Playoff push

Sorry for the lack of entries these days. There hasn't been too much to blog about recently. I don't want to talk about Brett Favre because the worst thing you can do for an attention whore is to talk about him, so I will not proceed any further.

Instead, let's take a look at October baseball in the horizon.

Here are the relevant MLB standings as of Wednesday, August 19, 2009:

AL

West	East	Central	Wild Card
Angels 73-45 Rangers 67-52 (-6.5)	Yankees 76-45 Red Sox 68-51 (-7)	Tigers 63-56 White Sox 62-59 (-2) Twins 58-62 (-5.5)	Boston Rangers (-1) Rays (-3) Mariners (-6.5) White Sox (-7)

NL

West	East	Central	Wild Card
Dodgers 71-50 Rockies 67-53 (-3.5) Giants 66-54 (-4.5)	Phillies 68-49 Marlins 64-56 (-5.5) Braves 63-57 (-6.5)	Cardinals 69-53 Cubs 61-57 (-6)	Rockies Giants (-1) Marlins (-3) Braves (-4) Cubs (-5)

My Predictions:
AL
West: Angels
-Their lead is too big and they are such a complete team from top to bottom.
East: Yankees
-They are playing too well right now and they will keep it up enough to hold on
Central: White Sox
-I'm not sold on the Tigers' starting pitching outside of Edwin Jackson and Justin Verlander.
Wild Card: Rangers
-I really like the addition of Pudge. I think he's going to make their overachieving young starters that much better. Every team that makes a run to the World Series has an electric young player and Neftali Feliz fits the bill.

NL
West: Dodgers
-Just barely. They win the division by a game and a half, tops.
East: Phillies
-Two words: Cliff. Lee.
Central: Cardinals
-The Cubs aren't going to end up coming anywhere close.
Wild Card: Giants
-The Rockies are hitting on all cylinders now, but can they keep it up? I don't think so. The Giants starting pitching is too good and they will score just enough runs to make it in.

ALDS:
Yankees vs Rangers: Yankees in 6
-I want to pick the Rangers because I think they have potential, but picking them against this Yankees team would be tomfoolery.
Angels vs White Sox: Angels in 5
-They'll all be close games, but the White Sox just don't have enough to get by the Angels.

ALCS:
Angels vs Yankees: Yankees in 7
-An epic battle. Yankees will simply come up with more clutch hits. The most clutch of all will be...yes...A-Rod.

NLDS:
Cardinals vs Giants: Giants in 6
-Carpenter vs Lincecum, Wainwright vs Cain...those will be matchups to look forward to if this series does end up happening. I think the Giants have a better bullpen...and the older Molina.
Dodgers vs Phillies: Dodgers in 6
-The Dodgers are better offensively than last year vs the Phillies. The Phillies have better starting pitching than last year vs the Dodgers. The Phillies bullpen got worse, namely Brad Lidge. He blows two saves in this series and the Dodgers take advantage.

NLCS:
Dodgers vs Giants: Dodgers in 5
-The Giants train runs out of gas at the NLCS.

World Series:
Dodgers vs Yankees: Dodgers in 6
-C'mon. In the off chance that all of this ends up happening and if I picked against the Dodgers and they actually won it, do you know what kind of crap I would get? Not worth it. Go Dodgers.