also expect them to rally back and force this series to 7 games.

Of course, given my prognostication skills, both St. Louis and Detroit will sweep their respective series for the rubber match of the 1934 and 1968 World Series (St. Louis won in ’34 and Detroit won in ’68).