The five of you still reading this are clearly here for ROUND TWO of our Fifth (yikes!) Annual Postseason Baseball Extravaganza. For the League Championship Series, the points are doubled -- you get four points for predicting the correct team, two for the correct number of games.
Feel free to join in even if you didn't make picks in the first round -- you may not win, but you'll probably still end up doing better than I do. . .
As a sidenote, since the Washington Post only predicted the ALCS today, I'll update the post with their NLCS prediction tomorrow, and close the betting until Monday morning, after the end of NLCS game two. And remember that this is a best of seven series, so four games are the minimum needed for the win.
Let's start with the easy call first, shall we?
ALCS: Yankees vs. Rangers. In the division series, the Yankees swept the Twins while the Rangers had to play the full five games to beat the Tampa Bay Rays. Now, on the one hand, you may all recall that I am a huge believer in momentum. The Rangers are on a high right now -- they're fresh off a win over a team that was heavily favored. The Yankees have been sitting around for awhile counting their money and getting complacent, because these are the things that Yankees do.
On the other hand. The Yankees had a better record during the season in a much more competetive division. They've got a stronger rotation overall, and because the Rangers had to go the full 5 against the Rays, they won't have Cliff Lee -- who picked up two of their three wins in
that series -- until game 3.An upset would be awesome. But I think it's unlikely.
Jordan Says: Yankees in 5
WaPo Says: Yankees in 6
FOX Says: Yankees in 6
And then we go to the series that starts tomorrow, the one for the league where they actually play baseball and not its weird mutate cousin.
NLCS: Phillies vs. Giants. Everyone else is going to say Phillies, right? It took the Giants too long to beat the Braves. Their fielding's not as strong. They've been too tied up in the whole three way battle with the Braves and the Padres to get to the postseason to get their heads on
about possibly facing the Phillies in the postseason. The Phillies have been here 3 years in a row. The Phillies have Roy HalladayAnd part of the reason I'm going in the opposite direction is sheer contrariness. I don't like it when everyone in the world thinks there's going to be a walkover. I like to shake my fist at the universe a bit like that.
But the other part is -- and I know I say this every year, and I know this is in complete opposition to what I said in the previous section -- the long undecided season, the long division series, the scrappy underdog attitude, the constant fight to get to the top? Momentum. The assured strut to the division title, the threepeat? Complacency.
Plus, no matter what the Phillies have, the Giants have Brian Wilson's beard. The beard is mighty, my friends. The beard has powers we have not yet fully borne witness to.
Jordan says: Giants in 7
FOX says: Phillies in 5
WaPo says: TBA
(updated 10/19. Hey, remebmer how I promised to add the WaPo picks in? Um. .life happened. Anyway, WaPo said Phillies in 6)
5 comments:
Well, I no longer have the problem of doing well by picking teams I dislike...
I'll say Rangers in 7 and Giants in 6.
I'm going to go Rangers in 6, and Phillies in 4.
I'm going with Giants in 7 and Rangers in 6. Just cause I like to bet for the underdogs. :)
I say Yankees in 5 and Giants in 6. I would have hoped it's Yanks in 4 and Giants in 5. But since the Yanks effed me on that one, I'm just going to remain stupidly optimistic, rather than just stupid.
This is actually kind of ideal; closing the betting on this round with both series tied up. Mwahahahaha.
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