2012 Division Series Predictions: Who's the favorite here?

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.

Other than these CBS Sports picks of the entire unfolding of the playoffs, I did not see much else in the way of predictions for the Wild Card games and still do not see much for this round, so there likely will not be any standings of my picks contrasted with others this year. (Sorry.) If you missed it, I was 1-1 on my first two picks, and now here's my predictions for this round in their usual descending order of confidence:

San Francisco Giants over Cincinnati Reds in four games

This is the one series I had matched up correctly in this round from my pre-season predictions, and I'll actually stick with the outcome I originally foresaw. Even when the Braves were still alive, the Giants were the one team that worried me the most. I think San Francisco responded quite well following the sudden departure of Melky Cabrera, even with the concerns about how well Tim Lincecum is going to perform. If anything, I'm guilty of underrating the Reds, a team that nearly had home-field throughout. However, Cincinnati enters the playoffs having won a division that boasts two 100+ loss teams, and I just cannot get over my doubts about Dusty Baker.

Oakland Athletics over Detroit Tigers in four games

While I know John Heyman, for one, picked Washington to win its division this year, I do not believe anybody had the A's doing much of anything. Still, here they are, a team of relative no-names that has been playing about as well as anybody for many, many months now. Detroit, meanwhile, was my predicted World Series runner-up this year and was also expected to run away with the AL Central and possibly contend for home-field throughout the playoffs. Instead, the Tigers come in with a pretty underwhelming performance this season, most notably in the field. Oakland is clearly the defensively superior team here, and I would not be surprised if a couple of key errors end up determining a game or two here. There's the temptation to believe that Detroit ends up being one of the written-off clubs that goes on to win the whole thing, but I'll run with that narrative if they're able to survive this series. I'm certainly not counting on it.

Baltimore Orioles over New York Yankees in four games

Expect a high-scoring series, and a tightly fought one too. Oh, and a mention of Jeffrey Maier roughly every other inning. Seriously, that clip is going to get shown enough times over the next couple weeks to begin inducing vomiting. This year's series, however, should be a wildly entertaining one. The five-game series is always one of the toughest challenges for the Yankees to overcome, and this year should be no different. As usual with the Bronx Bombers, I'm inclined to root against them, and that's probably as much to blame for anything here in my picking the Orioles. These teams split the 18 games they played against one another during the regular season, but perhaps what's encouraging for Baltimore is that both teams went 3-6 in their own stadiums during the series.

Washington Nationals over St. Louis Cardinals in five games

Why in the world would I have such a hard time picking the team with the best record in all of baseball over the team with the worst record in these playoffs? Because it's the Cardinals. And St. Louis is just as threatening this time around as they were last year when they, you know, won the whole thing. Even without Stephen Strasburg, the Nats have proven to have plenty of tools needed to make a legitimate postseason run. And Davey Johnson's no bum of a coach, either. The Cards certainly won't roll over, and I obviously think they'll push Washington to the limit, but in the end, the Nationals will find a way to move on.