Marco's Baseball Blog-O-Roonie 2017: PLAYOFF JUJU

MARCO'S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2017: PLAYOFF JUJU

Now that the games have been played, I can confidently predict that both the Yankees and the Diamondbacks will easily advance!

If you think I am fudging a bit by waiting until the outcome has been decided before predicting...well...it's hard to know what's going to happen in one lousy game. I mean, Brian Dozier could have gotten hot. How can you predict that both Severino and Santana would choke on furballs in the same game? Archie Bradley hits a triple? Come on...how you going to predict that kind of randomness?

I haven't had time to write until now, so the wild cards are over and we have two nice neat 5 game playoffs in each league. 8 Teams instead of this unwieldy 10.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

The Yankees staked the Twinks to a 3-run lead and then came bouncing back with big homers from Gregorius and Judge. Their bullpen was better than Minnesota's after both starters went belly up. As a matter of fact, with Chapman, Betances, Robertson, Warren, Chad Green et al, the Yankees have the best bullpen in the post season.

GOOD JUJU YANKS: confidence from a strong offensive showing and the aforementioned bullpen looking strong. Yankee mystique well stoked in the Bronx.

BAD JUJU YANKS: Their Ace pitcher just got decapitated in 1/3 of an inning. Now he won't pitch until game 4 of the playoffs. He's been their one sure thing as a starter. Sonny Gray, C.C. Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka are all good pitchers, but they are only occasionally dominant. Now everything depends on all these guys putting in 6 good innings in the playoff games against Cleveland, a team with a punishing offense. How will Severino respond to his total collapse in his showcase game? The Yankees might not get far enough to even find out.

MORE BAD JUJU: Sanchez is a terrible defensive catcher. Not because of his throwing, which is spectacular. The guy has a howitzer of an arm. His problem is he can't block pitches in the dirt. Girardi was very concerned about this a few weeks ago but with the guy hitting 30-odd homers it's hard not to put him in the lineup. But when a catcher can't block breaking pitches in the dirt, the pitchers don't have the confidence to throw those pitches, and that's how they get hitters out in the modern game. The fastballs set up these sliders, change-ups and curves that the hurlers love to bounce on the plate, inducing the batter to swing over them. But they have to trust that their catcher will block those tricky dirt balls and Sanchez is really bad at it.

GOOD JUJU TRIBE: they were baptized by fire in last year's post season. They are less likely to get off kilter than the Yanks. They have a deep, multi-faceted offense. Power, speed, hitting for average...everything. They have 4 strong starters...Kluber (probable Cy Young), Carrasco (strong ERA on the road), Bauer (just shutout the Yanks in game 1) and Tomlin (very effective in last year's playoffs)/

The Indians can afford to put two good starters...Clevenger and Salazar... in the bullpen to add depth to an already strong crew.

Talent and depth creates its own Juju. Plus this team won 22 straight late in the season. They feel like the bullies on the block and it will intimidate other teams.

BAD JUJU TRIBE: About the only bad news is that injuries to Brantley, Chisenhall and Zimmer have forced them to play Kipnis in center field.

Cleveland in 4. (*NOTE: The Indians just came back from 5 runs down to stun the Yanks 9-8 in Game 2. A freakish pitch that hit the knob of Chisenhall's bat but was called a HBP let Lindor bat with the bases loaded...and Frankie delivered a 4-bagger slam. Then Bruce tied it with a homer in the 8^th and catcher Yan Gomes singled in the winner in the 13th after picking off the Yankees runner from second base in the top half of the inning. Disastrous luck for the New Yorkers...but let's see how the Indians deal with that Bronx crowd back in NYC.

ATTENTION MLB...THIS FREAKIN' GAME TOOK FIVE HOURS TO PLAY! DO SOMETHING TO SHORTEN GAMES...SANCHEZ WALKED OUT TO THE MOUND EVERY OTHER PITCH!!)

Houston and the Bosox is the other matchup, and you can make a case for either team. Houston has the edge in offense because their hitters are all dangerous long ball threats 1 through 9 while the Sox are a bunch of singles hitters. The Sox need 4 or 5 guys to all get hot at once; the Astros only need a couple of guys to bop homers.

Also, for a team that relies on good hitting, the Boston team is surprisingly feeble in the matter of batting average. Moreland .246, Bogaerts .273, Benintendi .271, Bradley .245, Betts .264, Ramirez .242, Leon .225, Marrero .211, Young .235, Holt .200...these are all regulars or semi-regulars. Four of these guys have from 20-24 homers. Only Pedroia (bad knee and ankle) at .293, Nunez (out with knee) .321, Vazquez .290 and Devers .284 have pretty good averages.

In today's games with record long balls, this is a pitty-pat offense.

Houston also gets the edge in basepath speed.

Boston has the better starting pitchers, but the margin is not great. Especially since Sales has gotten lit up by good offenses lately. The Astros have had a boost from the addition of Verlander. The Astros bullpen is suspect.

Boston's bullpen is pretty good. Price coming in for long relief should help them a lot.

GOOD JUJU SOX: an affable team with a bunch of nice guys. They do cute little dances in the outfield when they win. They get beat on frequently but always come back. They went 15-3 in extra inning games.

BAD JUJU SOX: disturbing events off the field with racist outbreaks in the stands, strange attacks on the media from Price, getting caught cheating with the help of technology... and that's really tacky.

The main problem is that when the Sox get down, they don't have that big scary hitter to blast one and give them an inspirational boost. Next season the Sox need to add somebody like Eric Hosmer or maybe load up and make a run at Mike Trout.

J.D. Martinez is going to be a free agent after slaughtering the ball for the Diamondbacks in the second half. He could play right and Mookie could move to center. Jackie Bradley is terrific defensively but goes into long slumps. In this day and age your centerfielder has to have more offense. Jackie would be a dynamite back-up outfielder.

GOOD JUJU ASTROS: this team has rallied behind the city of Houston after the hurricane and really helped the morale of the battered city. The Sox did the same thing after the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013 and that team went on to win it all. Inspirational leadership from Jose Altuve.

BAD JUJU ASTROS: is Keuchel all the way back from his injury? He had some shaky starts in September. How about the 3-4 starters? Will they produce? Will the bullpen do enough? You've got to really stretch to find problems with this team.

Houston in 4. (*NOTE...by the time I finished this rundown Houston has bombed the Bosox 8-2 in two games in a row. They can't get Altuve or Correa out. Maybe Fister can junk ball them back at Fenway, because the left-handers Sale and Pomeranz were serving up spiced meat for those rightie bats.)

NATIONAL LEAGUE

The second most entertaining game of the playoffs so far (after that 13 inning spectacular at Cleveland vs. New York) was the National League Wild Card Playoff where Arizona and Colorado played a game that brought back memories of a bygone era. Arizona hit four triples, bunted for hits, ran the bases and pitched their entire staff. Colorado also used every pitcher they had almost and kept getting hits and coming back.

I especially got a kick out of the Diamondback's relief pitcher Archie Bradley. Archie came up as a starter and I saw him win his first game over the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw. He's from Muskogee Oklahoma and looked like the Sooner's quarterback of the future before he decided to take the big money from Arizona to play baseball. He was a top prospect but then he took a line drive to the face and spent two years scuffling. Now he's a long reliever and he just got his first extra base hit ever...in a playoff game no less...with a two run triple.

Now the Diamondhumps are involved with their nemesis, the L.A. Dodgers, who look like they've shaken off their strange late-season malaise and are ready to hurt somebody at last. They won the first game even with Kershaw giving up 4 homers. Justin Turner set a Dodger post season record with 5 ribbies.

Goldschmidt gave Arizona a lead with a 2-run blast to start Game 2 but that bomb and a 3-run job by Brandon Drury went for naught as the Dodgers played small ball and won 8-5.

so the Arizona boys have out-homered L.A. 6-1 and their pitchers have struck out 21 batters to 17 for the Dodgers and they're down 0-2.

GOOD JUJU DIAMONDBACKS: This team finally has some decent pitching to go along with a vigorous offense (albeit magnified by their home park). They seem to have a lot of nice guy players like Paul Goldschmidt to warm the hearts of Arizonans. Plus they competed well with the Dodgers all season long.

BAD JUJU DIAMONDBACKS: Did they use it all up winning the Wild Card? They used a lot of pitchers and now they seem depleted. Arizona needs a starter to step up and give them a chance to outscore L.A. in Game 3.

GOOD JUJU DODGERS: They were NL favorites all year until their September Swoon. Vin Scully retired and sentiment calls for an inspirational showing from the Boys in Blue.

They also have the two big pitching horses...starter Kershaw and Closer Jansen. (But then Boston has the two best in the AL (or close to it) and they're down 0-2.)

BAD JUJU DODGERS: They are overly dependent on two young players to lead them offensively. Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger. They also have the loosest cannon in baseball playing for them in Yasiel Puig. He flipped his bat on a single the other day. Things can get strange.

Dodgers in 5

Meanwhile, back on the East Coast, a nice little grudge battle between Washington and Chicago. The two top Happy-Face managers in Dusty Baker and Joe Maddon. Baker used to manage the Cubs back in their Cursed By God days.

The Nats have that great top of the lineup with Turner, Harper, Murphy, Rendon and Zimmerman. The Cubs counter with Kris Bryant and Rizzo and young hot dogs like Baez and Contreras. Both teams have deep starters...Scherzer, Strasburg, Gonzalez and Roark for the Nats...Hendricks, Arietta, Lester for the Cubs. This should be a great series.

GOOD JUJU CUBS: The view from Olympus. They've won it all and they know they can do it. Confidence is everything. They have a great defense and several 20 homer guys. Somebody is always there to pick you up.

BAD JUJU CUBS: Arietta hurt something late in the season and has to wait til mid-series to pitch. Schwarber hit 30 homers but barely moved the meter on his batting average all season. They don't have a whole lot of stoppers in the bullpen to set up Wade Davis. They played uninspired ball the first half of the season, then got serious.

Most importantly...does the JUJU God shine his light on the same dog's ass this year?

The series started with an unlikely Game 1. Stork Hendricks of the Cubs shut out the Nats for 7 innings on two hits. He had to be good because Strasburg (who was starting instead of hamstrung Max Scherzer) had a no hitter until the 6^th when Rizzo and Kris Bryant got big hits. Cubs win! Cubs win!

Through the 7^th inning of Game 2 the Nationals had exactly 1 run and 5 hits for the series! Then that offense kicked in when Harper hit a big home run off of CJ Edwards (who had also pitched in Game 1...maybe they'd seen him too much Joe?) and Zimmerman bombed Montgomery for a 3 run job. Harper cemented his rep as Mr. Mustard-on-that-Hot Dog with a showboat trip around the bases finished off with an appalling hair toss at home. Nats win 6-3.

GOOD JUJU NATIONALS: They've been one of the unluckiest injury prone teams in baseball for years. Have they sacrificed some livestock to the JUJU God this year so they can win something at last? The Law of JUJU Averages says yes...but then Scherzer tweaked his hamstring. Oh No!

BAD JUJU NATIONALS: See above.

Okay...Nationals in 5.

Now I'll say farewell and go watch the Red Sox try to come back on the Astros. It's 4-3 Sox but Altuve gets a hit on every pitch they throw him! Is he hot or what?

Enjoy the Post Season!