League Championship Series Predictions: Who do I actually root for?

Looking back at last year's postseason predictions, I forgot that ESPN doesn't maintain a consistent set of experts throughout the postseason for predicting each series on a round-by-round basis. So after just one round of baseball predictions, it appears I'm already going to lose a significant number of the experts I'd anticipated comparing my own picks to. And actually, of the four people they've got predictions for the outcome of the ALCS, not one of them was included last round. Nice job, Mother Ship.

But hey! Yahoo's keeping up, so we'll scratch ESPN's panel from the standings and keep this a five-horse race, I guess—not that's it really going to be all that much of a race, of course. There's only two matchups this round and one last one after that, so maybe I'll remember next year not to bother trying to do this ... although I'm almost certainly going to forget again.


Anyway, the only ESPN pundit whose predictions were really worth a damn was Buster Olney, who had all four series correct and actually had three in the exact number of games. If ESPN gets its shit together sometime after I post this, maybe I'll include those pundits, but for now, here's how my results from the last round rank with the Yahoo gang (number in brackets denoting how many series were predicted in exact number of games):

 1. Steve Henson: 4-0 [1]

2. Tim Brown: 3-1 [1]

3. Kevin Kaduk: 2-2 [1]
3. YOURS TRULY: 2-2 [1]

5. Jeff Passan: 2-2 [0]

Yeah, that's kinda lame. Oh well.

Here's how the Yahoo boys see this next round sizing up:

Which, of course, leads into my own way of forecasting this year's two League Championships:

Philadelphia Phillies over San Francisco Giants in five games

My original hope—back when it was still possible that the Braves would be in this round rather than the Giants—was that the dominant trio of Halladay-Oswalt-Hamels would have cooled off some at this point. But really, I don't know when these guys are going to slow down at all. And now that the Phillies are matched against a Giants team with pitching to rival Philadelphia's, it's clear to me that this series will be determined by the bats. And in that category, I think the edge has to go to the Phillies. All of this is not to mention that this is Philly's third straight appearance in the LCS, so experience never hurts either.

Texas Rangers over New York Yankees in seven games

Who really wants to see a rematch of last year's World Series, after all? Well, as possible as it might be—Cliff Lee can't start every game, after all—Texas enjoys home-field advantage in the series. The Rangers lineup is pretty scary, but more impressive has been the manner in which they put their runs on the board (note Elvis Andrus scoring the first run of Game Five against the Rays all the way from second base ... on a ground out). Additionally, you've got a Texas team that's already beaten the otherwise superhuman Mariano Rivera earlier this season. The Yankees are supposed to trot out A.J. Burnett in this series, and the poor guy's been nothing short of dreadful. New York's bats might win them a couple games, but their starting pitching's sure to cost them just as many. A Texas-Philadelphia World Series might equal ratings death for Fox, but something's telling me they're just going to have to deal with it.