DownSwinging.com

Anything can happen in the playoffs. Really, anything can. That’s why getting to the playoffs is such a big deal, because teams that are there are in truth very close to a World Series championship, regardless of the number of wins they had in the regular season. Look at the ‘06 Cardinals, 83 wins, World Series champions. So it’s tough to really say one team is definitively going to beat another. But I’m going to throw that out the window right now.

Here’s what I don’t want to happen: A Yankees/Dodgers World Series. Sure the Joe Torre storyline would be nice for the media, but I just don’t see it panning out into a good series, which is all I can hope for now that my team has been eliminated (well, that and the Yankees not losing, so this would really be a double whammy).

The Yankees have an unbelievable lineup. It’s an All-Star team, it really is. And they’ve been that way pretty much this entire decade, but this year they have the pitching to back it up, and not just in the rotation. So while teams with a good offense might be able to pick up a few runs here and there, they can’t count on the run support they relied on throughout the regular season. So the pressure switches to the pitcher. In order to beat the Yankees (well, beat them four times at least) you have to be able to shutdown that offense, and while there are no pitchers in the postseason (or the world) that can definitively do that, so you have to rely on guys that have shutdown potential and that’s really all you can ask for.