Braves Update

I lied. I had to post again about the Braves before I left! Their playoff chances are just too encouraging for me to pass it up. :)  As I mentioned in my last post, the Giants and the Padres have to play each other at the end of the season, which makes things interesting because one of those teams will win the NL West while the other contends with the Braves for the wild card. It would get too complicated for the baseball websites to factor in teams' schedules when determining the magic and/or elimination numbers, but not so for me! Assuming both the Giants and the Padres win their two remaining games before their series against each other, the best possible records for the two teams (remember, both teams have to have better records than the Braves for the Braves to be eliminated) would be 92-70 and 91-71 if the Padres sweep or they take two out of three from the Giants. Obviously, if the Giants sweep or take two out of three, then their record would be much better, 94-68 I think, but the Padres' would only be 89-73. Anyway, worst case scenario is that the Braves have to beat a 91-71 record. Best case scenario is the Padres just lose all their games and the Braves win the wild card without having to strain their pitching staff to win games at the end. MLB.com and ESPN.com have the magic number for the Braves' wild card set at 4, meaning they have to win four more games or the Padres have to lose four games or some combination of the Braves' wins and the Padres' losses equalling four. And that number is correct if you're only concerned about the Braves and the Padres, but it's possible for the Padres to overtake the Giants and push them into the wild card race. Factoring in the schedule, the real number is three. I'm not worried at all about the Braves being able to take care of business and get a win or two or three in their final four games and clinch. Their final series is against the Phillies, which would normally scare me, but they will have locked up the best record in the NL and they'll have nothing to play for. Their best pitchers will be resting for the playoff push.

Looking ahead to the playoffs, I'm not sure how much faith I have in the Braves to go very far. I'm pretty sure they don't allow teams from the same division to play in the first round even though they may have the wild card winner and the team with the best record, so we won't have to play the Phillies right out of the box. I could see us beating either the Reds or the Giants/Padres, but after that I'm betting on the Phillies. They're just too good. They probably spent about as much money as the Yankees did, it's ridiculous. I really don't care about the AL; I think the DH is stupid and takes away from the strategy of the game and I think they just hit a bunch of home runs and don't play small ball. Not to mention the fact that there are two less teams in the AL, what's up with that? This is a completely uneducated guess because I don't follow that league but I'm picking an AL East team to go to the World Series. Either one. I just can't see the Twins sans Morneau getting there or the Rangers. I think their records are better than they should be because both of their divisions are trash. It's incredible to have two .600 win % teams in the same division like the Yankees and Rays. Especially when you consider that the Red Sox and the Blue Jays aren't that bad either. The Sox probably would have won the wild card or even some divisions in the NL. Bottom line: NLCS: Braves vs. Phillies; ALCS: Yankees vs. Rays. An all-east final is in the cards this year. Phillies will win in 6. You heard it here first.