Hey, how about those Pirates? Was that a case of “we’re just happy to be here” or what? I shut the game off at 5-0 Giants and it only got worse. I picked both Wild Card match ups wrong. 0-2, kiddos. Yippee for me.

Here are my useless division series picks. If you’re a bettin’ type I would suggest betting against all of these predictions.

Detroit vs Baltimore: There is no way in heaven or on Earth that I would ever root for the Baltimore Orioles. I don’t Yankees hate them, but they are in Boston’s division so it’s a close thing. Go Tigers.

Kansas City vs Los Angeles of Anaheim: I’d like to pick the Royals. Did you see George Brett’s reaction to the walk off the other day? Priceless. I’d like to pick them to win this series, but the Angels are going to dismantle them and throw each separate piece into a different dumpster so that all the kings horses and all the kings men will never be able to put the Royals back together again. Go Angels. Damn it, I feel disgusting saying that.

San Francisco vs Washington: I don’t really know much about either of these teams. I’ll use the same logic I used for last night’s game. The Giants used to be from New York, therefore I hate them. Go Senators… I mean Expos… I mean Nationals.

St Louis vs Los Angeles: I hate the Dodgers. Only partly because they too used to be a New York team. Mostly I hate them because they are the Dodgers. Go Cardinals.

To sum up, my prediction for the League Championship Series will be Detroit vs Anaheim of Los Angeles of California and Washington vs St Louis.

Let the games begin, and let these predictions prove utterly wrong.

I’m still not sure if I’m a fan of these one game wild card playoffs.  I’m also still not sure if I want to do predictions posts through the whole post season.  It couldn’t hurt though, right?  If I decide to not do it in the future then it’s no big deal.

For now though, here are my wild card playoff predictions…

Oakland at Kansas City:  It figures, two teams I like are facing each other and they only get one game.  What a bummer.  I’ve quietly been a Royals fan ever since George Brett hit .390 in 1980, although I rooted against them in the World Series that year.  I was nine years old and I played on the Phillies in little league.  There was no way I was rooting against the Phils in the World Series.

I have been a quiet Oakland fan for a while too.  It took a while to get over the Red Sox losing to them in both the 1988 and 1990 AL championship round, but I did get over it while watching their great pitching staffs in the early 2000s.  Was Moneyball a factor for me?  Not consciously, although I did like the way they were always competitive even though they seemed to have a mediocre line up.

Today though, who do I root for?  Who do I pick in tonight’s game?

Oakland.  Why?  Two words: Jon Effin’ Lester.

Lester is clutch.  Lester is twice a World Series hero.  One does not simply bet against Lester in a one game playoff.  Also, selfishly, there is the whole fact that the Red Sox suckitude was unparallelled this year and seeing one of our guys succeed in the post season would be a nice rubbing of salt into the wound for the team’s management.

I’m going with Oakland tonight.

San Francisco at Pittsburgh:  I really don’t have a clue on this one.  The Red Sox disaster (worst to first to worst) sucked a lot of my baseball interest away from me this year, and as little as I followed the AL, I followed the NL significantly less.  So who do I pick?  If I go with the Pirates I can justify it by saying it levels out my utter hatred of Pittsburgh in the NHL.  It also lets me root against a former New York team.  Yeah.  Screw New York!  I’m going with the Pirates tomorrow night.

There you have it.  My predictions for the two wild card games.

Let’s go A’s!