The Pecan Park Eagle

Fearless Forecasts Flow Fast From a 1932 Houston Buffs Jersey.

I meant to get to this business of forecasting the 2011 MLB Playoff Outcomes through the World Series yesterday, but found myself too distracted by other things to get around to it, so, I will get it done now – without changing my original picks as a result of yesterday’s one blow-out win over one of my first round short series picks.

The Playoffs have always been one of my favorite times of the baseball season, even when our home club Astros had no chance of getting there. – Oh wait! I almost forgot! Those times are back! Now we can look forward in Houston to the day when our new homegrown youth crop grows up and puts us back into this same wonderful post-season contention.

These playoffs shape up as another triumph of pitching over slugging, as I see it. Even the powerful blowout of the Rays over the Rangers Friday night was such a statement. In spite of the 9-0 power surge by Tampa Bay on the road, it was the 7-inning 2-hit start by young Matt Moore that striped the Rangers down to Josh Hamilton and nobody else.

In disregard of that blast upon my before-the-fact opinion, I’m going to stick with my pre-Friday private picks in all series, even if it costs me on the accuracy side in this first round best three of five games situation.

Here goes:

Round One / Wild Card Round (Best 3 of 5 Games):

American League: Rangers over Rays; Tigers over Yankees.

National League: Phillies over Cardinals; Brewers over Diamondbacks.

Round Two / League Championship Series (Best 4 of 7 Games):

American League: Tigers over Rangers.

National League: Phillies over Brewers.

World Series (Best 4 of 7 Games):

Detroit Tigers over Philadelphia Phillies.

That’s right. In the end, I expect the Tigers with Justin Verlander and that imported company of pitching Tigers from Detroit, to get the best of Roy Halladay and the arguably best team in baseball, the Philadelphia Phillies, in a series that will likely run to six or seven games. Now let’s play the hands we’ve been dealt and find out how right or wrong we all can be.

Please post your own picks today as comments on this column. If you are among the big crowd who thinks that the Phillies own the best starting four pitchers in the big leagues, you may spiritedly disagree with my selections. If you’re from St. Louis, you may even be one of those fans who see the Cardinals rolling into Philadelphia today with enough momentum going for them to even knock the Phils out of the NLCS.

Just let us know here today what you think – before we get too far into some important early games.

Tags: 2011 MLB Playoff Predictions

This entry was posted on October 1, 2011 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.