The Post Season

For a few teams, these next few days and weeks will be the fulfillment of a life long dream. For a few teams, they have reasserted their annual dominance in baseball, for others, it has been a long time since the last time they have taken part in the joyous post season.

First lets look at the National League

Friday St. Louis will take on the Atlanta Braves, both had interesting stories last year. St. Louis won the World Series against all odds, twice getting down to the last out before storming back to win. On the other hand, there is Atlanta. The Braves just barely missed out on a wild card birth last year. At the beginning of this season, respected veteran Chipper Jones announced that this would be his last year. The Braves gave him everything he could have asked for this year, giving him the chance to go out on top, on the biggest stage.

The rest of the NL playoff picture is filled out with San Francisco, Cincinnati and Washington. The SF Giants endured a season of ups and downs to quietly make it to the playoffs, as did the Reds. Most of the NL drama unfolded through the Washington Nationals. This team endured tough decisions about ace pitcher Strasburg, deciding to shut him down during the season. The Nationals were still able to make the playoffs for the first time since moving to Washington.

Now we take a look at the American League.

In what proved to be a wild Wednesday night, The A's came out the big winners. The A's completed a sweep over their division rivals, the Texas Rangers. By sweeping the Rangers, The A's were able to take 1st place in the division, and knock Texas down to a wild card team.

Next the Red Sox played the Yankees. The Yankees were in control of their own destiny, win and they would win the AL East, and that is exactly what they did. The Yanks left nothing up to fate, they took an early lead in the game and never looked back, eventually winning 12-2.

With the Yankees win, the Orioles could only be a Wild Card team, win or lose. But they still had motivation to win. If the Orioles won, they would have had home field advantage for the wild card game. Instead they lost to Tampa Bay 4-0, and have to travel to Texas for a one game showdown in Arlington on Friday night.

The post season, like so many before it, promises to be exciting.

On the not so good side are the teams that missed out. Tampa Bay was one of three teams to have their third straight 90 win season, along with Texas and the Yankees. Unfortunately for Tampa, this did not result in a post season birth. In Boston, a disappointing season led to the firing of first year manager Bobby Valentine. Valentine struggled right from the beginning, being micro managed by the front office, and was never able to gain the respect of the players. All of that culminated in his being fired just a few hours after the last game of the season.