Division Series Predictions: Allow me some wishful thinking

I guess I did technically improve my regular-season prognosticating for Major League Baseball this past season, getting 10 of the 30 teams' final places in the standings correct. And while half of the eight teams about to play in the post-season are indeed clubs I had said would be there, only one is going in as the division winner I thought they'd be. I guess it was a down year for a lot of people though.

So I'm quite inclined to support Thomas Boswell's belief that making predictions about MLB's playoffs is "folly." And considering that my beloved Braves are limping into this postseason without Chipper Jones, Martin Prado, and probably not Jair Jurrjens either, hardly an expert out there is picking Atlanta to do much of anything in these October games.

But predictions are, of course, something of the norm here on BMC, and with the first pitch of the postseason only a few hours away, it's time to add some more wrongheaded logic to what I've already displayed so far this baseball season. (And just so I won't feel alone, we'll include a couple "experts" too.)

Here's how the ESPN gang sees things:

And here's the Yahoo staff's picks, which appear to have been created on an eight-bit Nintendo:

On to my own now, in the usual descending order of confidence:

 Philadelphia Phillies over Cincinnati Reds in three games

 I have yet to see anybody pick the Reds, and I won't be the first—although I sure as hell will be pulling for Dusty Baker's squad to pull off the upset. But the three-headed monster of Halladay-Oswalt-Hamels has been nothing short of unbeatable the past month, and the bats in the Phillies' lineup shouldn't struggle against three straight right-handers that are as questionable as Philadelphia's "H2O" is solid. Wrong series for Cincy to hope it could win a slugfest.

Tampa Bay Rays over Texas Rangers in four games

Nobody wants to bat against Cliff Lee, but Tampa Bay's got the rotation to win a series with—not that David Price is going to be any slouch when he's starting one, possibly (probably) two games in this series to match Lee. Texas' bullpen is also hurt by the loss of setup man Frank Francisco, and MVP candidate Josh Hamilton's aching ribs puts a little too much pressure to perform on Vladmir Guerrero. There's life to these Rangers, for sure, but Tampa Bay's just a little hungrier.

New York Yankees over Minnesota Twins in five games

With home-field advantage this time around and that brand-spankin'-new ballpark, there's the temptation to believe the Twinkies can find a way to eke this one out this year. But with both teams sort of stumbling in down the stretch, the Yankees are the defending champions that produced the most runs in all of baseball for the second half of the season—as well as the overall regular season. New York's three-man rotation will be a gamble, but when it comes to the bullpens—as it most probably will—I'll take Mariano Rivera over Matt Capps any day. Especially in October.

Atlanta Braves over San Francisco Giants in five games

It's been seemingly forever since I've gotten to have my hopes built up for a postseason run by the Braves, and I can't bear the thought of another Atlanta October ending with a first-round exit and Bobby Cox's utterly fantastic managerial career ending with him at another press conference saying how these playoffs are always a "crapshoot." The pitching is sure to be the story in this series, so if you are like me and enjoy playoff baseball of the nail-biting, low-scoring variety, then this series should have precisely those types of games. Here's to my admittedly biased opinion hoping that the Bravos can get the national media to refer to them as the "cardiac kids" and retain some of that never-say-die attitude that earned them 45 come-from-behind wins and 25 final at-bat victories this season (most in the majors).