Here's your trash talk: Cleveland is done

Oh brother, welcome to the pains of caring too much about baseball. (Where's the Wahoo picture at the top of your post? Liberal guilt?)

(note: this started out serious and at some point took an obvious turn to the absurd...)

Let me lay it out for you, and I know it will hurt, but the truth often does. Cleveland is full of kids who were wearing their dad's clothes, make believing they were working at jobs, and then one day woke up realizing they were working at these jobs and should be at home playing in the closet. They're done. Grady Sizemore smiled too easily at that dropped fly ball. Something like that is devistating. SO devistating that they go home and lose two in a row to the D-Rays. The chase they've made is amazing but the first half was so ugly that they would have had to sustain an insane, world championship pace and have lost a step. I'm not saying they're not going to win 3 of 4 or 2 of 4 games left, I'm saying it won't be good enough. SO here's how the post season will end up.

This weekend:
Indians win 3 out of 4 (2 against White Sox)
White Sox win 2 out of 4
Red Sox win 3 out of 4
Yankees win 2 out of 4

So the White Sox win the Central, are the 1 seed in the AL playoffs.
Red Sox, Yankees, and Indians have the same record. According to this sweet mlb.com article, this is what will happen.
The Yankees and Red Sox will play a one game playoff for the East on Monday at Yankees Stadium and the Yankees will win in a devistating blow out.
Then on Tuesday the Indians will play the Red Sox at Fenway where, a determined pissed off Red Sox team beat the Indians in 13 innings of wild baseball, on a David Ortiz walk off homerun off Bob Howry (former Red Sox).

So the playoffs set up as follows:
American League
White Sox vs. Red Sox
Yankees vs. Angels

National League
St. Louis vs. San Diego
Atlanta vs. Houston

Now, while the AL is finishing its insane one game playoffs, the NL will be under way. The Padres will shock the Cardinals and win game one with the Cards making it even heading to San Diego where the cards will win both and advance to the NLCS. They will be playing the Braves who go five against the Astros. Clemens will not win a game, making two starts, getting rocked the first time and barely losing game 5 because he's hurt. The AL first round will be exciting, both series going 5 games, White Sox over the Red Sox and Yankees over LAA, getting sweet revenge for the elimination in 2003.

So now we have St. Louis vs. Atlanta and White Sox vs. Yankees. Atlanta will beat St. Louis in 6 games, Andrew Jones will hit 6 home runs and the Cardinals pitching will be solid but their offense won't show up. In the AL, the Yankees will beat the White Sox in 6, with Contreras and Hernandez both getting rocked, leading to a post-season investigation where it is revealed that Contreras and Hernandez (former Yankees) were paid off by the Yankees to throw the series, furthering the shame and curse that is south side Chicago baseball. Ozzie Guillen will respond by eating a live chicken at a press conference and then claiming he is Jesus Christ while lowering his pants at the bar at the Sheridan Hotel downtown. Shockingly, instead of firing him, the Chicago fans elevate him to legend status, while U.S. Cellular field does become The Cell as Guillen is sentanced to never leave the ball park.

World Series will be Atlanta vs. Yankees, in the battle of the decades. The Braves win in 6. In a shocking mid-series development Bernie Williams' legs fall off as it turns out he is playing without hips, Jorge Posada's arm will fall off, and Mike Mussina will not be able to throw over 65 miles an hour. ARod and Giambi hit 45 homeruns in the series but they all come in the games the Yankees win. In a shocking development, Torre will be traded to the Cubs for Dusty Baker who (thankfully) takes Neifi Perez, Jose Macias, and Correy Patterson with him. The Cubs get Robinson Cano. The Yankees begin a stretch of 15 years without a playoff appearance while the Braves win three in a row. In this WS John Smoltz closes in all the games he doesn't start, Marcus Giles hits for .450 and the Julio Franco dies after hitting a walk off homerun in game 5. Trying to get an upper hand, Steinbrenner trades for Chipper Jones in the middle of the series but then doesn't play him because he already has ARod.

There you have it. Call me a prophet.

posted by Jake Sikora @ 10:59 AM