How Can Yankees Fans Live With Themselves?

Well, I'm still here basking in the glory that is Cliff Lee returning to the Phillies, now more than 24 hours after the news shocked the baseball world and sent Phillies Phans around the globe into an absolute tizzy. I've read just about every story on every major media outlet, every blog post from a Philly blogger, everything I could devour since Tuesday's big announcement, and it looks like I'll be taking at least one more day before focusing on what is still missing from this Phillies team before we can pencil in another World Series championship for the Fightin Phils.

Today, my focus is on exactly how all this happened. I mean, ultimately, Cliff Lee had an awesome time in Philadelphia in 2009, he loved the team, the players, the coaches, the stadium, and he loved the area in general, including the home he bought in New Jersey when he was traded to the Phils a couple of years ago, which he never sold even after leaving the team for Seattle, Washington, and then Arlington Texas in the middle of the 2010 season.

But, having lived in New York City all through the past baseball season, I can't help but think that the Yankees fans themselves literally played a big part in why Cliff Lee walked away from 34 million more guaranteed dollars offered by the Yanks to sign a shorter-term deal to return to the city of brotherly shove. For those of you who don't live in the area and/or don't follow post-season baseball like I do:

According to a report in the USA Today on October 26, 2010, while the American League Championship Series was being played in Yankee Stadium, the wife of Texas Rangers ace Cliff Lee was reportedly not happy with how the Yankees fans treated her while she was sitting in the visiting family section at the Yankees' new stadium in the Bronx.

Kristen Lee said there were ugly taunts. Obscenities. Cups of beer thrown. Even fans spitting from the section above.

“The fans did not do good things in my heart,” Kristen says.

“When people are staring at you, and saying horrible things, it’s hard not to take it personal.”

Well there you have it. The comment about the fans "not doing good things in my heart" really sticks out to me for some reason. Does that sound like a woman who would want her husband to turn down $24 million a year to play in the city they both loved, in favor of committing to two more years at around $23 million a year in the city whose fans "did bad things in her heart"?

Is it truly possible that Yankees fans are such fucking pigs that they literally chased away the only chance they had of Cliff Lee coming to play for them?

What must Yankees fans be thinking about themselves right about now?

End of the Road

So, the baseball season has come to an end for my beloved Philadelphia Phillies. What can I say really....The 2010 NLCS was a case study in the old adage that great pitching prevails over great hitting in the playoffs. Without really dominating in any of the games, the Giants quietly went out and took two of three in Philadelphia, and two of three in San Francisco to return to their first world series since Barry Bonds led them there back in 2002. The pitching was pretty much stellar, with only Jonathan Sanchez getting slammed up hard by the team, and Bruce Bochy's coaching is highly underrated in my view as he managed to find a way to take a team that does not run the bases well, does not steal bases at all, and really has very little offense to speak of, and eke out three out of four wins in one-run games against the team that led the entire major leagues this year in record in one-run games. In a lot of ways, the Giants did to the Phillies this year what the Phillies have done to the Dodgers in the past two NLCS's. Where in the recent past it was Jimmy Rollins leading the time to the amazing 9th-inning walkoff rally, this year in the key Game 4 it was the Giants finding a way to hammer out a run off of Phillies' starting pitcher Roy Oswalt in a rare bullpen appearance.

While the above made the NLCS painful for me to watch in a lot of ways, nonetheless I will confess that I am left with the feeling that the Phillies are still the class of the National League. The Giants' lineup is a joke for a World Series team, and it is quite obvious that they live and die by their pitching staff alone. I mean, if not for Cody Ross -- he of the three regular season home runs and 18 rbis all year -- going absolutely bananas out of nowhere in this series, the Giants would not have scored more than 8 or 9 runs in the 6 game series, and they would not have had a chance even with the Phillies' bats slumping as they did in the series. Ryan Howard struck out 12 times in the NLCS, and had a mind-boggling zero home runs and zero RBIs in the entire series after recording 17 rbis in the 2009 NLCS. Chase Utley, another of the most clutch bats in the postseason over the past four years, was pretty much worthless at the plate in this series. Several times in the series, Carlos Ruiz and Shane Victorino came to the plate with runners in scoring position or even with the bases loaded, and they failed to come through in the clutch as they have so many times in the recent past. Now to be sure, a lot of this is directly related to the incredible, historic strength of the Giants' starting rotation as I wrote about before this series began. But the Phillies deserve a whole lot of the credit for sucking up the joint in this series, be it at bat, or in the field where they made several uncharacteristic errors from guys like Rollins, Howard, Utley and Victorino -- all basically gold glove-worthy fielders in their own right -- including single-handedly committing three errors in the field in the third inning of the decisive Game 6 to let in both of the runs given up by Roy Oswalt on the day The official records say Oswalt's strong performance was one ER in six innings, but it was clearly zero if you know your ass from first base about scoring a baseball hit.

Anyways, try as I might -- and I freely recognize that this may just be the Philly boy in me shining through -- I just can't shake the feeling that while we might very well be looking at the best pitching staff in the last few generations, we're just not looking at the best team in the NL here in the upcoming World Series. Unlike the ALCS, where I would say it was painfully obvious that the Rangers are in fact the superior team over the overmatched Yankees. I mean, for all the talk of how Cliff Lee has the Yankees' number, and how much of an advantage that gives Texas in a four-game series, the guy pitched exactly one time in the ALCS. Yes, he won his start and utterly shut down the Yanks in Game 3, but the guy barely had a hand in any of the actual games. And those games for the most part were not close. The Rangers thrashed the Yankees in this series. As I heard a caller say on sports radio sometime today, this was a 6-game series that felt an awful lot like a sweep. The Rangers are superior, they were far superior at both hitting and pitching than the Yankees, they made the Yanks look old, and ultimately the Bronx Bombers never had a chance in this series, an outcome which in the end just didn't surprise me much at all.

One thing I will say about the 2010 World Series -- this is yet another victory for the little guy, for the small market team that is not the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies or Mets. Despite all the talk heading into the LCS series, in the end it was not the top-5 payroll Phils or the sick-spending Yankees prevailing to face off in the sport's biggest stage. Instead, we're looking at Texas and San Francisco, not exactly small market teams, but not close to the big spenders on the top end of the spectrum in the major leagues. The Giants' opening day 2010 payroll stood at $97.8 million, good for 10th out of 30 teams in the majors, while the Rangers' team payroll was a paltry $55.2 mil, placing them in 27th out of 30 teams in terms of money spent on their players. So while the Yankees and the Phillies continue to show that money can generally buy some modicum of success over a 162-game regular season, once again baseball has two relatively new and rare participants in the Fall Classic, including the first-ever franchise appearance for a Rangers team that looks to be on a major roll heading into the final series of the season.

Before I go, I would be remiss if I did not mention that fuckass referee in the Packers - Vikings game on Sunday night in NBC, as that dickwad stood right there on national, prime time weekend television and just plain decided to give Brett Favre another come from behind victory by calling Percy Harvin in-bounds on the field with just 48 seconds left in what was at the time a 4-point Packer lead. I mean, this muthafucker is paid to be an NFL referee -- getting these calls right is his whole job -- and this jackfuck stood right there, not two feet away from where the catch occurred, in perfect position, looking right at the play right down on the ground, and called Harvin in bounds. This despite Harvin not being touched or pushed on his way up, and even though Harvin actually got not two, not one, but zero feet in-bounds. Go watch the play if you care to, but I mean this guy's first foot landed mostly in-bounds but on review his heel was clearly touching the out-of-bounds line at the back of the end zone. Then the second foot landed, with the entire foot well onto the white line, so much so that you could even see the white outline in front of the foot because literally the entire foot was that far out of bounds. And then the body landed, also hopelessly on the white well past the back of the end zone. And yet that fucksniffing referee still just up and decided to make the call on the field a touchdown, making it that much harder for replay to overturn the call and keep Favre from another stunning comeback victory at Lambeau Field. As I've written about several times here on the blog, this trend of sports officials interjecting themselves into the game and making sure that they actually affect the outcome instead of just shutting up, sitting back and calling the game correctly. The bottom line is, that referee in Green Bay cannot possibly miss that call from as close as he was and in the perfect position he was in, unless he is predisposed towards taking over the game. That's just the way it is. That referee is an asshole and he should be removed from the game immediately.

OK, /end rant.

Cowboys over the Giants tonight. Tom Coughlin always has a way of surprising you on the downside after a couple of big wins. Bank it.

Not Dead Yet

Kudos out to Roy Halladay who gutted his way through a first-inning groin injury -- that he told no one but his manager about and then insisted on going back out to the mound for six tough innings of 2-run baseball -- to nab his first win of the NLCS and an absolutely crucial victory for the Phillies on the brink of elimination in Game 5. To the rabid Phillies fans watching the game, it was very obvious just from the look on Halladay's face while he was out there and even in the dugout in between innings early in the game -- where Halladay was barely able to sit down without significant pain -- that something was wrong, and in a way it was a relief to hear about the groin injury in manager Charlie Manuel's end of game presser, indicating that this is not the new status quo for the Phillies' ace but rather just (hopefully) a temporary physical ailment. But for him to go out there and give the team six quality innings and to pitch through the pain like he did, this is the stuff that Philadelphia is made of, and the fans will not forget.

As big as Halladay was in the Phillies nabbing the win and sending the series back home to Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, the real story in Game 5 wasn't Halladay, nor Giants ace Tim Lincecum who took the tough loss after another solid pitching performance himself, but rather the Phillies' bullpen, easily thought to be the one glaring weakness on this team. After a scoreless 7th inning from Jose Contreras and J.C. Romero, Ryan Madson came in needing to hold on to a slim 1-run lead while facing the Giants' tough 4-5-6 hitters of Buster Posey, Pat Burrell and Cody Ross in the 8th inning -- the three guys responsible for mostly all of San Francisco's offense in this entire LCS series -- and Madson responded to the pressure by promptly setting down the side in order, throwing fastball after fastball by the heart of the Giants' lineup as he mowed down the most menacing players on the opposition like they were children with pitches that registered around 90-92 on the radar gun but looked more like 150 or 200 to this experienced eye. Honestly I do not recall the last time Ryan Madson (or any Phillies reliever, for that matter) came into a game late and struck out the side like this, but it provided a huge lift to the team and to their fans who I can personally tell you were not ready to pack it in for the season just yet. By the time Jayson Werth added his NL record 11th postseason home run with the Phillies in the top of the 9th inning, the team's spirits were high, and my nemesis Brad Lidge was perfect to close it out in the 9th.

So, the anatomy of each of the 12 historic comebacks from 3-1 down in 7-game series in MLB history begins exactly the same way -- with a win by the down team in Game 5 -- and that's what we're looking at here in the NLCS. And unlike the Yankees, who (1) have to win the last two games of their ALCS series on the road at Texas, and (2) who still have to face their opponent's #1 starter and known Yankee killer in Game 7, the Phillies have a somewhat easier rode ahead of them. No more road games, no more silly west coast time zone, and most of all, no more Tim Lincecum in any meaningful way in this series. Right now it's just about winning Game 6, which will feature Phillies pitcher Roy Oswalt's shot at redemption after taking the loss in giving up a 9th inning run in Game 4, going against Sanchez who the Phillies already touched up but good in Game 2 of this series, the only game where the Phils' lineup was really able to come together and do their thing. Here's hoping we get not just one but two Game 7s this weekend in what could shape up to be an incredible weekend on both the baseball and the football fronts.

team to rally from a 3-1 deficit in a best-of-seven series. The Red Sox were the last to do it, in the 2007 ALCS against Cleveland.

Zombie Alert

I hate to stir up mass hysteria or anything, but I am pretty sure Cliff Lee is undead. I mean, the stony look on his face while he just goes out there and throws strikes by people is unlike anyone I can ever recall. He must be undead, it's the most sensible explanation for how someone could not just get the results Lee gets on the mound but more particularly do it how he does it. I don't ever recall someone with such ice in their veins in a huge spot over and over again -- I know I posted that video of the ridiculously blase basket catch in last year's World Series against the Yankees -- but Monday night's Game 3 of the ALCS in New York was a perfect example of the country's most famous zombie in action.

Do you realize the Yankees had just three baserunners in 8 innings against Cliff Lee last night? That Lee struck out 13 batters out of the 24 guys he mowed down on the night? You do realize this is the all-time all-star Yankees lineup we're talking about here, they of the Derek Jeter / A-Rod / Mark Teixeira / Robinson Cano / Jorge Posada and I could go on and on? Cliff Lee, even with all the spotlight in the world on him and the highest expectations one could have, he still performed.

And the thing that gets me most of all with him is he doesn't make you chase bad pitches. He doesn't set you up with three lowballs and then fire one in way high out of the strike zone to make you swing and miss. He doesn't even necessarily "paint the corners" like a Greg Maddux did so impeccably back in his heyday. Cliff Lee just throws effing strikes. You know he's going to do it. You can't just take the first pitch like so many other pitchers allow a good contact hitter to do. If you do, you'll just be behind in the count every time you get up there, which is not where you want to be against Lee. In two-hitting and shutting out the Yankees on Monday, Lee threw 122 pitches, 82 of them for strikes. I used to point this out all the time here on the blog last year when Lee was pitching for the Phillies, but this guy throws at least 2/3 strikes every time he goes out there. He just challenges every hitter with his perfectly-placed fastball, and he moves on to the cutters and the sliders once he gets ahead in the count, and the guy is deadly accurate. Forget pitching around certain guys, or being sure to avoid the top part of the strike zone against the cleanup hitter, forget all that stuff. Cliff Lee the Undead just goes out there with that same stoic look on his face and the same stoic approach to every hitter he faces: just throw it by them. Cliff Lee gives new meaning to the phrase "mowing 'em down", he really does.

I watched my own team's #1 pitcher throw a frigging no-hitter earlier in these playoffs, and I also watched Tim Lincecum throw a masterful 14-strikeout 3-hit complete game shutout of the Braves in Game 1 of this year's NLDS. But Cliff Lee's performance on Monday night at the Yankees is quite simply the most sensational pitching performance I have witnessed in the last few weeks.

With AJ Burnett slated to pitch tonight for the Yankees in Game 4, there is a very real chance that the Yankees are down 3 games to 1 in the ALCS with two more games still to play in Arlington to end the series. That is a horrible situation for the Yankees, not so much because they have to win three straight games, but because it means that under the best case scenario, they will have to beat Cliff Lee again to go back to the World Series. And this time it will be in Texas.

Nobody has really given this Rangers team a real chance to win the AL pennant (myself included) all season long, until perhaps today. For the first time this morning on the way into work, I found myself speculating about the possibilities. It's actually a pretty amazing story, albeit one I haven't even considered for one second until just today: Cliff Lee pitching against the Phillies in the World Series, the team that traded him after he dominated for us in 2009 and went and got Roy Halladay instead. Halladay vs Lee in Game 1 of the World Series....that one's gonna be even better than Halladay vs. Lincecum twice in the NLDS here.

Speaking of which, Game 3 of the NLCS kicks off at 4pm ET today, and as I mentioned yesterday this is a much bigger game for the Phillies than Game 1 was. Although winning today is certainly not crucial to either team, with Cole Hamels pitching today and Joe Blanton slated for tomorrow, clearly the Phils' best chance is to win with Hamels today and then take the pressure off for Game 4 on Wednesday.

Bring on the Baseball

Contrary to the worst fears of a significant number of Philadelphia Phillies fans, the Phils' 4-3 loss to the Giants in Game 1 of the NLCS did not have me worried. I believe I wrote about this last Friday, but I actually thought coming in (and still do think today) that both the NLCS and the ALCS this year for specific reasons did not feature a Game 1 that it actually mattered all that much to either team involved in either game to win. I mean sure, we've all seen the stats as far as what percentage of Game 1 winners have gone on to win the series, but #1 the numbers are not all that high, and #2 and more importantly, the reason those numbers are not all that meaningful is that the team with homefield advantage is already the better team over a 162-game season in most cases, so they should win Game 1 at home, and they should win the whole series in most cases due to superior skill and talent. In any event, usually I will concede that Game 1 proves to be very important the later into these series you get in the postseason, but I just don't think that's the case this year.

On the Yankees side, the big reason that Game 1 just doesn't matter all that much -- even to the underdog Rangers playing at home -- is Cliff Lee. It's that simple. If Cliff Lee had been pitching in Game 1 in Texas, then the Rangers losing that game would have been in my mind devastating to their chances of winning this series. Because not only did they just lose with their ace, but they have no more Cliff Lee to pitch for the next four games of the series. That's the big loss right there. But here, not only does Texas have homefield advantage in the series, and thus gets four games at home if necessary including the decisive Game 7 if it gets that far, but they've got what everyone in the world is viewing as a gimme win with Cliff Lee going tonight in Game 3. Knowing that Game 3 is theirs regardless of where the game is being played is a huge factor for the Rangers in this series, and it quite simply made winning Game 1 not a huge priority as long as the team was able to secure a split in Texas. Now if all goes as planned tonight and Lee pitches another gem after beating the Yankees twice during the regular season already this year and also twice during the World Series in 2009, the Rangers will be guaranteed at worst to return to Texas with a chance to beat the Yankees as they have flogged them in the first two games of the series at home and to move on to the first World Series appearance (and the first World Series loss) in franchise history.

In the NLCS, it's basically the same story but for a more generalized reason. With the Rangers, it is the specter of Cliff Lee alone that made Game 1 not crucial for them to win the series. With the Phillies, it's the entire starting rotation. I mean, when you've got Halladay, Oswalt and Hamels taking the ball to start 6 of the potentially 7 games of this series, winning Game 1 with Halladay throwing against another of the top two or three pitchers in the league is quite simply not that significant. The Phils are still the far superior team, the Giants' lineup is proving itself to be even more of a joke than I thought minus the ridicky Cody Ross situation, and Game 7 is still in Philly if needed. Halladay pitched ok -- the three home runs and four total runs over 7 innings he gave up were not necessarily all that different from many of Halladay's performances over the second half of the season -- but losing that game is just not something to get all worked up about in my mind given all of the above factors.

And Game 2 in both series proved out exactly what I am talking about here. The Rangers -- who shelled the Yankees Game 1 starter and AL Cy Young winner CC Sabathia for 5 runs in under 5 innings, and then followed that up by equally badly shelling Yankees' Game 2 starter Phil Hughes for another 5 runs in I think 6 innings -- came back and pounded the Yankees once again in Game 2 at home, and like I said, as long as Cliff Lee outduels the tiring Andy Pettite tonight in New York, the Rangers are in as good a shape as they could have reasonably hoped for after three games with a 2-1 lead. And the Phillies did in Game 2 to the Giants what they have done to mostly every team since acquiring Roy Oswalt at the end of July this year, chipping away at the Giants' starter, scoring early and getting the pitch count up, eventually chasing him and then smiting the Giants' bullpen in the middle innings to bust open the game entirely and basically blow out to also get back to 1-1 in the series.

I should also mention that, as predicted, Roy Oswalt did in fact snack on the Giants' silly offensive lineup. He is an awesome pitcher, and anyone who sits and watches him work in and out of a lineup, in and out of counts and pitches, cannot leave with any other conclusion. He is a wonder to watch, for somebody with such seemingly thin arms to whip it in there that hard and with that great of placement. Watching Aubrey Huff in the 8th try to keep up with Roy Oswalt's 104th, 105th and 106th pitches of the night was something truly to behold. Oswalt showed in scattering just four hits over eight full innings that he is in fact a cut (or two) above the quality of the Giants' lineup, and again absent the hot streak that Cody Ross is on right now, the Giants are not doing a damn thing against either of Philly's starting pitchers in the first two games of this series. Now on Tuesday it will be Cole Hamels going against Matt Cain in San Francisco in a game that is probaly kind of up in the air, and which is more important to Philadelphia than Game 1 but which is also not crucial given who the Phils will be putting forth as their starter in games 5, 6 and 7 even if the Phils head into Game 5 down 3-1 in the series.

As I watched the Phillies hitters tee off on three different Giants' pitchers late in Game 2, I once again found myself thinking of something I thought of over the weekend about why I just don't see the Giants winning this series. Of course this is baseball, and you only have to look back basically every two or three years to find a team that won out despite not having the most raw talent in the league in an objective sense, so you certainly can't say that the Giants could not possibly win this series. They could, they can, and they might. But in terms of predicting it, I just can't realistically make that prediction, and in a nutshell here's why: If the Giants' starting rotation of Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez and Bumgartner had to face just the Phillies every day over a 162-game season, can you imagine how much worse off the Giants' starting rotation's season numbers would have been as compared to how they ended up this year after instead playing everyone in the NL, a couple of AL teams and with a focus on the NL West? I am guessing things like individual ERAs would literally probably have been twice as high for the Giants' pitchers, and the win totals, plus things like strikeouts, WHIP, etc. would all have been markedly lower as well. Meanwhile, think about the reverse situation for the Phillies' pitchers. If Halladay, Oswalt, Hamels and Blanton did nothing but face this silly little Giants' lineup for 162 games over and over again for a whole season, can you just imagine those numbers? Obviously we would have four 20-game winners -- probably two 30-gamers and maybe even a 35 thrown in there for good measure -- and I'm thinking Blanton would have what, four no-hitters, Hamels maybe 6, and Halladay and Oswalt would clearly both be in double-figures for no-nos with maybe 3 or 4 perfect games sprinkled in to boot.

Game 3 tonight, the Cliff Lees at the Yankees, and then on Tuesday it's 4pm ET afternoon baseball for the Phillies in San Fran.

More on the LCS

So this will be my last day writing here before the AL and NL League Championship Series kick off, the AL on Friday night in Arlington, Texas and the NL on Saturday night in Philadelphia. I've spent a good deal more time thinking about the likely outcome of both series, and I thought I would put down some more of my thoughts on those here.

First, in the AL I am thinking more and more that the Rangers have a real chance to do something amazing here. I hate to be that guy who picked against the Yankees in the first series, they swept, and who then picked against them again in the second series against a team I never thought was better than them, and watch them kill it a second time contrary to my predictions. But at the same time, one playoff series against perennial postseason pussies like the Twins does not change the feeling I expressed around the end of the regular season and again as the playoffs began that this year's Yankees team just seems to be not quite a strong of offense, not quite as clutch with the hitting, and definitely not as strong in the pitching either as last year's squad that had basically no doubt all season long they were going to win it all. Try as I might, I have had a lot of trouble late this week envisioning what the Yankees winning this series will actually look like. I can't quite go to the point of picking the Rangers to win the series, but you know what? I would pick them to win, if Cliff Lee was starting Game 1, and potentially 1-2 more games for his team in the series as a result. I mean, the Rangers had what, a few wins less than the Yankees this season, they ran away and hid with their division basically two months ago and as a team had nothing to play for for as long as anybody in major league baseball this year, they have homefield advantage in this series, and their big slugger Josh Hamilton is only just back from an injury that should see him continue to increase his contribution to the Rangers' push for the World Series more as the playoffs going on. This Yankees team has still got to be the favorite in this series, but damn if Cliff Lee were only available for Games 1 and 4 and maybe 7, it would be much easier to see the Rangers making it happen. Still, I bet we are looking at at least a 6-game series between two very good teams. Despite the coke habit, that Ron Washington has got some real chutzpah and he seems to say all the right things to his team. He is clearly one of the unknown great managers in the game today.

On the NL side, the buzz continues to grow about one of the best matchups of starting rotations that anybody can remember for League Championship Series. Chris Russo on Mad Dog Radio -- admittedly a huge lifelong San Francisco Giants fan -- has multiple times stated that he believes the Halladay - Lincecum matchup in Game 1 on Saturday night in Philly is the most-anticipated Game 1 LCS matchup in a couple of generations. At first I thought he was exaggerating, but then I tried to think of a time in recent memory when there was more buzz about the matchup of two starting pitchers to start an LCS series (or any playoff series, for that matter). It's just that, after Halladay's no-hitter against the league's most productive offense in his last outing, and after Lincecum mowed down 14 in absolutely wiping up the Braves in his last playoff appearance, the expectations heading into Game 1 for the pitching are truly lofty, and with good reason.

Russo loves loves loves his Giants in this series, but try as I might I just don't see how anyone who isn't a blind fan of San Francisco can look at this series objectively and determine that the Giants are going to win. The Giants' starting rotation is truly superb, and given how incredibly well the entire staff has pitched over the last 8 weeks or so, I am not even going to try to claim that the Phillies' staff is superior. But just look at the starter matchups side by side. It's Halladay vs. Lincecum in Game 1. I'm willing to call that a wash, more or less. It's Oswalt vs. Sanchez in Game 2. That's also around a wash, given how great Sanchez threw the ball in two wins in his two appearances against the Phillies this season. Kane vs. Cole Hamels in Game 3 is also very close if you look at season stats. I probably give the slight edge to Hamels given how lights-out he has pitched in the second half of the season, but with Game 3 in San Fran that is also basically a wash in my book. And then Bumgartner vs. Joe Blanton in Game 4, I probably give the edge there to the Giants, in particular in their building.

So, other than the #4 starter -- where even there I do not think the edge is huge -- these two teams are both utterly stacked at starting pitching, and I just do not see a meaningful difference between the starting pitching of the two teams. But it's the hitting of the two teams that I just simply cannot get over. Let's take a look at the two lineups here and I will show you what I mean:

Leadoff: Victornio (.276, 12 HR, 45 RBIs) vs. Torres (.260, 15 HR, 52 RBIs). These two look close, but Victorino is clearly the better hitter, and he is a much better baserunner once he gets on base from the leadoff spot as well.

#2: Polanco (.303, 5 HR, 43 RBIs) vs. Sanchez (.277, 6 HR, 41 RBIs). Again, this one is clearly in favor of the Phils, who saw Polanco hitting over .300 through most of the season and doing exactly what this stacked Phillies lineup needs from him in this spot.

#3: Chase Utley (.282, 16 HR, 61 RBIs) vs. Huff (.286, 18 HR, 57 RBIs). Yet again, another clear advantage for the Phillies. Not only has Utley proven himself to be perhaps the single most clutch hitter in the major leagues today over the past couple of seasons, but he missed a ton of games this year and would have destroyed Huff's numbers if given his normal amount of playing time.

#4: Howard (.275, 31 HR, 108 RBIs) vs. Poser (a rookie) (.274, 10 HR, 33 RBIs). Once again, this one is not close.

#5: Werth (.312, 27 HR, 82 RBIs) vs. Burrell (.313, 14 HR, 37 RBIs). What a joke.

#6: Ibanez (.270, 9 HR, 54 RBIs) vs. Uribe (.219, 4 HR, 14 RBIs). Even in positions where the Phillies are relatively weak -- and the real Phillies fans know that Ibanez has had a pretty clutch year at the plate -- the Giants' lineup is even weaker. Another advantage to the Phillies.

#7: Ruiz (.337, 6 HR, 31 RBIs) vs. Uribe (.233, 7 HR, 26 RBIs). Another spot that isn't even close, as Ruiz has quietly distinguished himself as another of the most clutch hitters in the game today and easily blows away his counterpart on the Giants in terms of offense.

#8: Valdez (.244, 4 HR, 23 RBIs) vs. Whiteside (.247, 4 HRs, 9 RBIs). Valdez isn't even an everyday player for this team, and yet his numbers in less than half a season are even better than the Giants' #8 hitter.

Our pitchers are even probably better hitters than the Giants' pitchers on average. The Giants have zero basestealers on their team, and "manufacturing runs" by speed on the basepaths is simply not a weapon in this Giants' squad's arsenal.

So yes, Lincecum is awesome. Sanchez has killed the Phillies so far this year. Kane and Bumgartner are both quality starters for sure who are pitching great at this point in the season. The Giants' bullpen is surely far superior to the Phillies' relievers. But that same pitching staff just gave up 9 runs in 4 games to the Braves, one of the worst-hitting teams in the National League over the final month to six weeks of the regular season. Now they are facing a lineup that is undebatably far superior to their own, at every single position. And I'm supposed to be afraid the Phillies won't be able to score on them?

And think about this -- meanwhile, the Phillies just gave up exactly 3 earned runs in 3 games against the Reds, a team with a far, far, laughably better lineup than the Giants, the team in fact that scored easily the most runs in the National League. And they scored 3 earned runs in 3 games against us, and now we're trotting out those same three pitchers for 6 of the potentially 7 games of this series. Roy Halladay is coming off of no-hitting the best-hitting team in the league, and now facing this historically horrible Giants lineup. Roy Oswalt got "shelled" in Game 2 against the Reds for four runs over 5 innings. But just like his first start in Philly was bad -- call it nerves, unease, whatever -- but then he bounced back with several incredible starts since then, if I were the Giants I would not want any part of Roy Oswalt and his 1.02 season WHIP in Game 2 on Sunday. In fact, I would go so far as to say that after that outing against the hard-hitting Reds, I expect Roy Oswalt to come out on Sunday and motherfucking snack on this Giants' minor league lineup. And Hamels, I'm not worried about this team smacking him around too hard at all with the way he's pitched for the last several months.

So yeah, the runs are going to be hard to come by in this series and certainly every time you can get a runner across the plate is going to have a real impact in these games. But, despite being the only team in all of MLB who could credibly claim to have the same general quality of staff in a short series as the Phillies, the disparity in the lineups between these two teams is like majors-vs-minors level stuff. And the Phils have homefield advantage. The Phils should take this series without too much trouble in my view even with the specter of Tim Lincecum hanging over our heads most likely twice in the series.

MLB -- Championship Series Update

How unfortunate is it that baseball has apparently hired the same money-grubbing monkeys to schedule their postseason who already schedule the NBA playoffs these days? I mean, here we are, all done with the divisional rounds of the playoffs, and we have to wait until Friday night to start up the ALCS, which just ended on Tuesday night, and until Saturday night for the start of the NLCS, which ended on Monday night? I mean, in the end, sure this helps my Phillies this year in that we will have more than enough time to line up our pitching staff just the way we want to for the NLCS, but is it the way the games should be played? Personally, I prefer a system that favors the teams with the incredible 2- or 3-man starting rotation less, by having fewer off days in between series and even during the series themselves, but as I said, there's no doubt that this helps mostly every team still alive by this point in the playoffs and I imagine that is 90% of the reason behind the move (the other 10% being media money, in some form or another), but it totally takes away from the excitement and the momentum of the games to us fans, and I am not specifically a fan of this move one bit.

All that said, it was an entertaining divisional series round of games, with some surprises in the AL but nothing but chalk in the NL. First, in the American League, the Rays and Rangers played a very unusual series in which -- for the first time in divisional round history -- the road team amazingly won all five games in the series, including the Rangers clinching on Tuesday night on the back of yet another stellar postseason performance out of Cliff Lee. I think the owner of the Rays made a major, major screwup by coming out right as the regular season was coming to a close and announcing his intentions to essentially slash the payroll and break up the team after this postseason run was over. His team played tight as hell in the playoffs right from the getgo, they couldn't score runs when they needed them against a very scoreable-against team (other than when Cliff Lee is out there), and in the end their best pitcher (and the Rays' only great pitcher at this point in the season) lost two starts in the series, both at home, and that's your season right there in a nutshell.

On the other side in the AL, I picked the Twins to take down the Yankees finally after years and years of ineptitude against the Bronx Bombers, but instead we were all treated to one of the biggest step-downs I've in the postseason in years, in any sport. I mean, even for the Twins, and even against the Yankees, this was a huge puss-out for the Twins. They did not come to play, they allowed themselves to get rolled over by a pitching staff that has been very assailable by many teams throughout this season, and they continued with their total inability to hold on to any kind of a lead whatsoever, even late in games. The Twins led in two of the three games of the series, one of them late, and they had homefield in both games where they led. The fact that they got bounced this badly by a team with noticeable weaknesses compared to last year's world championship team is a huge black mark on that team and on Rod Gardenhire, who I now can only label as the game's best regular season coach, not best overall coach given his total postseason ineptitude.

Looking forward, the Rays would have been a much, much better matchup with the Yankees I think, other than the one big, fat, huge scary part about the Rangers to every Yankee fan in the world -- Cliff Lee. Recall that as a Phillie in 2009, Lee won both of his starts against the Yankees, including in Game 1 when he came out and absolutely moved down the best lineup in the AL by far. And the sick thing about watching Lee pitch is how incredibly calm and stone-faced he seems out there, even in the biggest spots of his life. Who could forget this catch by Lee in Game 1 of the World Series last year, when it was almost like he was too busy thinking of something else to be bothered really paying attention while making this catch. It is a small, insignificant play but I think speaks volumes about Lee and his ability to shine against the best lineup in the game while under the biggest spotlight in his sport. Unfortunately, even though I never believed the Yankees would make the World Series this year after around the halfway point in this regular season, I just don't see the Rangers as having quite enough on either the offense or the pitching staff to take down this juggernaut Yankees squad. Especially with the way that Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes pitched against the pussies Twins, the Yankees have got to be a significant favorite in this series, despite the fact that every Yankee fan out there is quaking in their boots about facing Cliff Lee. Not having to face Lee until Game 3 was the Yankees' biggest win of the entire postseason so far, and is a major factor in my thinking the Rangers will not have enough to find their way to their second-ever postseason series win as a franchise.

The National League divisional series had much less excitement and interest, and they went right along with the chalk. The Phillies took the best-hitting, most prolific run-scoring team in the National League in the Reds, and no-hit them in the first game, gave up 3 earned runs in the second, and then 2-hit complete game shut them out again in the third game to nab the easy sweep for the far and away the league's greatest team. Meanwhile, equally prdictably on the other side, the incredible pitching staff of the Giants was as expected far too much for a very ordinary Braves lineup, and they easily disposed of Atlanta in four games with no big offensive outputs throughout out of the overmatched Braves batters.

People are having fun predicting the Giants to take out the Phillies or at least to make a serious run at the best team the National League has seen in some 90 years, but to be perfectly honest I am just not seeing it. I mean, there is no doubt that the Giants are the team I would have wanted the Phillies to face the least, because between Lincecum and Sanchez they have two starters who have previously and I am sure will again shut down the Phils' lineup, and we could easily face those two starters as many as five times in a 7-game series. Plus the Giants' bullpen is excellent, which is the only weakness this Phillies team has here in the 2010 postseason. But in the end, even though I respect the Giants' picthers quite a bit, I am just not seeing this as anything but an awful matchup for them. The Phils have homefield advantage, and even though I could surely see Lincecum outlasting Roy Halladay in a pitchers duel in one of his two starts in Games 1 and 4, the bottom line is that the matchups of Halladay vs. Lincecum -- both in Philadelphia -- and Oswalt vs. Sanchez -- one in Philly and one in San Fran -- plus Cole Hamels pitching Games 3 and 7 against the Giants' #3 starter, and again with the extra game at home in Philly, this one just seems like a mismatch to me for the defending NL champs. This Phillies lineup is the total opposite of the Braves' light-hitting squad, and those games that were 1-0 and 3-2 wins for the Giants in the NLDS are more likely in my mind to be 5-3 and 6-1 losses for the Giants here in the NLCS.

In any event, Friday cannot get here quickly enough for those of us big baseball fans out there. It's been quite a ride so far and it should only get better from here as we march towards the 2010 World Series.

2010 MLB Playoff Predictions

Well, once again I'm not going to be posting these until after some of the Game 1s have already begun in this year's postseason baseball season, but as with my preseason NFL picks, most of this post was written prior to Wednesday's kickoff to the 2010 postseason games.

1. Rays vs Rangers. I'm going with the Rays in this one. They've got home field advantage, they had the most wins in the American League this season, and unlike when they had their unlikely postseason run back in 2008, now this is a team with plenty of experienced players with postseason and even World Series games under their belt. Cliff Lee did not surprise me much in winning Game 1 today or really any time he steps on the mound, but I still have a feeling that the Rays will quickly turn this back into a series again and will likely prevail in the end over what is a very good Texas Rangers team.

2. Yankees vs. Twins. I have turned this one over and over and over in my head, and try as I might I just cannot shake this nagging feeling that the Twins are finally going to break through this year. Secretly I have thought the Twins have been the best team in the AL for the past several months, and all this with star Justin Morneau -- who hit .345 with 18 home runs this year in 82 total games -- missing fully half the season to injury, and with the closer Joe Nathan missing the entire season with Tommy John surgery earlier this year. And the main thing I just can't get past is that the Yankees' rotation is simply not close to what it used to be. Yeah AJ Burnett has kinda sucked balls late this year, but at least with him last year you knew he might bust out with a great start, every once in a while. Now this year, the Yankees are looking at CC Sabathia, who of course is a horse, but after that it's an injured Andy Pettite who has posted an ERA of nearly 7 since returning from something like 6 weeks on the disabled list, and then it's Phil Hughes who didn't really pitch well for the past two months of the season in his own right. And that's it, that's the whole rotation, just those three pitchers for Joe Girardi in the postseason. And I worry that, after losing the division to the Rays on the final day of the regular season and thus having to go on the road to play Minnesota in their brand new stadium in Games 1 and 2, if CC can't get it done early then this could be a quick series for the defending World Champions.

Giants vs. Braves. I'm going to go with the chalk here and take the Giants, whose pitching staff I just see dominating the Braves' faltering lineup, especially with homefield advantage also leaning their way. The Braves really cooled off in the final month or two of the season, and meanwhile the Giants did nothing short of posting the best team ERA in September in the last 40 years since the days when Tom Seaver graced the mound. I was a big Braves guy earlier in the season, but this Giants rotation is going to be very difficult for them to beat in a 5-game series without homefield advantage.

Phillies vs. Reds. Of course this one is very close to home for me, but this Phillies team is going to be a huge task for anyone in the National League. Not only were the Fightin Phils 2010's best team, but they had 54 wins at home and will have homefield advantage all throughout the entire postseason. And when it comes to a starting rotation, this is the best staff that comes to mind since those steroid-fueled Yankees teams of the early 2000s at least. You've got Roy Halladay, the lock NL Cy Young winner, and you've got Roy Oswalt, who led the NL in WHIP with a stunning 1.02, and then there's Cole Hamels, who might have been the NL's best pitcher in the final two months of the season. In a short series like this, this Reds team -- whose whole "World Series" was just returning to the postseason this year after a long absence -- should be no match for the best team in the sport in 2010.

Oh, and Roy Halladay just pitched a mutha fuckin no hitter against them too. What a fucking stallion.

Closing the Book on MLB 2009

As the last of the confetti was cleaned up this weekend after the Yankees parade in lower Manhattan, I had some good time to close the book in my own head on the 2009 baseball season. With a few days to reflect, most of my impressions from last week of course remain the same, but there are some additional thoughts that gradually crept into my head a day or two after Game 6 and which have only gotten stronger since then.

For starters, although most predictions about the greatness of this series coming in (my own included) proved to be inaccurate and exaggerated by the time the teams got on the field to actually play the games, one thing was clearly correct: the ratings for this series were strongly up from past years. The average share for the six 2009 World Series games was just under a 19, meaning approximately 18.8 million viewers in U.S. households tuned in each night to watch the Phillies and Yankees battle it out for the world championship. The most-watched game was Game 4 -- the game I attended in Philadelphia -- with nearly 23 million viewers, while Games 3 and 5 both garnered between 15 and 16 million watchers on the low end. Game 1 of the 2009 Series was viewed by over 19 million in the U.S., while in contrast, Game 1 of the 2008 World Series between the Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays brought in just over 10 million viewers, and Game 1 in 2007 between Colorado and the Red Sox came in at around 13 million. Overall viewership was up just over 40% above the series last year, and the 2009 Fall Classic was the most watched World Series since the Red Sox broke their 50,000 year slump by riding steroided-up horse-pill-takers to the World Series championship back in 2004.

But the main feeling I am left with now that the 2009 major league baseball season has come to a close is that it really is sick what the Yankees have done, using the absurd structure of the sport and their deepest of pockets to their extreme advantage. And yet, like most non-Yankee fans I keep running in to in real life, on the internet, national sports talk shows, etc., I do not say this with a whole lot of admiration, so much as rather with a solid helping of disdain. Here's the thing: the Yankees missed the playoffs in 2008 one time. One year. The Bombers were not in the playoff hunt in 2008, after participating in the postseason previously in every year since 1996. And their reaction to missing the playoffs one time -- keep in mind they had made the playoffs twelve straight years before that, equalling the number of times the Phillies have made the postseason in their entire nearly 130-year history -- but after just one year of missing the playoffs, they had had enough. Oh sure, Yanks' GM Brian Cashman had thought he had had enough before already -- several times in fact -- but what everyone involved in the Yankees organization found out quickly during the 2008-2009 offseason was that they hadn't seen anything yet.

Before anyone could say "competitive imbalance" five times fast, the Yankees went out in the offseason before this year and signed the not one, not two, but the three biggest free agents out there in CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira. And it's not like they had to scrimp or anything in paying these guys in order to manage to afford all three of them in one offseason on top of what was already for years the highest payroll in all of baseball. Nope -- they committed to $161 million for 7 years with Sabathia, $82 million for 5 years with Burnett, and $180 million over 8 years on Teixeira. All three of these deals were announced within a few days of December 18, 2008, and it was obvious that the Yankees were negotiating with all three players simultaneously and, clearly, without real regard to the money it was costing them. That's over $420 million committed by the Yankees over the next 8 years on just these three players, again on top of what was already the highest payroll in baseball by about $20 million more than the second-place Red Sox even before last season came to a close.

In 2009, the Yankees spent a total of a whopping $208.1 million on their payroll. Second place on that list is now the New York Mets, but coming in way "down" at 145.3 million. In third are the Cubs, coming in at $134.8 million, with Yankees rival the Boston Red Sox rounding out the top four at 122.4 million. So the Yankees are spending more than 70% more money on their team than their closest rival in the AL, and the team that still has the fourth-highest payroll overall in the majors, and the Yanks are spending 43% more than anybody else in baseball. 43% more than the 2nd highest payroll in the league right now. And lookie there, they went out and won the 2009 title. Shocker.

When a team is spending 43% more than the 2nd place team in a professional sport, and between 70% and 500% more than any other team in their league, that sport is walking a really fine line. Basically, it's fine when that team is not winning the world series title every single year and when, generally speaking, at least a decent handful of other teams are entering every season with a reasonable shot at winning it all. But when someone is spending more than 43% more than the next closest payroll, and more than 70% more than anybody else in their league, and they go out, win more games than anybody else by a mile, and basically show game in and game out why nobody else in the major leagues can even touch them, well, that really causes some problems. Obviously it is bad for the sport as a whole -- take a look at the teams at the bottom of the payroll list in Florida, Pittsburgh and Washington, for example, who cannot compete so have just given up trying, not to mention the teams like Minnesota, Cleveland, etc. who seem to come up every few years in talks of bankruptcy, significant losses and even contraction. But the Yankees just keep chugging along, even in the worst economy of any of our lifetimes. Think about it -- this was December 2008, right smack in the midst of all that shit last winter with the financial meltdown, the markets were in the tank, just about everything seemed to have come to a standstill. Everything, that is, except the Yankees, who in the span of three or four days committed to spend over $420 million on three players for the next 5-8 years in what was without a doubt the most sweeping, literally not believable free agency extravaganza by any team at any time in baseball history.

All I know is that I, like just about every other non-Yankee baseball fan in America it seems these days, am left with a very bitter taste in my mouth about this Yankees team and what exactly they did to basically secure their 27th world series title before the 2009 season has even begun. Sure this team has always spent the most money in the league for most of their history, but what they did prior to the 2009 season was corpulent and gluttony even by Yankees standards, and it bought them exactly what they wanted. I guess if you spend enough money on players, enough more than everybody else in the league is willing to spend regardless of the situation, the economy, the state of the game, etc., you really can buy a championship. And that's exactly what we saw in the 2009 baseball season: the purchase of a World Series. Price tag? $208.1 million. Not even a fraction of a bailout.

And one of the least satisfying aspects of this entire thing is what it means for the future. Look at the state of baseball right now, and ask yourself who you honestly think is going to win the world series in 2010. Think about that lineup we just watched the Yankees trot out there every night against the Phillies, and think about that starting rotation that held the Yankees back for years but which was completely and totally transformed by the addition of Burnett and Sabathia at the top of the list, and think about Mariano Rivera coming in from the pen in the 9th. Face it -- the Yankees are already your 2010 World Series champions. Might as well book it now. The only question is: do the Yankees win 120 games next year? I have very little doubt that this team -- without the issues around A-Rod's getting caught for steroid use, the injury and the poor start without him in April and part of May -- will give the 1998 Yankees and their 114-42 regular season record a serious run for their money. There is some age on the Yankees roster, but outside of Rivera who is still, far and away, the best relief pitcher in baseball today, there isn't much that the addition of last year's three huge free agents can't overcome for at least the next couple of years. The Yankees are here to stay, the $200 million+ behemoth in a league of $30-120 million competitors, unless and until baseball does something to change their system that they have shown no indication of changing whatsoever thus far.

I mentioned A-Rod's preseason revelation about having used steroids from 2001-2003 in baseball. Personally, I find the Yankees' reliance over the past several years on steroided-up players to be one of the most disgusting aspects of this whole nasty team that has been permitted by league rules to completely trump all others in terms of skill and experience amassed on its roster. Think about this for a minute -- although Hideki Matsui won the 2009 World Series MVP award (and deservedly so), who would you name as the Yankees' overall postseason MVPs in 2009? I'll tell you who -- Alex Rodriguez, for starters. Despite an only "good" World Series in which A-Rod won Game 4 in the top of the 9th and contributed solidly on offense to one other win as well, the man ended the 2009 postseason going 19-for-52 for a .365 batting average, with 6 home runs, 2 doubles, 18 RBIs and two stolen bases. A-Rod was an offensive machine for the Yankees and would simply have to be thought of as the MVP of this team's postseason run in 2009. And who would be next on that list for the 2009 Yankees? Andy Pettitte, who pitched and won the series-clinching game in each of the three playoff series in 2009 against the Twins, the Angels and then the Phillies in the World Series. Pettitte really lived up to his career reputation as a stopper for the Yankees, taking the ball in the biggest and most crucial of spots time and again in the postseason, and coming through in a big way. Alex Rodriguez and Andy Pettitte literally led their team 1-2 in postseason contributions in 2009, including both winning games during the World Series itself.

And both are admitted juicers. And guys, might I add, who only admitted their steroid usage after getting outed publicly, A-Rod by the biography of him released earlier this year, and Pettitte in connection with the ongoing investigation into the steroid activities of Roger Clemens, another guy who contributed greatly to the World Series runs of the Yankees several years ago.

Both A-Rod and Pettitte have had their bodies forever altered in immeasurable ways by the illegal and banned substances they knowingly ingested over the past several years in their attempts to cheat skirt the rules. Both found muscles that most people never even know they have, as a result of illegal steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, muscles which are still more developed in their bodies today as a result of that usage, regardless of how long it's been since they received more PEDs. Both used illegal steroids to rehab from injuries, injuries which we'll never even know if they could have recovered from the same without cheating the rules of the game. And both of those guys are now on the roster of the team with the astronomically high payroll, and the two led the New York Yankees to the first world title in 10 years in 2009. It's disgusting, it's despicable, and most of all, it's just not fair.

A last impression I have after the 2009 baseball season relates to home field advantage and the All-Star Game. It is truly and totally ridiculous that home-field advantage in the World Series is decided by who wins the freaking All-Star game in mid-summer every year. Yes, I mean, everyone has said this and there's no doubt that it's an accurate statement, but I mean it for a slightly different reason, getting right back at the competitive imbalance in the sport these days. For years the Yankees and the Red Sox have led the league in terms of team payroll, and even though this year the Red Sox have fallen to 4th place, the fact remains that the highest-payroll teams are still concentrated in the American League, and the lower-paying teams are still concentrated in the National League. Just the presence of the Yankees alone, stockpiling and overpaying for talent in wallet-busting fashion, basically helps ensure that the American League teams will have homefield advantage in the World Series under the current system because they help tilt the talent scale in favor of the AL over the NL. Four of the top six payrolls in baseball were in the AL in 2009 (Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers and Angels), while the bottom four payroll teams in baseball -- including the bottom three which are each at least 25% below the lowly Washington Nationals' 2009 payroll -- are all in the National League. The result? There is more talent in the American League because there is more money being spent there, year in and year out -- at least partially due to the outdated DH rule in the American League, by the way -- and as a result, the National League is stupidly disadvantaged in the World Series by never getting to have home field advantage.

Prior to 2003, home field in the World Series simply alternated every year between the AL team and the NL team. That's also dumb, in that in a year like 2009, it could have given the Phillies home field advantage despite the Yankees having the best record in baseball by far. Instead, home field in the Fall Classic should simply be based on which team had the better regular season record (just like the other sports have figured out years ago by now). In the seven years that the All-Star game has been used to determine home field advantage in the World Series ever since Bud Selig butchered the 2002 All-Star game after 11 innings, the AL has won the All-Star game with their clearly superior talent every single year -- again buttressed tremendously by the Yankees' and Red Sox's penchant for extravagant spending and bidding wars, as the AL has held at least four of the top 6 payroll spots in each year in the league since 2003 -- and as a result of the Yankees' and Red Sox's largesse, the AL team has had four home games on the World Series schedule every year. In a year like this year, that dictates the correct result, but allowing the league with all the overspending to get this kind of a home-baked advantage in the location of the World Series games is just the final stick in the eye of all true baseball fans in this country who are sick and tired of the Yankees taking extreme (and growing) advantage of this sport being the only one of the major professional sports in this country not to enforce some form of a salary cap to help ensure that all teams have a chance to win it all.

Here is where I normally would make some kind of an optimistic statement about the powers that be in the sport hopefully recognizing the problem in their league and doing something to fix it right away. But that's not going to happen here. So given that, get yourselves ready everyone for another year (or more) of the Yankees on top.

Reflection

What a fun day to be a Yankees fan, and a terrible one to be among the Phillies faithful. It was terrible for the Phils because you just knew right from the getgo that the team had no chance to win Game 6 of the World Series on Wednesday night. As soon as the first inning, when Pedro was throwing fastballs that were registering a bare 84 miles per hour on the gun, you had to know. Most major league hitters are going to pound on any clown throwing 84-mph cheese up there, but when you're facing a lineup like the Yankees', the whole notion is an absolute joke. They were all over P-Mart from his first pitch to his merciful last in just the 4th inning, and thanks to Charlie Manuel's continued insistence on leaving his pitchers in for too long and for too many bad pitches, the Phils were out of it by the time they finally got Pedro out of the game in the 4th. But as soon as Pedro came out in the first with guns ablazing with 84 mph fastballs, this game was as good as done.

There are so many reasons the Phillies lost this series. Ultimately, they simply could not compete with the Yankees, who overmatched them about as badly as the Phillies themselves outmatched everyone else in the National League in this postseason. As much as I hate to admit it, this was not a close series in my book. It was about as bad of a blowout as the Yankees did to the Angels a couple of weeks back. Sure, like with the Angels, the Yanks lost Game 5 on the road to extend the series to six and come back home to New York, but as with the ALCS, once things got back to Yankee Stadium, the best team in America quickly retook control of the series, on the back of Andy Pettitte, who got the incredible sixth series-clinching victory of his illustrious career, mostly with the Yankees.

Just like I said here how the Phillies had an advantage both in starting pitching and on offense against every team in the National League and both of its postseason opponents in the NLDS and NLCS, the same proved to be true for the Yankees over the Phillies in this series. On the offensive side of the ball, I think the two lineups are fairly comparable, with the Yankees probably retaining a slight edge as far as their five or six "big boppers" at the top of the lineup. The biggest difference in the lineups to me is that the Yankees, as an American League team with a designated hitter, have that one extra big hitter -- I'm talking a 30 HR, 100 RBI type -- who in this case happens to be Hideki Matsui. I'm not just mentioning him because he utterly destroyed the Phillies in the World Series in nabbing his first ever World Series MVP award. I'm saying if you compare the lineups, both teams have a couple of poor hitters at the bottom of their rotation who are mostly in there for their defensive prowess on a team that simply does not need any more offensive firepower, but otherwise the biggest real difference is that the Yankees go one more man deep among the big hitters they can put at the top of their lineup. Sure the Phillies get the benefit of the same DH rule when they play World Series games in their American League opponent's park, but how can you even compare when the Yankees throw Godzilla's bat into that already stacked lineup, while the Phils are adding in Ben Francisco's, or Matt Stairs'? You can't, because there is just no comparison, and ironically that DH position ends up being one of the big items to tip the scale in the Yankees' favor in this series. The fact that the Yanks so thoroughly handled the Phillies throughout this series, even with A-Rod, Teixeira, Cano and Posada basically hitting like shit is really a testament to just how strong their lineup as a whole is when compared to the competition.

Then, moving on to the pitching, once again the Yanks just had a clear advantage in this World Series. Even though CC Sabathia failed to record a win in his two starts against the Phils, he pitched well enough both times, the second time for his team to secure the late victory off of Phillies idiot Brad Lidge in the 9th inning of Game 4 in Philadelphia. Even though AJ Burnett was hideous on three days rest the in Game 5 loss to the Phillies, he pitched extremely well in Game 2, outlasting a valiant attempt from Pedro Martinez to get his Yankees back into the series after the Phils' surprising Game 1 win. And even though Andy Pettitte pitched on three days rest for the first time in over three years in Game 6, the man was able to put together enough good innings to leave his team in a position to win when they needed to to put this series away. And meanwhile, on the Phillies' side of the ball, the story was pretty much totally reversed. Heading into the postseason I had viewed the Phils' likely rotation of Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Pedro Martinez and J. Happ as among the best baseball has to offer this season on one team. However, in practice, once the Yankees posed some actual competition to the skill level on the Phillies' team, Hamels sucked balls every time he went out there, Happ didn't even start a game in the entire postseason for some reason I will never ever ever understand, and when he did pitch in the Series it was constantly Charlie Manuel inserting him into games with guys on 2nd and 3rd, nobody out in the middle of a key inning, a situation which Happ was totally and completely unfamiliar with prior to this postseason. And Pedro, well, it looks like the oil well finally ran dry for the old man here during the World Series. After looking great in a dominating start in LA against the Dodgers in the NLCS, Pedro could not find that form in Game 2 of the World Series facing the Yankees' huge bats, and by the time Game 6 rolled around, even on five days rest, Pedro was worthless. As anyone who watched this series knows, in the end the Phillies simply had nobody on their entire team -- other than Cliff Lee of course -- who could stop the Yankees. Ever. In any inning. Period. Whether it was Hamels, Pedro, Blanton, Happ, Chan Ho Park, Scott Eyre, Ryan Madsen, Brad Lidge or anyone else, in the end the Phils simply could not keep those huge Yankee hitters off the basepaths, and when you combine that with the Yankee pitchers success against most of the Phils' lineup not named Chase Utley or Jayson Werth in this series, it's not hard to see why the Phils weren't even close in this matchup.

This morning on Mike and Mike, Buster Olney was on the air and he was talking all about what an amazing postseason this was for major league baseball. "Amazing"? Really? Try again, Robert. This was about as bad and as boring of a postseason as there has been in baseball in a long time, and ultimately the World Series did little to change that conclusion. Think about it -- the four LDS matchups saw three 3-game sweeps, and one 4-game win for the Phillies over the Rockies. I don't even remember the last time I saw that happen, but from there it just got worse. In the NLCS, the Phillies lambasted the Dodgers in five games, never trailing in the series and never even giving the impression that it was going to become close at any point. The Yankees had a very similar experience in the ALCS against the Angels, although as I mentioned they allowed their series to go six games, but again, it was not a series that ever saw the Yanks trailing or that anyone who understands the game actually ever thought the Angels were close to winning. The path of these two teams to the World Series here in 2009 was about as bad and as boring as possible. And then, sadly, even the World Series ended up not coming close to living up to the hype that a bunch of morons like me spread about it heading into the Fall Classic. This was supposed to be that amazing, historic series -- on paper -- and it was destined to go seven games, right? Wrong. Sure, again the Phils made it to six games in this Series and to that extent it might be tempting to consider this a close matchup, but it really wasn't that close if you actually watched the games, and from the moment that Game 1 ended, the Yankees took complete control of the series and just never looked back, like any championship team should.

As the Yankees bombed their way past the Phillies to win the 2009 World Series on Wednesday night, I did the obvious and took some time to reflect on what this Phillies team has accomplished over the past year or so. It really is amazing if you think about it. The Phillies are a team that in their 130-year history as a franchise, had only been to the World Series five times before last year, and only won it once, in 1980 when I was a mere babe. Staying up and watching that 1980 championship -- watching the late Tug McGraw strike out Willie Wilson to eliminate the Royals in Game 6 -- became my first real clear sports memory, the first time I can specifically remember a sporting event having a big effect on me and those around me. In Philadelphia, just making it to the finals in any sport has always been enough during my lifetime to make you a statue in front of the art museum and to be remembered forever in the lore and stories of old men on their porches in Northeast Philly, the local mailmen on Cottman Avenue, and the lifelong blue-collar workers down in Manyunk.

But this Phillies team really changed all that, didn't it? Those in Philadelphia know exactly what I'm talking about. These Phillies went all the way through the postseason last year and never even came close to losing any series. They won it all and did so in fairly dominatory fashion, putting an end to a 25-year drought of misery and failure that no other city with teams in all four major professional sports in this country has ever had to endure before. By the time the 2008 Phillies arrived at the World Series, they were there to win and they just clamped their collective foot down on the Rays' necks and never let up until the series was over.

And then they went back. It's never been done before in Philly -- two straight World Series appearances -- and in the eyes of the fans it really legitimizes what happened last year as not being some kind of a "fluke" or an accident. And that's not to say that the team wouldn't always have been remembered for being good, but I mean even that 1993 World Series Phillies team never made it back to another postseason, let alone another Fall Classic. Philadelphia has never before been a city of dynasties, but the 2008-2009 Phillies actually got people talking in the city about the "D" word for the first time in decades. In the end, I have never made any bones here at the blog about the fact that the Yankees were the best team in baseball this year. It became clear to me somewhere in the middle of the summertime, and nothing that happened anywhere in the season or during the postseason gave me any reason to doubt that the Yanks's superior talent would eventually prevail and they would win the 2009 World Series.

In a way, knowing how great this Yankees team was really helps ease the acceptance process for the Phillies fans out there. Despite all the bravado and braggadocio and pride from the Phillies Phaithful this postseason, despite all the bad calls, all the questionable coaching decisions, in the end in this World Series, the best team won. I can admit that -- I have no doubt about it at all, for that matter -- and so should everyone else out there. For now, it's time to put the memories of another incredible Phillies season on the back burner, and time to really focus on NFL football.

Thank you, Phillies, for another fabulous season. Here's to more to come in 2010!

World Series Game 6 Preview

Well, I figure I've been basically wrong about every other game of this World Series so far, so why not go ahead and make another prediction that only a jackass would follow with regard to Game 6 coming up Wednesday night in the Bronx. Game 6 pits Yankee ace and winningest postseason pitcher of all time in Andy Pettitte against another all-time pitching great in Pedro Martinez for the Phillies. The Series returns home for the Yankees, who already hold a 3 games to 2 edge in this best of 7 championship series, and as I mentioned they've got their all-time stopper on the mound in Andy Pettitte who has personally pitched the team to clinching five separate postseason series in his time on the mound for the Bombers. The Phils have had a couple of good games so far in the Series, but they've never quite been able to get everyone hitting at once in the series, and the pitching has not quite been able to hold the Yankees' power lineup at bay, at least not quite enough to hold on to any kind of a run advantage over the Yanks. So this one should be a clear clincher for the Yankees tonight then, right?

Wrong. I'm just not feeling it. It's hard to explain, but I just can't get over the fact that the Phillies are going to hit Andy Pettitte hard on Wednesday evening in the Bronx. As I've mentioned here many times over the past few weeks, this Phillies team -- World Champions that they are -- have shown a ton of heart, throughout this season and especially in the postseason. Although so far the series has been devoid of that special moment where the Phillies really rise up and make their greatness known, I can't shake this feeling that tonight we are going to see that moment.

Let's look a little deeper at that pitching matchup for a minute. Andy Pettitte has actually faced the Phillies now twice this season, once at each stadium. The Phils squared off against Pettitte at Yankee Stadium back on May 25, where Pettitte threw 114 pitches in giving up 4 earned runs in 7 innings, including two home runs to Raul Ibanez and the first-ever game for first baseman Jermaine Mayberry. Pettite fell behind 4-1 in the 5th inning and stayed behind 4-2 when he left the game in the 7th, and although he did not pitch terribly, the two homers and 5.2 ERA for the game were enough for him to leave the game knowing he got outpitched by rookie J. Happ of the Phils.

Pettitte also faced the Phillies on Halloween night just last week in Game 3 of the World Series, this time in Philadelphia. There, he threw 104 pitches in 6 innings, again giving up 4 earned runs and 2 homers, this time both monstrous shots to Jayson Werth, for a game ERA of 6.00, although this time he did leave the game with a 2-run lead thanks to his offense stepping up for him in the middle innings against embattled Phillies starter Cole Hamels.

And on Wednesday, Pettitte will face the Phillies a third time, this time back in New York with a chance to clinch the franchise's 27th world championship in front of the home town fans. But Pettitte will have to do so on three days' rest, something with which he is not nearly as comfortable as his colleague CC Sabathia in the Yankees' rotation. This will be the first time that the 37-year-old veteran pitches with just three days rest between outings since late September, 2006, when that arm was a much younger 34 years old. In 18 appearances on short rest in his illustrious career, Pettitte's numbers drop off dramatically: 5-7 with a 4.18 ERA, as compared to much better numbers over the rest of his career. What's more, Pettitte, now an old man by baseball standards, as well as an admitted steroid user who took "the cream" and "the clear" to help heal more quickly from injury but who no (presumably) longer has access to such miracle healing cures, has worked on an extra days' rest in his last eight starts, dating back to early September, and there's a reason for that: he needs it. At 37, his arm is old and used, just the kind of arm that the Phillies ought to be able to take advantage of on Wednesday in New York.

So, looking at all the stats, I think we can paint a reasonable prediction for what Pettitte will pitch like tonight. He was good for 7 innings against the Phils back in May in New York, and 6 innings against the Phillies' lineup in Game 3, and I see no reason to expect Pettitte to last any longer than 6 innings (at the outside) in Game 6 on short rest. What's more, he has given up two home runs and four total earned runs in each of his last two starts against the Phils -- again both on full or even extra rest -- and again tonight I can't see the Phils not at least equalling that feat and probably besting it slightly given the short time between Pettitte's starts. So for Game 6, a reasonable expectation based purely on the facts would have the Phillies scoring, say, 5 earned runs off of Pettitte in, say, six innings of work. Five runs.

The question is, what will the Yankees' run total be at the end of 6 when the Phils have had five men cross the plate? Will it be 5-0? Probably not. The 38-year-old Pedro Martinez was able to hold the Yankees to 3 earned runs in 6 innings in Game 2 of this World Series, and he has had not just the full four days of rest, but five days off since that Game 2 appearance. I still would expect the Yankees to hit him about as well as they did in Game 2, and possibly a little better, although Pedro on extra rest has pitched extremely well for the Phillies this season, and remember he is generally well-rested unlike a guy like Andy Pettitte because P-Mart didn't even play baseball until the middle of the summer this year. So Pedro should have the fresher arm, and Pettitte is likely going to be hit a little harder tonight in my view than the Phillies' starter is likely to be.

5-3 at the end of six tonight? 5-4? Or 5-5? It's going to be one of those, the way I see it. And then the Phillies' job, if they really want to extend this series one more game, is to get to the Yankees' middle relief -- which has performed atrociously all through this series -- without letting the Yankees get to theirs (which has also been pretty bad, but not quite as bad).

It's extremely hard to predict something like this with any precision of course, and as I mentioned above I have basically gotten every guess wrong in terms of individual games so far in the Series, so what do I know. But something tells me that you'll be reading here tomorrow about the anticipation and hype surrounding a Game 7 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium on Thursday night in New York City.

Phillies - Yankees Live

It all started with an innocent, if not fairly common, telephone call from my older brother around 10am on Sunday this weekend. I was on my way back from the weekly run to the grocery, and when I picked up my cell, the one sentence I heard would change the path of my day and my weekend:

"The team needs us, man. Joe Blanton needs us."

I couldn't even begin to argue with my brother's sentiment. After Philies manager Charlie Manuel exhibited his mental retardation when it comes to pitchers better than I ever could have dreamt up on my own, opting to pitch Joe Blanton in World Series Game 4 -- a crucial game for the Phils, down 2-1 in the series -- against Yankees' ace CC Sabathia instead of going with Phils' ace Cliff Lee, I knew my brother was right. The Phils simply had to win Game 4, and to do that under the circumstances Charlie Manuel had put the team in was going to take every ounce of support from the real Phillies fans in Citizens Bank Park on the night.

The logic was inescapable. I had to be at that game.

The internet is really a modern day miracle. Within half an hour or so, my brother had not only found us a pair of incredible seats to Sunday night's World Series Game 4 at The Bank via StubHub but sitting in my email box was a printable pdf which included my actual ticket. Unbelievable. I went from spending the afternoon with some friends who were bringing their new baby over to hang with our kids, to heading down Route 95 to Philadelphia to make the trek from Yankees land to Chilladelphia and see my team through to a 2-2 World Series tie.

After the tickets had been procured, the next question was when to get there. In a rare two-game city sports matchup, the Eagles were already playing the Giants at Lincoln Financial Field, just caddy-corner from the Bank, in a 1pm game which would probably end close to 4:30pm. The traffic from that badboy was sure to last until at least 5:30 or 6 in and around the stadium, and I did not necessarily feel like getting involved in that whole morass if I could avoid it. But then with the World Series scheduled to start shortly after 8pm in basically that same space, it stood to reason that the traffic for that game would likely start picking up somewhere around 6pm as well. So, I reasoned, my best bet was probably to make it into parking lot of The Bank sometime around 6pm and try to sneak in during that small window where the football traffic should be winding down while the baseball traffic should just be starting to pick up.

Amazingly, the 124.3 mile trip from my place to my parking lot at The Bank took me under 2 1/2 hours despite having to drive clear through two major cities, and I managed to time things just about perfectly. What's more, my brother arrived just minutes after I did, and we quickly headed upstairs to one of the sit-down restaurants at The Bank for a couple hours of preparations for the big game. This would actually be the third World Series game I would be attending with my brother, having been at both the 15-14 Mitch Williams debacle and the 2-0 Curt Schilling dominatory shutout in the 1993 Phillies-Blue Jays series, so we pretty much have the routine down pat and we executed it to perfection on Sunday night, such that by game time we were nice and toasty in our seats and ready to see the Phils take back control of this series.

Oh, did I mention our seats were incredible?



This is the view of the Fox Sports set on the field just prior to the first pitch. It's also the view from sitting in my seat for the game. We were in the second row of the stadium, not three feet from the dirt in foul ground about ten feet behind first base, where you often see people leaning way over the gate to try to pick up a foul ground ball. We were right on the aisle, second row, right there. It was so sick. Like I said, if you have the money to spend, you can get some pretty effing amazing things from the internet pretty much on demand. While I've been to several World Series games before in my life, I can definitely say that I've never gone in style quite like this. But that's one of the great things about my older brother, which I know I've written about here before in the context of my Vegas trips with him over the past few years -- the man certainly knows how to live right.

The Bank was electric as Joe Blanton threw the first pitch to Carlos Ruiz to start the top of the 1st inning, but right from the first couple of foul balls and even one lineout, it was obvious that the Yanks were keyed on him early. Within minutes, Blanton had quickly given up two runs and somehow had managed to quiet the stadium's 45,145 fans even before the Phillies had come to bat. But a run in the bottom of the first brought the home town crowd back into it, and the Phils spent the next several innings doing what they've been forced to do all through this World Series -- playing catchup. Blanton calmed down a bit and put the Yanks down without further runs over the next few innings, and in the meantime in the 4th, as Sabathia's pitch count ran into the 60s, the Phils eked out another run to finally get back to even. It seemed that Blanton's early mistake had been forgiven and now the team was being given new life to win this game that they knew they had to win. But no sooner had that occurred than Blanton came out and gave up two more runs to the Yanks in the top of the 5th to bring the score to 4-2 and leave the Phils in yet another 2-run hole, and the home crowd once again gasping for its collective breath just minutes after feeling like the team had finally gotten the second chance at this game that it dsperately needed.

The fans in the stadium were amazing. After Blanton was pinch-hit for in the bottom of the 5th, the stadium erupted in support of Chan Ho Park and Ryan Madson as they came in to try to hold the Yanks down while the Phils could chip away at another 2-run lead, and chip away they did. While Park and Madson weaved their way through a couple of mistakes and continued to hold the Yankees at 4 total runs, first Chase Utley smashed a home run deep into the right field seats in the 7th to bring the Phillies to within 4-3, which really got the crowd rocking and rolling. Then, out of nowhere with the bottom of the Phillies' order up in the 8th, Phillies' third baseman Pedro Feliz drove a liner deep to left-center, clearing the wall and sending the hometown fans into a serious frenzy as he tied the game up once again at 4 with just one inning left to go. Carlos Ruiz soon grounded out to end the Phillies' 8th, but one thing was clear to every single person in the stadium -- the fans, the players on both teams on the field, even retard Charlie Manuel as the 8th inning ended -- hold the Yankees scoreless in the top of the 9th, and the Phils were going to win this game with the top of the order coming up in the bottom of the 9th. You just knew, with the way the game had gone, the Phils' unlikely tying of the game in the 8th, and with how desperately the team needed the game. Three more outs from Madson, and the Phils were going to nab a run off whoever Joe Girardi ran out there to pitch to the home team in the bottom of the 9th and tie this series up at 2.

But unfortunately this is not a fairy tale, and when management repeatedly fails to address the team's blatant, glaring weaknesses in the bullpen, stuff tends to happen. Charlie Manuel unabashedly brought Brad Lidge out to hold the Yanks scoreless in the 9th inning, and the whole stadium collectively groaned. Even when Lidge got the first two batters out in short order, and got up 1-2 on third batter Johnny Damon, nobody exhaled. Because on some level we all knew. We all knew this was Brad Lidge, the literal worst player in the entire major leagues this year as I've been screaming here for months. We knew this was a huge, huge spot for the team and for the franchise, and we know how hideous Lidge has performed in this situation over the months and months that have comprised the 2009 season. Despite the refonkulous claims of manager Charlie Manuel that Lidge was "back", that the postseason was a "clean slate" and that Lidge was ready, willing and able to lead this team back to another world championship, I'm not the only one who knows who truly untrustably bad Lidge is and always will be. We all knew, all 45,000+ fans on their feet all through that 9th inning, so when Lidge ended up giving up a hit to Damon after running the count to 3-2, then plunking Mark Teixeira to let two guys on base, and then serving up a delicious swedish meatball to Alex Rodriguez to lose the tie before throwing another soft-tosser in there to Jorge Posada for another two runs and to complete the blowout, nobody was surprised. Stunned, yes. Definitely. But not in a surprised kind of way. More in an I-told-you-so kind of way.

Despite sometimes feeling like I'm completely alone here in this space screaming for months about how horrible Brad Lidge is and how the Phillies had absolutely, positively zero chance of repeating as World Champions when Brad Lidge was our closer, on Sunday night I had the oppotunity to learn how 45,145 of my fellow Phillies fans felt about Lidge, and what I learned is that everyone -- every body in the city -- feels just like I do. Nobody wanted Lidge out there to pitch to this lineup, in this stadium. Nobody thought the inning was over at 2 outs, nobody on, and 1-2 to Johnny Damon. And nobody thought there was any chance whatsoever that Lidge would be able to stop the bleeding at just one run by getting Posada out, down 5-4. Everybody knew. And somehow, for some reason, I actually take a little comfort in knowing that. We were all in the same boat at The Bank yesterday, and walking out with the hordes as that game came to a close on Sunday night, I recognized all too well the dazed looks I saw everywhere I turned my head. I was sporting the same look myself, as I eased into the front seat of my car and started the long trek that would eventually get me back into my own bed shortly after 2am.

Let me be clear about one thing: I still expect this series to get back to New York, which is all I ever felt sure about coming in to the series as far as length. Although I can personally attest that the loss on Sunday night was emotionally draining for the team and for the city, these players have been through this before. Several times. Like, 15 times just this season with Lidge, plus another 6 or 7 with Madson and others. Blowing a game in the 9th in a spot like this is always one of the hardest things to get over, and I can't say I would be completely shocked if the team couldn't muster up enough chutzpah to grab one win in Philly tonight after what has happened in Philadelphia over the past few days. But this Phillies team has been resilient all through the season, and they've come back with tough, hard-fought wins time and again in the face of adversity, even the day after Lidge blows a big game like happened on May 25 to end that Phillies - Yankees intraleague series back in the spring. I like the matchup of Cliff Lee vs AJ Burnett, and I think there is a good chance that the defending World Champions will not let the Yanks off that easy tonight at The Bank. After Game 5 the Phils will have a major uphill battle to wage, but at this point, you know the routine.

One Game at a Time.

Yankees vs. Phillies

As previously stated, my #1 prediction for the 2009 World Series is that it should be a great one. After pretty much not a single good series in the entire 2009 playoffs so far on either side -- I know the Angels made it to six games with the Yanks, but in truth that series was never in doubt -- this World Series more than anything else will hopefully deliver. It doesn't have to be extra-innings-in-Game-7 amazing, but damn doesn't a 7-game World Series sound great right now? And despite some really intriguing pitching matchups, we are likely to see some serious power on display over the next week on both sides of this matchup, as this is the first time in World Series history that the #1 teams in home runs and runs scored from each league are meeting in the Fall Classic. I do believe both teams have the talent, the depth and the heart to extend this series to at least six games. Here's how I get to that point:

Game 1 pits CC Sabathia against Cliff Lee in what is probably the only matchup of starters in this series with the potential to create some pitcher's duels. Both pitchers have been absolutely brilliant in the postseason, and they will probably pitch fairly well against these respective lineups although I expect more runs than the roughly 1 per 9 innings each pitcher has ceded so far in the postseason. Looking at the intangibles, I am definitely convinced that Sabathia will come to play, but the Phils have roughed his ass up good in recent years, in particular last year in the NLDS against the Brewers when the Phillies beat Sabathia with the longball to advance to the NLCS against the Dodgers, so that will work to neutralize Sabathia's greatness to some extent. The Yankees went a league-best 57-24 at home in 2009, although the Phillies were a league-best 48-33 on the road, so those two also kind of balance each other out. Game 1 seems to hard to pick in my mind that I find myself thinking how this game is the first World Series game in New York in what feels like a long time, the Yankees and their fans are gonna be hungry as hell. Now I know that over recent history, home field advantage has meant very little in the World Series (see the Phils' championship win last year in five game against the homefielded Tampa Bay Rays), but it's really more the "last licks" thing that matters most about having home field advantage IMO. This is made all the more valuable when the Yankees are at home and playing a team with a shaky closer situation like the Phillies certainly have. In what is really otherwise a complete tossup for me, I'm picking the home team to find a way to eke out a win in the bottom of an inning in Game 1.

Game 2, however, is a different story, as we now know that Phillies coach Charlie Manuel has decided to pitch old man Pedro Martinez in Game 2 against the Yankees' AJ Burnett. And this matchup I think definitely favors the Phillies, for two key reasons. First, P-Mart has simply been awesome since his return to baseball in the middle of the summer, something which I find funny that even most of the big-name commentators in the media, as well as the Yankees fans out there, do not seem to have picked up on yet. There's just no other way to describe how great and gutty Pedro has been this season. His fastball has consistently been over 90 mph and he's been very effective in placing his pitches and mixing up speeds. Pedro has also shown some depth, even throwing 130 pitches a couple of months back in his first complete game in years, and going 7 strong in a 2-hit shutout against the Dodgers last week in the NLCS. Pedro has been really rested over the past 6 weeks or so, and he has had a knack with Philly for showing up for all of his big games. Getting to appear and start in the World Series should really get Pedro's juices flowing, and I expect him to pitch fairly well against the Yankees in Game 2 -- let's say 3 runs or less in 6 innings. And on the other side of the coin, I've watched AJ Burnett pitch a couple of times so far this postseason, and he is just exactly the kind of inconsistent, mentally suspect guy that this Phillies lineup feasts on. I feel confident that the Phils can get to Burnett early, as we saw in the ALCS, and Philadelphia can wear him down in the middle innings as well like they did throughout the Colorado and LA series this postseason. With the heart that this Phillies team has, going down 1-0 in the World Series will mean bupkis to them, and I expect the team to ride on Pedro's back to a Game 2 victory and even up this series heading back to Philadelphia for three key games. And I know this team can get to Burnett even here in the new Yankee Stadium -- let's not forget that these two teams played a 3-game series in NY earlier this season, and the Phils crushed Burnett in Game 1, including Jimmy Rollins hitting Burnett's first pitch out of the park and Jayson Werth becoming the first player to reach the second deck in left field on their way to smashing four homers and easily taking the series opener.

Game 3 will feature Cole Hamels against Andy Pettite. To be honest, I have absolutely no faith in Cole Hamels, which is why I believe Charlie is making the right decision in starting Pedro in Game 2, in front of a hostile New York crowd that Pedro will eat up. Giving Cole his start in Game 3 in front of the home town fans is the best chance the Phillies have of getting a productive performance out of him. Unfortunately, I don't see how anyone can expect Hamels to bounce back here, and he'll probably put up the 4- or 5-run, 4- or 5-inning performance that has become his usual this postseason. The question will be, can the Phillies get 5 or more runs off of Andy Pettite? The Phils did score 4 runs in 7 innings off of Pettite on May 23 in the Bronx, so there is some recent history on this to work from, and we know the possibility is there. I think this will be a very close one, as Pettite is a great steroid userpitcher and an incredible stopper for the Yankees over the years, but it's not like the Phillies won't be able to hit him. In the end this has a chance of coming down to the teams' bullpens, and once again I will have to go with the Yankees to win a close one based on favorable pitching matchups.

Game 4 looks like it is shaping up to be a probable matchup of Chad Gaudin against J. Happ Joe Blanton. Down 2 games to 1 in the series, at the Bank, Blanton should be tough and keep the Yankees at bay enough for the Phillies' bats to do the job against Gaudin. I think if the Yanks are not up 2-1 at that point, Girardi may opt to push it and go with Sabathia again on three days rest, but if they are up 2-1 in the series like I am expecting, I think it's going to be a good day for the Phillies against Gaudin to even up the series at two games apiece.

Game 5 then should feature Lee vs. Sabathia once again. And this time, I'm going to go with the last licks thing again, but that means this time the Phillies get the win and take a 3-2 series lead heading back to the Bronx in what should be another very intriguing matchup between baseball's two best teams.

This all is why I find it very hard to believe that this series does not end up for at least a Game 6 back in New York. I do not see the Phillies winning more than one of the first two games in New York, nor do I see them losing more than one of the three games in Philadelphia, and as long as both of those statements are true then this series has to last at least 6 games. The big question I think is whether the series score is 3-2 Phillies or 3-2 Yankees going into that Game 6. What the Phillies can do in one or two must-win games at Yankee Stadium at the end of this series is going to determine the 2009 World Championship. And with the way this Phillies team has played on the road, and especially with Burnett up again in Game 6, the Phillies will know that one is very winnable for the visitors, which could hopefully set the stage for a rockin' Game 7 for all the marbles in the Bronx. And even though Cliff Lee won't be available to start, the Phils could go with any combination of Hamels or soon-to-be rookie of the year winner J. Happ on full rest, Joe Blanton on 3 days rest, and Cliff Lee could always be available for a crucial inning or two late in a World Series Game 7 even on two days rest if it looks like the difference between winning and losing the championship. So Game 7 in New York could go any which way, although to be honest I don't know how you end up picking anyone but the home team Yankees, who once again will get to bat that incredible all-star lineup in the bottom half of the innings against the Phillies' totally untrustable bullpen. But we can cross that bridge of Game 7 when we come to it.

One thing I've seen a lot of analysts doing is comparing these two teams position by position. So, for example, at catcher the Yankees get the nod, as Jorge Posada is better than Carlos Ruiz overall, even though Ruiz is better at playing the position than his Yankee opponent. At first base, it's a clash of the titans in Ryan Howard vs. Mark Teixeira, which is senseless in a way to even have to pick one over the other. Teixeira is really good in the field in a way that even Howard is not, but when I look at Howard's body of work this season and the performance of the two players so far in the postseason, Ryan Howard gets the slight nod on that one. At 2nd base, Chase Utley is a better baseball player than Robinson Cano. Period. At short, you've got Jimmy Rollins and Derek Jeter in a battle of leadoff men who many would argue have been the heart and soul of their teams over the years. This is another one that really feels too close to call, but if pushed I would give the slight nod to Jeter given his career and the better regular season he had than J-Roll in 2009. At third base it's not even close of course, A-Rod takes it down over Pedro Feliz. And then there's the outfield, where I contend that the Phillies win in every single position. In left field, it's Johnny Damon vs. Jayson Werth. Who would you rather have on your team? Exactly. In center it's Melky Cabrera vs. gold-glover Shane Victorino. Exactly. And in right it's Nick Swisher vs. Raul Ibanez. Again, exactly. So, looking at the series this way, the Phils are better in three outfield positions, at first base and at second base for 5 of the 8 total fielding positions, while the Yankees have the big advantage at 3rd base as well as superiority at catcher and shortstop. So does this mean the Phillies will win this series?

Looking at the upcoming 2009 World Series in still a different way, I think there are a couple of distinct advantages for each team over the other. For the Yankees, the biggest and most dramatic advantage over the Phillies as a team has got to be the bullpen. This statement has to be tempered somewhat after the Angels series which saw both Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain look pretty much worthless and scared in that late-relief slot the Yanks have relied so heavily on to bridge them to Mariano Rivera in the 9th, but the presence of Rivera there means the Yankees usually only have to go 8 innings with the lead, and sometimes less as Mariano has been known to put in the 4- or 5-out save as needed as well. Not only do the Phillies not have any go-to guy for that spot, but they seem to think that 162 games worth of suckjobiness out of Brad Lidge has now all been erased in the postseason, which seems absurd to me. So the bullpen is a huge advantage for the Yankees over the Phillies, one which take it from me every single Phillies fan fears down to his or her soul for this World Series. I've said this before and I'll say it again now: the thought of Brad Lidge facing this Yankees lineup, in either stadium in this matchup, is enough to keep me up at night. I just don't see that matchup ending up in Philadelphia's favor in this series. The Phils will need to hope they don't need to use Lidge much, as happened in the Dodgers series, if they really want a chance to win the way I see it. Brad Lidge = Big Losses for the Phightins.

It should be mentioned that the existence of a designated hitter in potentially four of the games in this series is also an advantage for the Yankees in my view. They can play a great hitter like Hideki Matsui in that spot, whereas for the Phillies, who obviously do not make any effort to spend money to get a big stick like that who can't play baseball the field, they are likely to be left with a Matt Stairs or Greg Dobbs type to hit in the DH spot in the games in the Bronx. And the Yankees' pitchers include guys like Sabathia and Burnett who have played some part of their careers in the NL, and a guy like Pettite who has appeared in 58 world series, and have thus spent time batting in NL parks as opposed to being those AL pitchers who make themselves look like clowns every October because it's the first time they've picked up a bat in the past ten years.

Another slight advantage I believe the Yankees have going in to the 2009 World Series is in the overall strength of the lineup. This is the first time I've said that about the Phillies in this postseason, and frankly the Yankees are the only team in baseball I would ever say that about, but the Yankees have so many high-priced all-stars on their roster that it's hard to argue they aren't better than what any other team can throw out there, even the Phillies. In Philly, it's Jimmy Rollins (.250, 21 homers, 77 RBIs), Shane Victorino (.292, 10, 62), Chase Utley (.282, 31, 93), Ryan Howard (.279, 45, 141), Jayson Werth (.268, 36, 99), Raul Ibanez (.272, 34, 93), Carlos Ruiz (.255, 9, 43) and Pedro Feliz (.266, 12, 82). For the Yankees it's some combination of Derek Jeter (.334, 18 homers, 66 RBIs), Johnny Damon (.282, 24, 82), Mark Teixeira (.292, 39, 122), A-Rod (.286, 30, 100), Jorge Posada (.285, 22, 81), Hideki Matsui (.274, 28, 90), Robinson Cano (.320, 25, 85), Nick Swisher (.249, 29, 82) and Melky Cabrera (.274, 13, 68). When I look at those numbers, as much as the Phillies' lineup was superior to everyone else it faced in the National League, that Yankees lineup is simply even better.

The last thing I would mention is something that many people -- especially in the Philadelphia area -- would disagree with me on, but I think Joe Girardi is a slightly better manager than the Phillies' Charlie Manuel, and I trust Girardi more not to make key mistakes based on what I've seen out of Manuel in 2009. And don't get me wrong -- with the heart that this Phillies team plays with, their incredible focus on fundamentals, all the wins, Manuel has obviously proven himself to be a far better major league manager than he may come off as. He deserves a ton of credit for what this team has done over the past two seasons, and I won't take anything away from him on that. But unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that Manuel has made a very annoying and costly habit of sticking with "his guys" for too long. He leaves his starting pitchers in the games for an inning or two longer than he should, pretty much every single game when things aren't going great, like clockwork. Hamels comes out and goes down 2-0 against the first four batters he faces in the Dodgers series, and Manuel doesn't even get anyone up in the bullpen until the 5th inning when Hamels has already given up four or five runs. All this while J. Happ -- one of the best starting pitchers in the NL this season -- just sits on the Phils' bench and rots away his arm that could easily come into any game in the 3rd inning and pitch all the way through the 9th, not even needing to give that shitbag Lidge a chance to ruin another one for the team. But Manuel has demonstrated to me a significant lack of understanding about how to use his pitching staff in this season, from about the middle of the year on in fact when it started to become obvious that Lidge was worthless, and this trend has disturbingly continued all the way through the postseason so far. Despite some idiot Yankee fans questioning his every move of course, Girardi really has done a very good job through this whole season and right into the postseason, and I definitely see another advantage there for the Yankees in terms of the decisions being made by the guys at the helm of the respective teams.

On the Phillies side of the ledger, they also have a few key advantages IMO, the biggest one of which is something that I'm not hearing anyone else talking about: pressure. Or more specifically, in the Phillies case, the total lack thereof. Now I know this team wants to defend its title and win the World Series again this year, of that I think there is absolutely no doubt. But the Phillies don't have to win it. They are already the current World Champions, and unlike the Yankees they don't play in a city that demands at least one sports title every single year. The city of Philadelphia and the Phillies franchise and fans will be just fine if they lose to the Yankees this week. Especially after plowing their way back to a consecutive World Series appearance here, this Phillies team has already proven everything it could possibly have to prove, almost regardless of what happens over the next week along Route 95 in the northeast.

The Yankees, on the other hand, have an immense amount of pressure to win this series. The team spent more than $400 million in the offseason to acquire talent that put it leaps and bounds above any other team in the sport, both in terms of payroll and in terms of raw talent, and their opponent in the 2009 World Series is not even in the top 5 payrolls in the major leagues as far spending money on their players. With all the money spent by this team over the past few years, and with how great that talent has performed here in 2009, for the Yankees not to win this series would be a big blow to the organization and to the fans. They expect to win, they know they have the best talent money can buy on both sides of the ball, and they have home field advantage to boot. Especially given my prediction that this series has to go at least 6 games, those last couple of games in the Bronx are going to be absolute pressure cookers for the Yankees, while the Phils will still kinda be playing with the house's money. This can only bode well for the Phillies, especially given the choke history of some of the Yankees' players like A-Rod, and even Sabathia last year against the Phillies in the playoffs.

One other advantage the Phillies should definitely have in this series is on the basepaths. Yankees catcher Jorge Posada -- who we should see more of this series than in the ALDS or ALCS due to the DH being available on only half the games -- has a great bat but behind the plate has only thrown out 28% of the runners who have attempted to steal a base off of him in 2009. He can definitely be run on. And the Phils have those spark-plug type of players -- the Rollins, Victorino, Utley and Werth types -- who will grind out at bats, get on base, and will definitely run. And the Phils have the big bats behind those players to drive them in once they run themselves into scoring position. Carlos Ruiz is a much better fielding catcher than Jorge and can throw the ball better as well so should have better luck keeping the Yankees runners from wheeling around the bases at will, but this is one area I expect the Phillies to have to take advantage of if they are to have any chance of winning this series.

The last advantage I would mention is the Phillies' incredible road performance this year. Yes the Yankees won 57 games at home in 2009, which is truly sick no matter how you slice it, but my point here is that the Phillies are simply going to feel more comfortable and more confident going into Yankee Stadium -- where they already won 2.9 out of 3 games in May this spring -- than the Yankees are coming into the Bank in Philly. While the Yankees lost two of three games at Anaheim in the ALCS, for example, the Phillies split two games in LA and went 2-0 in two games in Colorado in the NLDS. It's just another game to this Phillies team regardless of the location of the stadium, the unfamiliarity of the surroundings, or the noise of the fans. Just another game.

In all, I keep coming back to the fact that the 2009 World Series is going to end up back in New York for Game 6 (sorry Jimmy Rollins, I don't buy your prediction of Phillies in 5 -- that worked for the Dodgers, but they sucked balls compared to the Yankees and you should know that), and I think the Phillies will have a decent shot of getting to Burnett in Game 6 and turning that game into a Phillies W. If the Phils can get back to New York up 3-2 in the series, then Game 6 is probably the team's best chance to capture back-to-back World Series for only the fourth time in National League history. If the Series extends to Game 7, however, I think the Yankees' chances of being victorious increase dramatically as the starting pitching matchups tend to even out and the bullpen is likely to take more focus as the game wears on, a position where the Yankees have their biggest advantage in the entire matchip between baseball's two greatest teams.