Baseball

So a couple of weeks back, Yahoo Sports writer Jeff Passan wrote a column called Think you know baseball? No, you don’t.

It was a good article that gave 25 facts about baseball that weren’t typical common knowledge. I liked it and in the back of my mind I thought that I wanted to do something similar about the Yankees at the end of the year.

After 162 games, the Major League Baseball postseason is finally here.

The 2010 playoffs has it all, from powerhouses like the Yankees and Phillies, to upstart teams like the Braves and Giants.

The games start Wednesday when the Texas Rangers travel to Tampa Bay to take on the Rays, followed by the Reds against the Phillies, and the Yankees against the Twins.

But before the first pitch has even been thrown, it already looks like some teams have positioned themselves as early favorites to play in the World Series.

WhatIfSports.com utilizes its award-winning baseball simulation engine to present the most comprehensive and unbiased ranking possible of all 30 teams in baseball each Monday during the regular season. To come up with the rankings, using only their statistical performance to date this season, each team is simulated against every other team 100 times (50 at home and 50 away) so that all five pitchers in the current rotation start 10 times at each location.

I would like to congratulate New Yorkers, Mets fans, and fans of baseball in general for our reward today, Oct. 4th.

The sport of baseball will forever be better off without Omar Minaya running the Mets.

It is going to be difficult to hire a general manager who will want to deal with Fred and Jeff Wilpon and the mess that is the New York Mets.

The Wild Card New York Yankees will start the postseason in Minnesota against the AL Central Champion Twins.

Both teams will be critique over the next three days, as the sports media and baseball fans will express their opinions while trying to predict the outcome.

In the parlance of that iconic psychedelic rock band, The Grateful Dead, the 2010 Philadelphia Phillies went on a long strange trip that was marred by a slew of injuries.  Of course, GM Ruben Amaro, skipper Charlie Manuel, and the rest of the team kept on Truckin', and they somehow enter this week's playoffs with the best record in baseball.

I have nothing against the San Francisco Giants—in fact, I don’t particularly care about them one way or the other. I’m sure they’re nice people, and they’re certainly a very good baseball team.

But, while San Francisco’s successes and failures don’t rouse my passions as an Indians and Red Sox fan, their victory Sunday afternoon irked me as a baseball fan because of the domino effect it had on the playoff scene.

The New York Yankees had a rough September, posting a 14-16 record for the month, and finalized it by losing the AL East to the Tampa Bay Rays.

Regardless, getting closer to the goal of repeating entails making the postseason and that first step has been accomplished.

For those who were concerned with Clayton Kershaw prior to the season, they certainly had their questions answered early and often in 2010.  While the Dodgers opted to shut him down early due to a heavy workload (he went from 171.0 innings in 2009 to 204.1 innings in 2010), that couldn’t put a damper on his amazing campaign.

Let’s take a look at the numbers before putting his success in perspective:

According to sources from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ken Macha has managed his last game for the Milwaukee Brewers. His option for 2011 will not be picked up, and he'll be relieved of his duties on Monday.

Macha has managed the Brewers to back-to-back losing seasons after the team made the playoffs in 2008.