By Max Liebel
With the NFL halfway through their regular season, and the NHL and NBA seasons beginning, October is a big month for sports. The biggest thing of all has to be playoff baseball and the World Series. Ten teams entered the postseason and three remain, the Boston Red Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, and Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Boston Red Sox beat the Houston Astros in game five of the ALCS to advance to the World Series last night. The Red Sox now must wait for the conclusion of the NLCS between the Brewers and Dodgers to see who their World Series opponents will be.
The Dodgers have a 3-2 lead in the series currently and are looking to get back to the series after a game seven loss to the Astros last year. The midseason addition of Manny Machado added a bit of fire power to the Dodgers defense and lineup. Clayton Kershaw leads the dodgers pitching staff that ranked second in the league in ERA in 2018. If the Dodgers are to make a run at the Red Sox, it will be behind their bullpen. The Red Sox have the number one batting average in the postseason this year and have accounted for 49 RBIs. Kershaw and company will have to give the Red Sox lineup problems if they want to make a push for the pennant.
The Brewers have had somewhat of a cinderella season winning the NL central and making the NLCS after a seven-year playoff drought. The Brewers are a well put together team and its shown this postseason. Christian Yelich is the favorite to win the National League MVP and has been key to the Brewers success all season. The Brewers have a solid lineup and their pitching this postseason has been whats gotten them to the NLCS. If they want to regain control of the series they will have to get back to playing their brand of baseball with good pitching and consistent sucess at the plate.
Regardless of what the matcup is, it’s anyones series to take. On paper, the Red Sox look like they have had a dominant postseason and the record would show that as well. However the Red Sox have managed to make things interesting this postseason. Craig Kimbrel is having a horrible postseason and if it werent for a few fantastic plays by the Red Sox outfield we may be talking about who will be playing the Astros on October 23rd. Their lineup has been dominant this postseason but they will face one of their toughest challenges this postseason regardless of what team plays.
The Red Sox are now the favorites to win the World Series, but how much weight does that really carry? After all, it’s October and if history tells us anything, its that anything can happen in October.
Photo by Keith Allison licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic.
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