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The predictions tag is certainly the one used most often here. And with the occasional exception, the team that I pick to win whatever sports championship at the beginning of the year very rarely goes on to do so in any of the four major sports.
Curiously, the outcome that has turned out to occur far more frequently is my originally predicted runner-up emerging instead. In fact, there have been at least five times in the six-year history of this blog: last season's Miami Heat, both the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Los Angeles Lakers of the 2008-09 seasons, and perhaps most lovingly hoped for, the 2009-10 Chicago Blackhawks.
The fifth, final and furthest runner-up that instead won it all was the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals. Coincidentally, that was also the same year of the last World Series appearance for the Detroit Tigers, the same team that I not only have picked to lose throughout this postseason, but also picked at the beginning of this year to be on the losing end of this final series of the year.
So it should be relatively clear what I'm really expecting to happen at this point. One of these years, I'll remember that everything that happened in baseball's regular season goes completely out the window at the start of the playoffs.
I should confess that I will likely miss a majority of this year's World Series, seeing as I'll be on my honeymoon. I may attempt to DVR it, although I can't really imagine that I'd actually watch entire games when I get home. Needless to say, I've obviously got plenty of other things on my mind right now—I mean, Jesus ... did you see how many winners and losers I forgot to color in for those years past?—so let me just get on with the inevitable and hope that if I catch any of these games, they're actually good ones.
Unless you count the defending World Champion Cardinals, most of the unlikeliest teams to make the playoffs this year saw their feelgood stories end in the Division Series. Considering that I bought into the whole charm of the surprising seasons of the Orioles, Athletics and Nationals, I was somewhat surprised that all three failed to advance. However, considering that all four Divisional Series went the maximum five games for the first time ever, I really can't complain. What we're left with offers some hope for continued great baseball, although I still doubt that I'll really have much of a team to feel genuinely happy for. You have the three teams that have won the last three World Series, leaving the Tigers as pretty much the only fanbase that's been deprived of recent success.
Maybe Detroit will invoke some more passionate enthusiasm from this particularly disappointed Braves fan in the next few weeks, but basically I'm presuming that it will not be so bad, after all, that I'm getting married the night of Game 3 of the World Series.
This is an all-too-familiar sight, with an Atlanta legend heading for the showers one last time. Like Bobby two years ago, we're left feeling like another longtime Brave deserved so much better. And this year, that statement holds even more meaning because Chipper's final season ends in what I obviously felt—and probably feel even more strongly now—was a ridiculously cheap single elimination "playoff" game.
Furthermore, Jones should not be leaving after a game in which the fans that cheered him on for 19 seasons delayed the game for 19 minutes by littering the field with trash. Yes, the infield fly rule being ludicrously invoked in a key eighth inning play was utterly preposterous, and it unfortunately proved exactly what Chipper himself feared about the one-game Wild Card idea:
Now if you were to say the two wild-card teams will play a best two-out-of-three [series], I'd be OK with that. I think it's more fair from a standpoint that anything can happen in one game -- a blown call by an umpire, a bad day at the office … at least in a two-of-three game series you have some sort of leeway.
Still, it is important to remember that even had that call not been made, no runs would have been added for Atlanta. Rather, the Braves would have admittedly had another golden opportunity with the bases loaded and only one out. Considering that the team ended the night by leaving 10 men on base, scoring that inning was still no guarantee. Oh, and then there were the three errors. And when Jones made the first one, I had the feeling it was the start of something bad.
It appears that as a Braves fan, I'm developing a stronger sense for imminent disappointment.
There remains some bitterness and disappointment from the ending to the Braves season last night, but for a fan base so accustomed to such early exits in recent years, the playoffs go on as they always do. My initial World Series pick from the beginning of this year did not make the playoffs, but my runner-up did and I did, in fact, get two participants correctly matched up in this round. Overall, I got four of the six division winners correct here, with all four being pretty safe picks, in my mind (I suppose there were a good number of votes for St. Louis in the Central, but I digress). The remaining picks were generally as sad as they usually are with my track record of prognosticating any MLB season.
And that said, it won't stop me from venturing guesses about the remainder of this postseason. I no longer have a genuine rooting interest, but I'm relatively certain one will emerge rather quickly. A co-worker of mine is from Detroit, so the Tigers are in consideration. However, both Oakland and Baltimore are wonderful little underdog stories. I suppose the Nationals might be my least disliked team in the National League, although I already feel like I'd be bitter about any one of the four teams that isn't Atlanta winning it all.
Either way, the one thing that still keeps me excited is that this field strikes me as being wide open. Any one of these eight teams has as good a shot as any other, and no team strikes me as being unbeatable.
Well, four major league teams have finished playing 162 games which involved countless series of three or four games over the past six months, and now it comes down to one game. Yep, sort of flies in the face of everything that baseball's about (Rotation depth? Whatever ...), but Bud Selig was so pleased with last year's thrilling finish to the regular season that he decided (NOTE: According to Ken Rosenthal, I stand corrected; Selig actually wanted the much better best-of-three format, but the 14 members of his Special Committee for On-Field Matters unanimously shot him down) to forcefully recreate it this year by adding one more team for each league in this year's playoffs with an idea that's bound to backfire in some future season. What happens when there's a tie for a division title or playoff spot, and a team has blown through its first two starters before a Division Series has even started?
For the time being, Selig looks fairly smart. Fans in many cities got to hold out a little more hope for a little longer than usual as this regular season came to a close. What happens today will leave two cities feeling rather justifiably shorted when the thrill of making the postseason ends in a single day. Fortunately for Selig, this year those cities will not be the louder voices in, say, New York or Boston.
I guess we will see how this goes tonight, and there's a strong possibility we could indeed see two highly thrilling contests that delight many a fan. However, as someone who has long felt that the Division Series needs to be extended to seven games, adding one more round with of even shorter length is adding mistakes upon errors. I'm already feeling sorry for the losers, although I've actually got a genuine rooting interest in this year's trial run, so that adds an element of possible personal pain too.
I actually typed in that record when I first started toying with the graphic after the Braves clinched a postseason berth. Sure, I still held out hope that maybe Atlanta could steal the division, but the Nationals did not end up collapsing despite the high hopes many Braves fans had after the sweep of Washington in mid-September.
So while I absolutely hate the new single-game Wild Card format (and believe me, there will be plenty more griping about that in the next post), it's hard to complain when at least this year does not end with the conclusion of the regular season. I said in my predictions for the year that I thought Atlanta would be fighting Washington for third place, so you can imagine my surprise that both teams wound up jockeying for the top spot instead. (And let's not go into my World Series pick.)
I can't help but notice that this year's final fourth quarter graphic has many similarities to the one from two years ago. There's the team congratulating a hero at home plate after a wild win, and much like the final season of Bobby Cox then, we fans find ourselves hoping that the Braves can go out with a bang for the final year of Chipper Jones. Hopefully, this year's campaign stretches out much further than the 2010 playoff run.
After two straight years of tacking on some version of the "Better than expected" title to the first Bears quarterly update of the year, the 3-1 record is actually about where I expected them to be. Dallas was the only iffy spot in the first four games, but Chicago passed that test with flying colors.
If there is one aspect to the team that really is far, far better than I expected, it is most certainly the defense. After a couple of years of expressing concerns about how the age was going to begin showing, the Bears instead have one of the best defenses in the league at this point.
Now, as for that explosive offense many fans had been hoping for (and, dare I say, expecting), that still seems to be a work-in-progress. Again, there were encouraging signs last night against the Cowboys as Jay Cutler posted a passer rating above 140, Brandon Marshall was demonstrating why he should be considered a legitimate weapon and Matt Forte's injury wasn't as serious as many of us feared it might be.
Going forward, Chicago is in good position to be 7-1 at the midway point. The team plays four pretty beatable opponents in its next four games (at Jacksonville, vs. Detroit, vs. Carolina, and at Tennessee). However, the Bears will need to take advantage of that stretch, because the second half of the year promises to be much, much more difficult. Still, for the time being, they are tied record-wise with the Vikings (!!!) for first place, although Minnesota holds the edge in divisional record right now.
