World Series

Fresh off an unacceptable loss to the Kansas City Royals on Sunday afternoon, the New York Yankees arrived back home to face the Detroit Tigers for a four-game set.

Instead of keeping the Tampa Bay Rays at bay, the Yankees lost to the Tigers 3-0, but that is just the icing on the cake.

With the playoff races heating up, and everything starting to take shape, I am here to put in my opinion on who will win each MLB division, who will win each pennant, and who will win the Fall Classic.

The only division in the MLB right now with possibly a clear outlook is the AL West, but anything can happen.

I'll keep it short and sweet, so here we go.

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The San Francisco Giants might win the 2010 National League pennant.

Remember Forrest Gump?  If he wasn't fictional, he would have a blast watching the Phillies. We are, "like a box of chocolates—you never know what you're gonna get." And that is the way it goes for Phillies fans.

Last night, Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, Blanton, delivered in innings two through five.  As expected he did not perform in the first or the sixth (Uncle Charlie, why did you not pull him after the fifth?) He allowed four runs on eight hits and four walk.

Via Baseball Reference:

Mariano Rivera is 40 years old, still pitching extremely well, and is first in baseball history in ERA+. Among active pitchers, he’s ranked first in ERA, WHIP, H/9IP, K/BB, HR/9IP, WPA, and fielding percentage. (Go ahead and carefully re-read that last sentence.)

What Johan Santana did today for the New York Mets was nothing short of amazing, and this is a franchise that knows from amazing.

Much the same way he pitched a gem when the Mets needed a win at the end of the 2008 season, Santana came up huge a day after the Mets saw another eighth-inning lead disappear, only to have their closer, Francisco Rodriguez, arrested for assaulting his father-in-law near the clubhouse after the game.

Do we have a Flushing Zoo on our hands?

With the way that the game has changed over the past few decades, relief pitching has become a substantially more integral part of baseball.

Just a few weeks ago I was reading articles on why the Phillies season was done. Now, they were very well written, but the authors seemed to be jumping the gun on the Phillies' season. The Phillies seem to be bouncing back even with their injury ridden lineup, winning eight of their last ten games.

Now only two games behind the Atlanta Braves, who appear to be in quite a slump, going four and six in there last 10 games, and not showing too many signs of improvement.

These are five reasons why the Phillies will make yet another post-season appearance.

Baseball managerial practices are organic. They change and shift according to knowledge into the laws of physics, culture, and economics.

In times of yore, a five-man rotation was thought to be useless, Cy Young started 49 games in a single year, and the concept of a closer would have been bizarre.

Getting back to the present, Stephen Strasburg's muscles flared a few weeks ago, and it seems he may be shut down for the year.

Yesterday I wrote that it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Philadelphia Phillies go out and acquire a first baseman if they thought Ryan Howard would be out longer than 15 days. I thought they would go out and get a player like Mike Lowell, Adam LaRoche, or Casey Kotchman.