Welcome back to Year Two of Commissioner Pepperwinkle's postseason format. Brought to you by Jack. The makers of Diddley, America's number one squat.
In the first episode, act one, three out of six regular season division winners got wild card round byes. The other three had to play wild card teams in round one. Two swept, one got swept, and one other wild card team swept the other one. Those sets played almost faster than the speed of sound, light, and the Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote.
Episode one, act two: two division winners got swept, two more lost in four games. Those sets didn't quite go beep! beep! but they were played swiftly enough when you look back upon them. And the net result was that the winning teams, collectively, went 20-2. Or, one loss fewer than former major league pitcher David Cone's 1988 won-lost record.
We pause now for a brief commercial. A lot more brief than the ones which have been, really, the number one culprit in turning baseball games into marathon runs that tried the patience of even those lifetime romantics to whom the lack of a time clock has been one of baseball's most endearing faculties.
This pause is brought to you by Schtick Razor Blades. No matter how you slice it, Schtick is just too sharp for comfort. Four out of five dermatologists tell you Schtick is several cuts below ... the surface, and anything else it can reach. Remember, four out of five surveys have been doctored.
Episode two, stage right, began Sunday night in Houston. Where the numbers one and two finishers in the American League West square off in a contest for not just the American League pennant but Texas bragging rights. Episode two, stage left, begins Monday night in Philadelphia. It's only a contest for the National League pennant. There's no intra-division, never mind in-state rivalry at stake there.
What we do have, however, is baseball's sixth-best regular season team (the Astros) playing its eighth-best regular season team (the Rangers) for that American League pennant and that Texas throne. We also have baseball's seventh-best regular season team (the Phillies) playing its twelfth-best team (the Diamondbacks) for that National League pennant and, maybe, highlight film rights plus a year's immunity from the sting of the Arizona bark scorpion.
Sunday night, the Astros open at home defiant of the conspiracy theory that the five-day layoff for the bye teams was a killer. They got the same five days off as the Dodgers and the Braves did and they beat the Twins in their division series, 3-1, outscoring the Twins 20-13. They also out-pitched the Twins, 3.25 team ERA to 4.89, with 52 pitching strikeouts to 37.
They weren't quite as good at avoiding pitching walks as the Twins (16 for the Astros, 9 for the Twins), but they didn't have to be in the end. The Astros hit for a team .818 OPS to the Twins's .681. They may not find the Rangers to be ALCS pushovers, either: the Rangers led the American League regular season in hits, runs, home runs, and OPS. The Astros's formidable pitching might have a war on its hands. But both teams were almost dead even for team fielding-independent pitching: 4.32 for the Rangers, 4.31 for the Astros.
This Texas war has the potential to make the Alamo resemble a ranch barbeque. Especially when each team's most formidable postseason batter, Rangers shortstop Corey Seager (you know, the guy the Dodgers allowed to escape into free agency) and Astros left fielder Yordan Alvarez, checks in and starts doing damage. When this ALCS ends, Texas will be singing either "Corey, Corey Seager, king of the wild frontier" or "Yordan fit the battle of Jericho."
The Astros — please, let's knock it off about Astrogate at last, if only because a) second baseman José Altuve was indeed what his former teammate Carlos Correa said, "the one guy who didn't use the trash can" and objected loudly when it was used during his plate appearances; and, b) Altuve and third baseman Alex Bregman are the only two remaining position players from the 2017-18 Astrogate teams.
But the Astros are playing for a piece of baseball history. If they turn the Rangers aside, then go on to win the World Series against either the Phillies or the Astros, they'd be the first repeat Series champions since the 1978 Yankees. If they meet and do it to the Phillies, they'd also be the first since 1978 to do it to the guys they beat the year before.
The Rangers are playing their first ALCS since winning back-to-backs in 2010-2011 ... but losing both those World Series, especially to that staggering Cardinals overthrow in Games 6 and 7 in 2011. (David Freese, call your office!) They haven't even smelled the postseason since losing a division series to the Blue Jays in 2016, never mind gotten far enough to play for the pennant.
So the War for Texas involves one team playing for history and another time trying to augment its own on the positive side of the ledger. They can both hit. They can both pitch, even if some observers wonder just when the Rangers' ordinarily unsteady bullpen runs out of postseason mojo. They'll throw out future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander (Astros) against Jordan Montgomery (Rangers — and the guy who runs Yankee fan temperatures up the scales because the Yankees let him escape in 2022) for Game 1.
And they're both managed by men who know how to keep the horses running reasonably while not letting the moments overwhelm them too heavily. Bruce Bochy vs. Dusty Baker. It almost sounds like Casey Stengel (the Yankee version) vs. Joe McCarthy (also the Yankee version). Almost. Though I can't imagine either man having any kind of flair for Casey's Stengelese triple-talking wit and wonder.
So on with the show. Brought to you by The Company. Who remind you that 67 years after its birth, it's now ... 67 years later.
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