The American League Championship Series opens this Friday night at 8:30pm in Tampa Bay. I can sum up the outcome of this best-of-seven series by chiming in on "who's hot". As of now, the hottest team has to be the Boston Red Sox. The Beantown Bombers are coming off one their best performances ever when they took down the Los Angeles Angels in four games of the American League Division Series. The Red Sox stepped up and took charge at a time when the Angels held the best record in all of Major League Baseball. Not to mention the California ball club was well rested as they could play as loose as they wanted having locked up the number one seed in the playoffs weeks before the regular season ended. All technicalities aside, the Rays can't be discounted from making this a respectable series. After all, they did beat out the Red Sox for the American League East division crown this year. In many ways, they remind me of the 1997 Florida Marlins minus the Yankees-like payroll. They have good, young talent. They have good pitching and great bats in their batting order. The problem for Tampa Bay is that in baseball there are good regular season teams and then there are outstanding postseason teams. Unfortunately for the Rays, they fall in the category of a good regular season team in 2008. The Red Sox have won two World championships in the past four years (2004 & 2007). Meanwhile, in it's 10 year franchise history, Tampa Bay has yet to make a postseason appearance until this year. In fact, until this season, they had finished no better than fourth in their division!
Look, I'm not saying that miracles don't happen. Team USA beat the Russians to win the gold medal in hockey in the 1980 Olympic Games. Jesus walked on water. And the White Sox won it all in 2005 after nearly 88 years of frustration for the south siders of the Windy City. Miracles most certainly do happen. It just won't happen for the doomed Rays of Tampa Bay this postseason.
It took the Red Sox 162 games to finally click on all cylinders. Having three of the most dominant starting pitchers in the league by way of Matsuzaka, Beckett and the emerging Jon Lester has once again made the big red machine a well-oiled monster. Boston, without a doubt, will have the Rays packing their bags and singing the blues come World Series time.
SPORTS INVASION 2008 ALCS Pick: Red Sox in 5 games