The teams are listed in order of their playoff seeding.
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What I am sold on, though, is that we’re going to have an exciting postseason ahead of us.
Despite their thrilling second-half push to the post-season, it appears the Toronto Blue Jays are not ready for prime time.
Chicago won the season series over Pittsburgh by an 11-8 margin, taking six of 10 from the Pirates at PNC Park, including three of four in mid-September, but dropped two of three at home two weekends ago.
The rest of Texas’ pitching stable did not fare as well against the high-powered Blue Jays offense this season, allowing 33 runs over four losses.
Toronto will open an American League Division Series matchup at home against the Texas Rangers on Thursday. Games 4 and 5, if necessary, have not yet been assigned a start time. However, Lewis doesn’t inspire much optimism given his own 5.96 ERA over his last eight starts, and likely Game 1 starter Yovani Gallardo has gone seven starts without completing the sixth inning, posting a 4.11 ERA over that stretch with a below-average 6.2 strikeouts per nine innings. Who knows, maybe it’ll even be Yankees rookie first baseman Greg Bird. The result of the Wild Card game between Houston and New York will determine the start time for TV purposes.
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New York will send Masahiro Tanaka to the mound on Tuesday night against Houston’s Dallas Keuchel, with the Astros slight -109 road favorites over the +104 Yankees.
