Late Innings

Any ways as usual I’ve been drinking tonight (note to casual L.I. readers, this tends to happen often here.) I made predictions last week as to who would win each Division Series. I got the Rays and Dodgers right, I got the Angels and Cubs wrong. In regards to the Phillies, the pitching is key. Brett Myers stepped up, as did Cole Hamels, and Joe Blanton was huge. That’s why they won. Of course the Brewers’ mistakes helped. The Angels I thought were going to pull it out as well, however they made base-running mistakes all series. Still, as we’ve learned now facing Jon Lester in a short series is deadly. And we also saw the importance of jumping out to a 2-0 lead in a short series, since all four of the teams that did this either swept their series or won it in four.

Any ways with that stated, we have our Championship series. I still think the Dodgers are going to win the whole thing (as I’ve been saying since March.) It’ll be great to see Manny Ramirez go back and face his (supposedly maligned) teammates in Boston. I love the story that the Rays are writing now, and I’d love to see them win, however the Red Sox have too deep of a team. I’m rooting for the Dodgers to knock the Red Sox, just so I won’t have to hear the words “Nation!” and “dynasty” uttered all throughout ESPN all Winter.

Any ways back to the hot stove discussion, and in regards to the Rays, think back to the Chad Bradford trade. The Rays get him for this year and the next for 3MM. The Orioles? They get a PTBNL. As to who they would get for this, I’m not sure. Reid Brignac, I doubt it. Same goes with Jeremy Hellickson or Wade Davis. As Peter Schmuck said, they most likely won’t get their blue chip prospects here. One reader posted a comment saying how Baltimore will most likely receive Evan Longoria, since they’ll want to unload all that money he was inked to back in April. As to what the comment said:

I still think that the Rays regret giving so much money so soon to Longoria and they are trying to offload him to the Orioles as the PTBNL, but of course he didn’t clear waivers. The O’s have two major concerns with accepting him though: 1) all that guaranteed money he’s getting; and 2) they are already set at 3B with Mora. So I heard that Angelos is trying to get TB to pick up some of the guaranteed money in Longoria’s contract to take him off their hands.

Schmuck’s rebuttal was classic:

I think you’re right. The guy is totally overrated.

Hopefully Baltimore will make the same proposition to the Brewers for Ryan Braun. He also was given a good chunk of money so early into his career. Yeah I’d love to see Longoria in Baltimore, but then again pigs must fly. Maybe that’ll start happening after a few more drinks tonight…