Blog Posts For Tag: Mlb Playoffs

The baseball playoffs have begun after the Detroit Tigers self destructed and let the Minnesota Twins win the AL Central. If anything, the very fact that the Tigers bombed so badly proves that there is a reason not to discount even the seemingly most ridiculous statistic, like the magic number in this case. The development also proves something else, that any team that has managed to make it to the MLB postseason has a very real shot if winning it all.

Everybody knew that the intensity of the MLB after the All Star game would quickly separate the real contenders from the handful of clubs that were going to receive participation trophies at best. It was what happened that has been such a surprise to those of us who do not make a living sitting down, reading all the stats, studying every box score, and enabling a Google alert for every MLB transaction.

In this new political atmosphere in the midst of an economy that appears to be on the brink of disaster because of shady business practices and a ground breaking presidential election the new trend is for transparency. This trend is slowly creeping into every aspect of our American lives, including sports.

Yesterday, for the second time in two days, the umpires calling the World Series admitted that they missed a key play. This time it was in the first inning of Game 4 when Jimmy Rollins got caught in a run down and was called safe on his retreat back to third base. Replays, seen nation wide by the largest audience to watch this World Series so far, showed that Rollins was tagged clearly on the bum by Rays third baseman Evan Longoria. The play ended up being significant because Pat Burrell walked with the bases loaded, scoring Rollins.

The question is, is this a good thing? It has been an American tradition to openly mock umpires for missing calls and hypothesize that the league has a vendetta against our team. It almost helps the “us against the world” mentality that sports fans have with regards for their team. By publicly admitting that the human element in sports (a genre like I think is simply politics without all that pesky national socio-economic fall out) is faulty it takes away from that traditional separation of the game on the field and destroying that fourth wall that separated the fan from the game.

The fans should not have sympathy for the ump or really any kind of personal relationship with the man (or woman) wearing the chest protector, leaning over the catchers shoulder. Fans should only have hopeless devotion for their team. They should think that each game is some sort of chapter in a grand story of destiny with a clear three act structure.

Bad calls are part of the game, simply put. Instant replay is already being used for home runs and it is slowly becoming justified as part of the every aspect of the game. Fairness and sports have never truly been one and the same, that is part of the beauty of sports.

I would much rather see this…

Than this…

And to end this post on a non sequitur, perhaps the most amazing pitch ever thrown…

World Series Tickets

Those issues would be putting the ball in play. The weakness every American League team was expecting to be the Tampa Bay Rays downfall on the way to the post season, in the divisional round, and in the ALCS has finally made an appearance in the first game of the World Series.

The Rays managed just five hits in the entire game and none of those hits came after the fifth inning when they needed them to come back from the 3-2 deficit. The Philadelphia Phillies were no picture perfect team themselves. The team stranded 11 base runners and Ryan Howard went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts. The game wipes out the home field advantage the Rays were counting on. The team has had problems on the road this season and now are playing in an evenly split series.

World Series Tickets
 

The World Series is the culmination of excellence for an entire season. The best teams with the best hitting, the best hitting, and the best fielding bring each season to a close in dramatic fashion. The Rays and the Phillies bring that this season, and though not many baseball fans though they would have an interest in seeing teams from Tampa and Philadelphia playing.

Most thought the Chicago Cubs would pick this season to give a story book ending to their century of bad luck. The team was as talented and as balanced as many of the great teams in history, but in the end the rest of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ batting lineup caught up with Manny Ramirez and swept the Cubbies. This broke plenty of people’s hearts, but inspired a hilarious SNL moment (the best comedy has its roots in tragedy, right).

Over in the American League everybody was sure that the Tampa Bay Rays playoff tickets would just be a fad. The team was less than compelling at the plate, relying on a couple of home run hitters to give their great pitching a thin lead all season long. The Chicago White Sox, the Boston Red Sox or the Los Angeles Angels (the team with the best record in baseball) were supposed to stop the Cinderella season.

Instead, the Rays found a groove and destroyed the White Sox and set the major league record for home runs in the ALCS while taking out the Red Sox (who were trying to become the first team to repeat as champions since the New York Yankees in the late ‘90s).

At the end of this season of great storylines and greater surprises World Series tickets have landed in Philadelphia and Tampa. In celebration of the unexpected and the unappreciated, we are celebrating the top ten catches (sometimes truly unbelievable, with good reason) from every league that uses a ball and a leather glove. Enjoy, be amazed, and trick yourself into believing you could actually make some these plays with breaking something in the process.
 

Ten of the Best Catches in Baseball

The World Series this season is going to be interesting as the Philadelphia Phillies take on the Tampa Bay Rays. It is the battle of the have nots and the have not in a while.

The Rays have a team that has performed masterfully on the mound and at the plate in both postseason series so far. The inexperienced Rays managed to keep their team ERA down to 3.62. Starting pitchers Matt Garza and James Shields were able to survive the dangerous bats of the Boston Red Sox with relatively few runs allowed. Garza won the ALCS MVP for his 2-0 record and 1.38 ERA during the series.

The bats have been alive all postseason long for Tamp Bay. Rays tickets to Tropicana Field have seen a team that set an ALCS record with 16 home runs (the prior record was 13). B.J. Upton may not be known as a power hitter after this past regular season, but the bat that managed to hit 24 home runs out of the ball park in 2007 has made a comeback and leads the team with seven dingers in the series.

The Philadelphia Phillies have not exactly struggled themselves. The team dispatched the Brewers easily in four games and the Dodgers in five. That 7-2 postseason record is quite impressive as the team that has been slowly gaining ground in the National League has made it to the championship series.

The Phillies tickets for their home games at Citizens Bank Park seem pretty safe, but Philadelphia will have to play better on the road, where they were 3-2 in the playoffs. Since the American League won the World Series, they get home field advantage.

The Phillies struggled offensively in the first two playoff series. This seems like an odd thing to say since the strength of the club is its batting lineup, but the team only managed to hit .259 in these first nine games. Those bats- specifically those of Ryan Howard, Pat Burrell, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins-will need to be far more explosive to make sure that the new upstart Rays do not make this a short World Series.

World Series Tickets

The Philadelphia Phillies have the unfortunate honor of being the professional franchise with the most losses in every sport. This has come because of a few factors. One, even a great team will post a large number of losses because of the pure volume of baseball games played in a regular season. Two, the Phillies have been playing those high volume games since 1883. Three, they were awful for quite a few seasons from 1915 to 1950.
Anybody who ahs paid attention the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park will tell you that since the turn of the century, Philadelphia has bucked history and been building a loaded team that was just waiting for the Atlanta Braves to go away. The Braves are gone and now the Phillies have fought off the New York Mets and the Florida Marlins to reach their first World Series since 1993.

The competition at Tropicana Field used to be for the fans with Rays tickets that were trying to beat the rest of the crowd while the last place team finished the final two innings. This season, things magically turned around. The team inexplicably started the season hot and never slowed down. They went 97-65 and flirted with the best record in the league for a few months.

The Tampa Bay Rays took the crazy turn this season thanks to the youth. B.J. Upton, Evan Longoria, and Carl Crawford have all been highly position touted prospects and this season they managed to find their way during the season and pave a road that led to a first place finish in the highly competitive American League East.

Scott Kazmir, Matt Garza, and James Shields have been the three young aces for the team. These three and a stellar bullpen held opponents to just few enough runs to make up for the sometimes sputtering offense. That offense has not been sputtering in the postseason and will need to put on a show because the Phillies offense is powerful enough to score a few runs on the Rays great pitchers.

World Series Tickets
 

The Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies are meeting in a World Series that few would have predicted at the beginning of the season. The series may not be what television outlets wanted, but it should a very entertaining one.

The entertainment value will come from watching two very similar teams duke it out. From a historical perspective this is a series between one of the league’s oldest franchises (the Phillies at the ripe old age of 126) and one of the leagues youngest (the Rays at the age of 11). On the field this is a match up that pits powerful bats against good pitching.

Phillies tickets provided entry to the third most dangerous team in the National League. Philadelphia has watched all season long as Pat Burrell, Ryan Howard, and Chase Utely have scared National League pitchers. Toward the end of the season Jimmy Rollins began to turn his bad season around and other players like Jayson Werth were dangerous enough to make teams suffer.

Rays tickets were not guarantees to a show with an onslaught of runs, but one with a lineup that lived and died with the home run ball. Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria were the main culprits, but during the postseason B.J. Upton joined the duo to make a trio of power hitters. The long ball and the multiple steal threats led from a surprising start to what could be an unbelievable finish.

The pitching on both sides has been pretty solid. Matt Garza, James Shields, and Scott Kazmir were dinged up a little bit by the Red Sox, but most teams would have been roughed up. The young starters are all quality performers on the mound and need to be at their best to make it through the middle of the Phillies lineup.

The Phillies have had to rely on the performances by Cole Hamels and Joe Blanton to start the game and Ryan Madson, J.C. Romeo, and Brad Lidge to hold the game until victory. The Rays bats may not be as dangerous as the Phillies, but they are definitely more of a challenge than the Dodgers.

World Series Tickets

 

The Tampa Bay Rays have been pounding on postseason pitching with stifling swings of the bats. They have already set a record with 13 homeruns in the ALCS. Carlos Pena has been on fire with three home runs in the last three games and Evan Longoria is continuing his stellar rookie season with six postseason homeruns. The team showed it could score with scattered shots in the Wild Card series with the White Sox and is now flexing its muscles with long shots. This may be the most compete offensive team left in the playoffs.

The pitching has been pretty good this postseason as well. For the most par the bullpen has shown that they can hold any lead (despite last night’s breakdown) and the starters have done a solid job. To avoid extending the series against this dangerous Red Sox team the Rays need James Shields to deliver a gem. A win would set up an interesting World Series between two teams that share a struggling history, but more on that later (if the Rays can close this series).

MLB Playoffs Tickets
 

The New Beasts of the East, the Boston Red Sox, go into tonight with their season on the line. Down three games to two, the Boston faithful are hoping for the kind of play that toppled the Yankees in 2004. The team woke up after two painful games against the upstart Tampa Bay Rays.

Josh Beckett will take the mound and will need to shake off his first two postseason appearances, in which he was fortunate to avoid two losses, but not fortunate to leave the games with less than an 11.57 ERA. Beckett will need to beckon a performance like his starts in September when he was dominant on the mound. The offense, especially David Ortiz, will need to show that Thursday’s late game re-emergence was not just a last grasp.

MLB Playoffs
 

The Boston Red Sox were there in the seventh inning with two outs and a 7-0 deficit to the Tampa Bay Rays. All seemed lost, but the Red Sox rallied, scoring eight runs and taking the ALCS to Game 6. This is the franchise that loves to dig themselves out of a hole. They came into the game down three games to one and managed to win their eighth consecutive game when facing elimination.

This time it all started with Jed Lowrie sitting on third and Coco Crisp on first. Dustin Pedroia hit a single that drove in Lowrie and David Ortiz followed with a three-run home run. The Red Sox scored three more runs in the eighth and won the game in the ninth when J.D. Drew hit a single to deep right that drove in Kevin Youklis.

Boston will have to win two more tough games to meet the Phillies in the World Series and despite the great comeback on Thursday the team is still in trouble. The Rays have been driving the ball all postseason long, with 13 home runs alone in the ALCS.

MLB Playoffs
 

The Philadelphia Phillies clinched the National League Pennant last night with a 5-1 victory in Game 5. In this new century the team that defined losing before has been slowly building into a champion. Now they will get a chance to win their first World Series since 1980 and their second in their 125 year history.

The game was a gem overall for the Philadelphia. Jimmy Rollins hit a home run off Chad Billingsley to start off the game. Cole Hamels continued his masterful performance this postseason with his second victory. The entire Phillies machine was in full swing. The only offensive contribution from the Dodgers came from, fittingly, Manny Ramirez, who hit a home run in the sixth to stop a shutout.

It looks like a foregone conclusion that the Rays are going to win the American League Pennant, with one game left until their first World Series birth.

MLB Playoff Tickets
 

The World Series is coming, but before it arrives the championship series have to play out. This weekend the ALCS went 1-1 as the Boston Red Sox defeated the Tampa Bay Rays 2-0 on Friday and the Rays evened the series 9-8 on Saturday, winning in extra innings.

The Phillies took a commanding 2-0 lead after beating the Dodgers 8-5 on Friday, but Los Angeles struck back with five runs in the first inning Sunday on their way to a 7-2 win to remind Philadelphia that the Dodgers can be just as dangerous with Manny Ramirez in the lineup.

MLB Playoffs
 

Last night the Philadelphia Phillies kicked off the NLCS with a dramatic 3-2 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers struck first in the first inning with a Manny Ramirez double to centerfield that was only a few feet from being a two-run home run. Los Angeles added a run in the fourth when Blake DeWitt hit a sacrifice to center to score Matt Kemp.

Down 2-0, the Phillies’ dangerous offense was held scoreless until the sixth inning. Derek Lowe had done a great job pitching around the middle of the lineup, but eventually they were able to hit him hard. Chase Utley drove a two-run home run to right field and Pat Burrell followed him with a solo shot that gave the Philadelphia a 3-2 lead. Both bullpens came in and shut the other team’s bats down, giving the Phillies a 3-2 win in the NLCS opener at Citizens Bank Park.

MLB Playoffs
 

The National League Championship Series has a traditional match up that baseball fans can really grasp. The Philadelphia Phillies and the Los Angeles Dodgers are bringing the early ‘90s back. The series should be very interesting since the teams are yin and yang. The Phillies have an underestimated pitching staff and a lauded middle of the lineup and the Dodgers have a celebrated staff and an underestimated offense (minus the praise Manny Ramirez always receives).

This is an intriguing series that I think will go seven games, with each contest being very close. The teams are putting their best pitchers on the mound for game one. The Phillies Cole Hamels dominated in the first game of the divisional series against the Brewers. Many will argue over who is better on the Dodgers staff, Derek Lowe or Chad Billingsley. The ERA difference is negligible, so it is probably a draw. Lowe handled the dangerous lineup of the Cubs in game one of the divisional series and will face an equally daunting task with the Phillies 3-4-5 guys. I am looking forward to this series the most.

MLB Playoff Tickets   
 

The MLB Playoffs have moved beyond the divisional round of the playoffs, a round that seems kind of forced to be honest with you. Despite the advent of the wild card seasons ago, the League Championships Series always felt like the real beginning of the postseason for me. This time the American League gets to be all East Coast with the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays. This series lacks the history or the compelling storylines, other than the upstart franchise (but it never feels right to have a team less than 20 years old in the playoffs, especially in their first postseason appearance).

The Red Sox have better hitting and more power in the lineup- even without Manny Ramirez. David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis, and a host of others bring home run swings throughout the lineup. The Rays are far from a great offensive club The have speed, but the hitting is not always on. The series with the White Sox made them look like small ball pros, but the reality is that the Rays have struggled to score all season. Which batting lineup will show up - the small ball machine, the team that can barely support its pitching, or the team that can score in spurts with power? I think the series comes down to the Ray pitching staff. They have been excellent all season long and will need to keep it up to get through nine innnings with this dangerous Red Sox team.

MLB Playoff Tickets