By Staff Writer: Travis Waker
October is here and that means postseason baseball. At the beginning of April thirty teams competed against each other, now it’s down to just eight. All have the same goal in mind, to win the World Series. It sounds easy, but it will be a grueling final month of the season for every team involved.
The opinion of the majority to win the ‘Series has been the Detroit Tigers from the beginning of the season. However, there are two factors that could hurt their chances of going far. One is the injury of their star MVP candidate, Miguel Cabrera, who only homered once the final month and a half of the season due to multiple leg injuries. The other is the recent struggles of their closer Joaquin Benoit, who blew two saves in the last six games of the season. Something he hasn’t done once all year. Something else that is not in Detroit’s favor is their inability to run the bases well. They have been playing the Oakland Athletics in the first round. Oakland stole 74 bases all year which is quite the total. They also have some guys at the top of their lineup who can really run, such as their leadoff man Coco Crisp. The Tigers, however, do have several things going for them. They have one of the best pitching staffs of all time, who broke the record for strikeouts in a single season. They also have the favorite for the CY Young award (given to each league’s best pitcher), Max Scherzer, Rookie of the Year candidate, Jose Iglasias, and MVP candidate, Miguel Cabrera.
The second team I believe to have a good chance in the postseason is the Boston Red Sox. They had the second best batting average in baseball during the regular season at .277. However, I don’t think their pitching will get them past the second round. Boston’s pitching staff had only 19 quality starts, (six innings or more with three earned runs or less.) The 19 quality starts is the fewest in baseball.
The Atlanta Braves are the third and final team who has a shot to win it all. Although there is nothing impressive about the Braves’ stats, they have a good mix of power, average, speed, and pitching, which is good enough to make a run.
The Major League Baseball postseason is the hardest grind in all of sports. Teams will have to face adversity and tough losses, but in the end, it’s worth everything if you win it all.
