mlb playoffs

My annual useless guess at how the playoffs will go. To my lucky credit, I did nail 6 of 8 playoff teams this year and all 4 A.L. teams. I was too bearish on the Braves and Reds, and too bullish on the Cubs(as usual) and Cardinals. To the playoff predictions...

It's the first time in 2 years that the Cubs won't be influencing my bracket. The last time that happened was in 2006 and I had the A's winning it all and the Tigers and Cardinals losing in the first round. It's always important to remember when reading my entries that I'm an idiot. If you want, MLB is running a bracket challenge that you can enter, or throw your guesses in the comments. I haven't seen a neat and tidy place with official playoff rosters, so the ex-Cub factor below is a guess at this point and it's possible I missed a Cub connection.

And here are the 29 players eligible to play in the 2009 post-season for the Chicago Cubs:

While Bud Selig was busily hiding his head in the sand regarding Hurricane Ike and catering to Drayton McLane's need to collect cotton candy revenue from this weekends games in Houston, the MLB powers that be had the annual coin flip for playoff tiebreaker games.

The Brewers won the flip for any NL Central tiebreaker between the Cubs and Brewers as it will be played in Miller Park. Of course, it's the Cubs home away from home and after the week of July 27th (not to mention the Brewers recent homestand performance against the Mets, Padres and Reds), I guess it's not a bad place for the Men in Blue to play. The regular season ends for the Cubs in Milwaukee on Sept. 28th so why not just do a day night doubleheader? I mean if they are considering rescheduling one or two of this weekends washouts on Monday Sept. 29th. Might as well make a travesty out of the whole season wrapup.

The Phillies got control of the lucky penny as they won all the home field advantages you can gather including wildcard tiebreakers vs Milwaukee, St. Louis and Houston. They even won the tiebreaker homefield if they have to play game #163 vs the Mets.

In the AL, tiebreaker games could be in Boston for both wild card or AL East,  vs Tampa Rays, for the AL East or vs. The Twins for the wild card playoff game.  US Commiscular will be causing havoc on the Dan Ryan, if the WSox tie the Twins after 162 regular season games.The AL didn't need to flip as much this year thanks to the franchise called the LA Angels of Anaheim from the OC near Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm.

Most of the time this stuff is a waste of good coin flippage, but go tell that to the 2007 Padres.