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Sunday, September 25, 2005

And Down the Stretch They Come...

Well, here we are, a week from the end of the season. The A's are six games back from the Angels for the AL West lead. The White Sox are 1.5 games ahead of the Indians for first in the AL Central. The Yankees and the Red Sox are tied for the AL East divisional title. Oh yea, and the difference between the first place Indians and the second place Red Sox or Yankees for the Wild Card is 1.5 games.

Oy vey.

Personally, I think the race in the West is over. Starting Monday, the A's and the Angels have a four-game series in Oakland, so Oakland still certainly has a shot to cover the ground between them and Anaheim. However, the Angels have shown themselves to be a much more consistant team this year. At the start of the season, Oakland was struggling mightily. Pretty much the only reason that they're even in this race at all is because of the midseason hot streak they had. I've been impressed by the A's rookies and the pitching staff (for the most part) this year, most notably rookie closer Houston Street and young pitcher Danny Haren, among others. Nevertheless, they just haven't proved to me that they can sustain themselves during the coming week to come out on top of the division. The Angels get my pick here.

The course that the AL Central has taken this year is bizarre. For the first half of the year, the White Sox were one of the two best teams in baseball, along with St. Louis. With Minnesota and Cleveland both having rough times to start the year, it looked like it was going to be easy sailing for Chicago. Around the All Star Break, things began to change. The White Sox were still continuing to win, but not at the same pace as they had been winning at earlier. At the same time, Cleveland was starting to improve. The Indians got better and better in the coming months, and now they've managed not only to put themselves in the lead in the Wild Card, but in a great position to win the division. While Chicago, who has been struggling lately, will be playing a somewhat solid Detroit team, Cleveland will play Tampa Bay at home, before the White Sox and Indians square off in Cleveland during the last series of the season. Clevelands youth and lack of experience could hurt them when it comes down to pressure packed times in a game, but, if they can manage to keep that from affecting their play, they could certainly win this division. Chicago's pitching, what's been carrying the team for the whole year, is beginning to come apart. Mark Buehrle, a Cy Young candidate for the whole year, has struggled, and, I mean, how ironic is it that Jose Contreras has been their best pitcher lately? Cleveland could certainly take advantage of Chicago's pitching problems. Either way, I'll be rooting for the Indians, just to see such an upset.

Now we come to the classic matchup: Boston vs. New York. Boston's pitching has been terrible of late, while just the opposite has been true with the Yankees. To start the year, the Yankees struggled to get every win. The pitching was terrible, with Randy Johnson, George Steinbrenner's big offseason aquisition, not being much better than the rest of the staff. However, Mike Mussina's pitching improved, the front office went out and got Shawn Chacon, and Aaron Small was called up from the farm system. No matter what way you look at it, the Yankees have gotten lucky in terms of how their pitching has recovered. Still, they have improved enough to tie the Red Sox for first, who looked like they would run away with the division. The way things have been going lately, it looks like the division will come down to the final series of the season at Fenway Park, or maybe even beyond that. In the last few weeks, it has seemed like the Yankees have been unbeatable. It's so close between the two teams, it's tough to make a prediction. What it may come down to is this: Boston plays all of its remaining games, including the final series against the Yankees, at Fenway, while the Yankees will play the rest of their games on the road (that is, unless the Yankees and Red Sox are tied for first at the end of the year, in which case a playoff would be held at Yankee Stadium). I usually don't buy into the home-field advantage that much, but it's just a fact that the Red Sox are built for Fenway and play much better at home than on the road. The Red Sox have been a much better team over the course of the year than the Yankees, and I like them to be in first place as the season comes to a close.

As for the Wild Card, it's tough to tell who will win it with all of the divisional races going on, but I can't see the Yankees missing out on the playoffs with the way they've been playing lately. The Yankees get the nod here.

No matter what happens in these races, it will be exciting. We haven't seen something like this in years, so enjoy the final week of the season.

REMEMBER TO COMMENT PLEASE

1 Comments:

Blogger adamh1289 said...

Hey Matt, thanks for replying.
Anyways at this point you're probably right. Earlier this week the White Sox looked like they were just going to fall out of it in a second with how badly they were playing, but they have stabilized. Cleveland has really been playing well lately, and with their recent play and Chicago's head start in terms of their early season record, the Wild Card will probably come out of the AL Central.

7:25 PM

 

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