Saturday, October 06, 2007

There are no babies in these DBacks.

It's been week since I blogged anything. It has been one of those weeks where my work came in the way of my life! I hate when that happens :-) MLB playoff are in full flow now and I couldn't be happier about the results so far. The baby-Backs are in the NLCS. Thats awesome. Nobody including the fans in Phoenix gave them a shot at the beginning of the season, but they are at the mountain-top right now with the other improbable team, the Colorado Rockies. An all NL-West NLCS. Who would have thought 2 NL-West teams would make it and neither would be the Padres, Dodgers or the Giants. Brandon Webb set the tone as expected in game 1 and the over-rated Cubs never recovered.

There were all kinds of criticism of the baby-backs lack of pitching depth beyond Brandon Webb. But Arizona's pitchers gave up just 6 runs total in 3 games. Livan Hernandez shut the Cubs down on the road today. It was a true team win with a whole of bunch of kids contributing. Chris Young hit a home-run in the very first pitch of the game and that was a blow the Wrigley faithful never really recovered from. Eric Byrnes and Stephen Drew hit home runs as well. Drew had some series with a .500 average. The kids are playing big when it counts the most. It would be awesome if the DBacks win a World Series. After the Marlins won a ring, gutted the team, re-built from scratch and won again in a span of ten years, it would be funny if the DBacks do the same. Cubs and Redsox and even the Giants have been waiting 50, 60, 80 years for championships and these guys are winning one very 5 to 10 years. Ironic!

Colorado swept the Philies to sew up the other NLCS spot. The Rockies are on an absolute roll. Their one-game playoff tie-breaker against the Padres might have been the best game of the year. Trevor Hoffman blew 2 straight saves to keep the Padres out of the playoffs and is taking a lot of heat from the Padres fans. The Rockies on the other hand have been hitting on all cylinders. The Phillies won the division after the Mets choked away the division lead in a spectacular meltdown. Tom Glavine couldn't get the second out in the first inning in the final game of the season and is now rumored to be contemplating not picking up his multi-million dollar player option to play for the Mets next season.

This series was predicted to be a high-scoring one with little pitching, but the Rockies pitching staff stepped up and shut the Phillies down. Phillies scored a total of 8 runs in 3 games against some Rockies pitchers that the rest of the country have not heard of. A Rockies-Dbacks NLCS was my dream and the TV networks nightmare! I was hoping for a similar match-up in the AL between Cleveland and Anaheim. Seems like the Angels are not going to be able to handle the Redsox. Manny came through with a walk-off homer in game 2 to put the Sox ahead 2-0. Many is awesome and so under-appreciated. He may be the only major leaguer I like in that whole over-rated Eastern sea-board. My wishes for a no-Redsox, no-Yankees ALCS is still alive. Cleveland is up 2-0 on the Yanks behind some awesome pitching by Fausto Carmona in a classic game 2 that went to 13 innings. Classic games are even more fun for me when the Yanks lose. A-Rod is 0-for-6 in the series so far and you can't blame him with Carmona pitching like that.

Lets just hope the Indians finish the Yankees off against Roger Clemens in game 3. And the Angels win the next 3 to keep the BoSox out.

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