As the 2008 MLB regular season winds down, we can start to see what the playoff picture will look like.
Boston is a good team - probably better than the Rays - but they appear headed for defeat in the division race. My basic model shows the following:
Red Sox
94 wins - 3%
95 wins - 36%
96 wins - 53%
97 wins - 9%
Rays
96 wins - 3%
97 wins - 39%
98 wins - 51%
99 wins - 7%
This gives Tampa Bay a 95% chance at a clean win in the division. This would set up a 2/3 matchup of Boston at LAA and a 1/4 Minnesota/Chicago White Sox at Tampa.
The Angels will be tough for Boston because they have such a strong pitching staff, but I think the Sox can prevail. To a lesser extent I'd say the same thing about Tampa Bay, but I think that, especially with the second round being a seven-game series in the ALCS, it is Los Angeles that is Boston's larger roadblock to the World Series.
In the National League things are less clear, but I am relatively confident that the NLCS will feature the Chicago Cubs taking down the winner of the NL East (New York/Philadelphia).
So I predict that it will most likely be the Red Sox and the Cubs in the World Series.
This makes things horrible for a Cardinals fan. Although the ecstasy from Tom Brady's knee is still brightening each and every day for me, I can't help but continue to hate Boston and all its teams. Except the Bruins. You can have them.
But this pales in comparison to my hatred for Chicago and its sports teams. The Cardinals-Cubs have the most underrated rivarly in sports, and the Cardinals have something special at stake this year. No team in North American professional sports can boast that their rival has failed to win a championship in more than a century. With the Cubs celebrating the centennial of their 1908 World Series this year, we in St. Louis ask them to hold off for just one more year, so that we can talk the best trash in all of sports.
So, even though the Cubs haven't won a World Series in the same time that the Cardinals were able to win 10 (although the Sox total of 2 in the same span - since 1926 - isn't anything to get excited about), they do present a huge challenge this year. Their run differential is the best in baseball, and their pitching staff is solid, headed by Carlos Zambrano, who recently threw a no-hitter (nevermind that he gave up a grand slam to the Cardinals in his first inning of work following the no-no). All-in-all, if it comes down to Sox-Cubs, I'd put 60% odds on the Cubs, but I'll root as hard as I can for the Sox anyway.
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Why do you hate Chicago (my hometown, ahem) and all its sports teams?
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you about Cubs/Cardinals being a great and underrated rivalry, though.
This is the year! (*flash back to me and every other Cubs fan saying the same thing last year, and the year before, and...*)
Why do I hate Chicago? Are you kidding me? First of all, I've never hated toll roads so much in my life. But that's semi-rational, and in sports, reason has no place when hatred is involved.
ReplyDeleteSo why do I really hate Chicago? Because I'm from St. Louis! I really enjoyed the Blues-Hawks rivarly, back when the Blackhawks were a team worth being rivals with (remember Jeremy Roenick?), and the Cubs-Cards rivalry needs no more introduction. The Bears stole Lovie Smith, but I don't think the Rams constitute a "team" for rivalry purposes. So yeah, mostly it's just how much Chicago sucks that makes me hate it so much.