Division Series postmortem & League Championship series 2025 preview Ep. 632 - 10.13.25

Almost Cooperstown (00:57.122)
League Championship Series is finally here. We're gonna find out who's gonna make it to the World Series in just two weeks. This week in baseball we're gonna talk about the Division Series and we're gonna preview the four teams that are still left playing.

Almost Cooperstown (01:13.049)
The first game has already been played and it's Monday here when we're dropping this episode. as of recording, we're We watched the first game. Right. Yeah. As of recording, the all of the division series are set. We are into the championship series. And I think it was a pretty fun set of division series across the board. I have watched so much baseball over the past couple of weeks. I don't know why. I I look at you.

I like how you're saying this like this is somehow different than year to year. You always watch this much every year. Come on. I'm recording games before I go to sleep and them in the morning. I haven't done it to the degree. So like watching the game five, let's just start with that. two game fives. One of them I watched live. But the first one, because it went till 1.08 in the morning for a five hour game. I think we could probably say that's a part of reason why you're watching so much is it was just a set of

really amazingly interesting and fun series to watch as we had a lot of really close games across all of them. They were all really dramatic and exciting games. There was only, think, like one or two games, mostly in the Cubs Brewer series that sort of just ended really quickly and were never really games. was a game four in the Cubs Brewer series, won by the Brewers, of course, was a four three game where all the runs were scored like in the first inning. And then they just kind of held on a little bit. And then it was four three.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't all that exciting. Or you've got, you know, the Mariners Tigers game five could have gone that direction until they were like, what if we just don't score until about five hours in to end the game? That will make it exciting. All right. So so what do want to start with? You want to start with that series? Well, you're talking about it. think let's start with a series in the order in which they ended that way. That way we can kind of follow along to how we got here. So I believe the Blue Jays series was the first series chronologically. The Dodgers did.

I'm right. So the first, two series that did not go to five games with the Dodgers and the Phillies and the Blue Jays and the Yankees. Right. And so the Dodgers were first. So let's start with stay in the national league. And a lot of people would have said, you know, I'm sure there are people out there making the argument, though I imagine they're Phillies fans that this was the real NLCS. Yeah. I mean, that's what I I call them the heavyweights, you know, right. The Dodgers and the Phillies and the Dodgers once again in the playoffs.

Almost Cooperstown (03:25.076)
They raise their game. I don't know that anybody would argue that. And they make all the little plays at the most important times look pretty easy. They make all the right base running plays. They make all the right fielding plays. And Dave Roberts, you know, credit to him, he was like, man, I have a terrible bullpen going into the postseason. How am going to handle this? I just won't use any of my relievers. I'll just bring in Roki Sasaki and other starters from the bullpen and I'll use them instead to work it out pretty well for him.

Well, and the hitting was not there for either team in that series. think the Dodgers batted, I want to say, 212. The show how he like 199. Yeah, show how he went like one for 17, the one being a home run. But that was it. But that's also, you look, it's the playoffs, right? So, of course, the pitching is great for the most part.

and so that you're gonna have low scoring games. No one should be surprised by teams having trouble hitting. You're seeing relief pitchers coming at the first sign of trouble. Right, you might see only one game. It's only when you get to these seven game series here in the championship series where the game's four of the series, sometimes you get like both teams are using not good pitchers. Pretty much every other game of the world, those seven game series, they're using good pitchers. And in these five game series, it's only good pitchers going for the most part.

And you know, in the Dodgers-Philly series, which, you know, what do I remember from that series? OK, here's what sticks out to me. Bryce Harper had a bad series, right? He didn't really. I think it was three for 50. All the big Philly guns had bad series. Swarbrick didn't do much. Turner didn't do much. The aging JT Rio Muto didn't do a ton. They had a hit here and there. But that is a team that lives and dies on the power of its big stars. And unfortunately, sometimes when you play

series of games like this, you're going to roll the series of games on the die where all of them don't play well sometimes. And in comparison to a team like the Brewers who aren't going to live and die with the performance of one guy, it can be tough to win games when Bryce Harper and Schorber, if Bryce Harper and Schorber don't get three home runs between the two of them in a series, are the Phillies probably going to win that series? Yeah, I think it's a good point because right where were the other Phillies, right? You know, Bryson Stott, where was Brandon Marsh?

Almost Cooperstown (05:34.147)
You these guys needed that other guy to come in or a couple of people to contribute in a way like, wow, I didn't expect that from him. Last year for the Dodgers, it was Tommy Edmond. Yeah. He was a guy that came in that you didn't expect that performance from and gave them that performance. And that was the big difference maker. Over in the American League. Yeah. The Mariners have Colorado and Julio Rodriguez, but it's maybe Jorge Planko that's having some of the biggest hits for them in this postseason, including the game winner in game five.

So, you know, the Dodgers got by without hitting. They turned Roki Sasaki into a closer. And he looks very good doing it. So now it looks like that's what he's going to do for the rest of the playoffs. the know, Shohei didn't really pitch very much. We know he didn't hit very much. he had a good start through, you know, he had a good start. I mean, they give up some runs, but they ended up winning that game. And, know, his at bat in the game five where they intentionally walked him before pitching to Mookie Betts.

is a really interesting situation because a lot of people point to that being like, that was a weird choice by the Phillies. And Mookie took that personally. Right. And delivered on that. But Mookie did something else in that game, which in game two that I think is noteworthy, and that is orchestrating the wheel play on defense in the ninth inning. perfectly covered the butt. Where Max Munchy came charging in and Bets runs over to third and everybody kind of shifts, you know, a base.

And the play was worked perfectly and it was Betts who suggested it on the mound and allegedly I say allegedly because you never know for sure Dave Roberts went out to the mound listen to the guys talk about Okay, you guys do whatever you want, know, like there's the manager telling the players honestly play baseball that happens more often a story, right? But I would believe that happening only because I I can't really say I saw it myself I'm not a pro baseball player but but as a coach if your players have already taken the initiative to start setting something up unless that one

Totally against what you believe against what you wanted to have happen there You're probably gonna let them to do it because them all buying into what they do is way more important and so at the biggest moment then Mookie makes the huge play and that's in contrast to Unfortunately, and you have to feel terrible for him Orion Kirkering right in the biggest moment in At the end of the game at the end of the series. He gets a ball hit right back to him and he

Almost Cooperstown (07:52.887)
Panics basically because he should have been looking at first year. It was pointed at first base exactly and and he panics and he tries to throw home and he throws it wide in the Dodgers way even certain had he gotten the play at home base that he would have gotten whereas had he gone even even when he bobbled it had he had still made the decision to go to first base he probably still gets the guy at first base because It was that just and you feel so bad for him. And I will say one of the things I was

Weirdly happy about was sort of the baseball community's response to it It seems like the general outpouring has been support for the guy and and and he you know to his credit got up and answered all the questions after the right You know which that's macho if you ask me to get up there and take the heat for something look, you know, basically It's a brain fart. I made a horrible mistake. I'll never forget it the rest of my life And I think in that situation, I think if you're if you're you know, Orion Kirk ring

A lot of Philly fans are probably looking at, he probably shouldn't have been in that situation to begin with in as much as if we had played better as a team, he's not pitching in the ninth inning, trying desperately to prevent just one run from scoring. Well, and Joan Duran is out there and he ends up being put into a situation where he walked in the tying run. You know, right. And so the Dodgers win the game and the series.

getting a basis-loaded walk and an error by the pitcher to end the series and the ballgame. Which kind of is interesting just in that it stands in the contrast, you know, what happened over in the American League, just because the Blue Jays sort of handled the Yankees and it felt like the Dodgers kind of slipped by the Phillies in some respects. those games were so close in comparison. And a lot of that had to do with the Phillies pitching, right? mean, look, Christopher Sanchez was terrific.

Rangel Suarez came in and the last game was on the Lazardo pitch great. know, without Zach Wheeler, no one's saying, well, if Zach Wheeler was here, the Phillies would have won, would have helped. no, but at the end of the day, you have to look at that lineup as being the piece that let them down. end this is they run it back a bunch of years in a row. So where do they go now as the Phillies? Yeah. And, know, and they won the East really easily because the Mets kind of threw up on themselves and finished so far behind.

Almost Cooperstown (10:09.093)
So it gives you a false sense of, we're the dominant team in the East right now, except when you look at next year, as we've said on this podcast, even in last episode, Braves are gonna be better next year. They're not gonna have another stupid year like they did this They're gonna be least way closer to competing. Who knows what the Mets are gonna do, but they're not gonna be terrible. It's unlikely they're gonna be worse than this year. It would be hard to do that. So I think going forward, the affiliates will say, we've got older players, who do we sign? We've got a...

What are we going to do with Schwab or what are we going to do with real Moutu? What are we going to do a Swarovski? It's like you've had young players, Bryson, Stott and Alec Boehm, haven't come up and asserted themselves as the young guys, as the heir apparent to the Schwabers and the Harpers and everything. So what are you going to do to get the get younger? Because eventually the breakdown is going to happen. Yeah, yeah. I also noticed one other thing about Kirk Ring's Eric as it was incorrectly reported that that was the first time that a playoff game ended with an error.

I thought it happened previously. It did happen previously. Rufnet on Dorr threw the ball away in 2016 when the Blue Jays beat the Rangers. And the nice thing for Kirkering is nobody remembered that Dorr did this. So maybe that will happen to Orion Kirkering and people will just forget. People are going to forget over time or does not really attribute that much to him. It'll just be a statistic. It won't be a Buckner style thing. So they get through and you're right that the Blue Jays will they?

dominated the Yankees. think there was a moment in game four where you were thinking like, if this goes back to Toronto, this could be interesting. That's true. And obviously, Judge hitting the fair poll in game three, know, gave the Yankees like, okay, we're in this thing because that got them to two one. Because games one and two were just such complete breakdowns. Correct. But the Blue Jays were better than the Yankees. And once again, defense hurt the Yankees in the biggest moments.

I got to think if they're if they're looking at their offseason and much the way we talked about the Mets, you know, shoring up that defense is got to be part of the jazz. Chisholm had a had a disaster and he's a I look at jazz as a pretty good defender, although he did make 12 hours this year. And really, I mean, that's just that is a brutal combination, unfortunately, up the middle defensively for the Yankees between Volpe and Chisholm. So I expect one of those to change going into. I think jazz just had a bad season defensively. And I could say the same for Volpe, by the way, because

Almost Cooperstown (12:32.065)
He's not been anywhere near this bad before. you start approaching 20 errors in a single season, it's hard to describe that as bad. But Aaron Judge exercised some, most of the demons that he had. went nine for 16. And win. Well, they didn't win. Well, one of the reasons they didn't win is the guy that they paid 30 million dollars a year to pitch for them over, think, seven or eight years, Max Fried, was bad.

Right. He didn't. He didn't pitch well. And he's he's not a great postseason pitcher. think his year in the postseason is like over five. Which is. And so, you know, we don't like to ding guys for not doing. that's for the Yankees. It's painful. That's why they brought this guy in, particularly with Garrett Cole not not being able to pitch for him to not be good and for a doughnut to be good. Once you have those two guys had bad starts for the Yankees, the series was all on Kam Schlitler. Right. No, I don't think that's a real good idea. You can't be putting that on.

I think that's, know, that the Yankees will certainly welcome getting back Cole next year. The Jays just impressed me in that series. They seem to have all the components. The bullpen seems solid. The starting pitching seems solid. And that offense can really pound the ball, you know, so. I kind of feel good for Vlad Guerrero Jr. because, you know, they're uncertain what they're going to do, but the Blue Jays make the commitment finally to signing Vlad. And he has a monster series.

whole mojo of the team kind of changed when they did that like okay they believe a 14-year contract that's the most serious thing the Blue Jays have done contract wise right there they're committing to this whole thing kind of you know went from there I think that you know it might be you know a spoiler for later on in the episode but I think they're my favorite right now to come out of the American League we'll get that I think I think that's that's true and how about

then moving over to the next series. Just before we go, just to say goodbye to the Yankees. think the Yankees are a team that in some ways they don't have to do a ton because they could just look at it and we're getting a huge off season acquisition. Carrot Cole is coming back. that's a big, that's a big bonus for, but I think there's part of them that has to be thinking, okay, Judge is another year older. Stanton's another year older. We still, there's still a lot of

Almost Cooperstown (14:36.492)
question mark out a year at a transition they didn't have a right to expect right you can't expect him to do that again gold Schmidt I don't know what his contract status is I think he was a one-year free agent so I don't know that he's a guy you bring back and it's been rice finally ready ready to do something with this guy and put him in a position to let him just play there because I think he's good enough to do right I don't know why they they do this dance I think you know the catcher Austin Wells had a nice 2024

wasn't as good this year. think you have some questions around there to go. Just because we like these guys doesn't mean that they're the best guys for us to run out. Exactly. So, yeah. But going back, but as you said, going back to the National League, we finished, we finished the Brewers Cubs series last night and it felt like, okay, the better team did actually win that series. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they outplayed the Cubs, I think. And I think

Craig council was out managed by Pat Murphy because Craig council tends to over manage a little bit at times. And then, and there's a couple of situations that where he was switching your pitchers back and forth. didn't work out for him. Right. And the Brewers did the thing, especially in game five that we weren't sure if they were going to be able to do. We talked about it on this podcast. Are they going to be able to get the random home runs that you need occasionally just to put scoring up and in the postseason?

and they get three two-out solar home runs. That's a weird game, by the way. All the runs were scored on home runs. All the more solo home runs. Which if you told us before the game that's how game five is gonna go, you wouldn't have picked the Brewers to win that before the game. And you wouldn't have predicted that Abner Uribe would finish the game for the Brewers pitching two scoreless innings to end the season of the Cubs because they started their closer McGill.

So so I you know, that was a weird thing to do to begin with and it worked out. It worked out. But had it not worked out, lot of people would have a lot of questions. I had a little problem with what Pat Murphy did there. So the Cubs were exactly who they we thought they were. Yeah, I mean, they never got.

Almost Cooperstown (16:33.58)
over losing Justin steel in my opinion, because you ran Matt Boyd out there who had a nice year. You are already a that yeah, but people would have considered you pitching light before the steel injury. Yes. Yes, exactly. So I think.

The Cubs got because they had such a super early season, they got enough of a cushion that they're able to ride that into the playoffs. Right. And the rest of their starting pitching held up in a way like say the team that also got out to a great start and didn't hold up in the Mets. The difference is the Cubs starting pitching held up and kept them from completely collapsing while the Mets didn't. But I'm looking at the Cubs and I think, like you said, the better team won. I'm feeling pretty good if I'm looking at the Cubs going, OK.

We got a couple of older players and Ian Happ had a nice year, but he's he's getting up there. But Michael Bush and Matt Shaw, you know, the great and the great part for you is some players. A weird situation here, if you're the Cubs also is you were in a team powered by Kyle Tucker. It wasn't like he went on some mythical run. Probably won't be next year because he might not be there. So losing Kyle Tucker doesn't feel like that's a great blow. It would have felt like had he been unbelievable and had been a large reason why you got to where you were.

He basically was a non factor. Well, and the question is, is how much money did Kyle Tucker cost himself? Right. Not having a great not only season, but not a great playoff. Right. And especially just disappearing now. Somebody is going to pay that man money. Yeah. Yeah. And he's still young enough that he's going to get a long term contract. But I'm not convinced it's going to be with the Cubs. Not going to. It might not be what he was going to get last offseason. So I think the Cubs will be fine.

But, you know, again, the Brewers had it over them and then I'm kind of glad that they got to go ahead because it's been a long time. And then the final series, which was a great one. And what a game five was the Mariners and Tigers. And I guess that lived up to the hype. Well, and you know, it's interesting that Tarek Scoobel, who's going to win the ALS Young Award, he started the game and pitched.

Almost Cooperstown (18:36.224)
Magnificently. He great in both his I think he's the first guy to have more than 13 strikeouts in two playoff games in one playoff, you know, in the history of Major League Baseball. And his teams won neither of those games. Well, not only that, but so they played the Mariners twice during the season and Scoob will start. mean, they played them during the season. Scoob will start twice against them. He lost those games.

He pitched two games against the Mariners in the playoffs. He lost those. didn't lose those. He didn't. They didn't win the games. I should say. You're right. You're right. They didn't win. It's tough for me to put these games on Scoob. If you're Scoob and you're the Tigers, you're thinking, well, when Scoob pitches, we win. Not when we play the Mariners, apparently, because they lost all four times that day. He started those games. But but that whole I'm glad the Mariners won because the Tigers felt like a team that was playing on borrowed time this whole postseason. Well, you know, and they were valiant, right? In not.

choking completely, you know, by at least making the playoffs after they blew a 15 game handled the Guardians, they exercised that demon. And they gave the Mariners obviously all they can handle. you really couldn't give them much more. And then Kerry Carpenter and the Kerry Carpenter thing was wild, right? I don't know. I don't know we talked about it in His stats? Yes. So he was, you know, five for 11 against George Kirby. And then finally, George Kirby is pitching in game five. So Carpenter's coming up sometime.

AJ Hinch is gonna, excuse me, the damn Wilson, the man is gonna, I got this one. Okay, we're not gonna let him pitch to Kerry Carpenter, and I'm gonna bring in my left hand there, Gabe Spears. So what does he do? It's a home run. Off this guy to give them the It just doesn't matter. So Kerry Carpenter kinda owned that, but not enough to get them through. And unheralded player named Leo Rivas.

And he is career minor leaguer, minor leaguer. It was his 28th birthday, I think. Right. So he ended up getting pinch hitting. So the way that it went is there's a guy in this that's going to come out. So Dominic can zone. No one's going to remember this guy's name. And years from now, he's going to be telling his grandchildren about this box score. See, my name is there. Dominic can zone. What did you do in the game, Grandpa? Well, here's what happened.

Almost Cooperstown (20:44.732)
they had a pitcher out there and they switched pitchers so they brought me in to face the other pitcher and except that they switched pitchers again they brought in a left-handed pitcher so they sat me down and somebody else batted for me so I didn't actually get to play at all. right he got up he was announced as the pinch hitter and they got pinch hit for. So he gets into the box score going zero for zero for zero zero zero zero because he really didn't do anything other than occupy space for about

You know five minutes can't be very fun. So but you know what's fun winning the game? Well, and Leo Rivas, know instead gets that hit, know, and then comes up later and and contributes by getting on base and as you said a horror Hey, Polanco ends up getting the big hit to win the series and and I think that that's gonna end up looking better over time Polanco said because it was sort of like shocking that it was over

Right. It's the 15th inning. It was like, it's over. It's over. We can all go to bed now. Except for me, I was already had already slept. Yeah, we watch it to the next day. But, you know, really, you know, big moment for the Mariners. They were that fan base for that franchise. I hadn't one gotten to the ALCS since 2001. And now here we are. We've got Blue Jays Mariners in the ALCS and the Dodgers and the Brewers in the NLCS. And it really does feel like we've got the four teams that are playing the best baseball right now.

Yeah, and the advanced rankings kind of have these four teams as pretty even. So I think the Blue Jays have a 27 % chance to win. So that puts them a little bit higher than anybody else. Probably just because they're more strongly favored against the Mariners than the Dodgers are against the Brewers or vice versa in that matchup. right. Blue Jays versus Brewers, 27 % is what the thought is going to happen.

That's the number one possible outcome. they're predicting that. right now they've got the Brewers as a slight favorites over the Dodgers. Just slightly. Right. Right. And you know what? Just thinking about that matchup, I was actually say I'm glad that the Brewers won because I also think they will be a much better matchup here into the Dodgers. The Cubs seem like the type of team the Dodgers could handle. Yeah, I agree. Where the Brewers are the type of team that I think is going to make the Dodgers struggle. But I do think that the Dodgers hitting and then they haven't hit great will be better than the Brewers trying to hit the Dodgers pitching. I expect.

Almost Cooperstown (22:54.656)
You know that is I think the key for the Brewers I have to imagine is you can't let one guy have a crazy series. You can't let you know, Tommy Edmund Medman have some series where he hits 400 and hits three home runs. You can't let obviously you can't let Shohei or Freddie Freeman or you know, Mookie kill you. But you got to make sure that there's no guy in that offense that goes off the whole series. So during the regular season, the Dodgers and the Brewers played six times.

the Brewers won all six times. That's a little weird, but it's happened before. It reminded me of 1988 when the Mets beat the Dodgers 10 out of 11 times. OK. And then they went in the NLCS and they lost. winning the season series and even winning 10 out of 11 doesn't really mean anything. I don't think there's carryover effect there, but it is kind of interesting because you wonder how the Brewers would be able to beat the Dodgers six times in a series in a season anyway. Right. And where I might kind of disagree with that, that that

method there that they're giving in terms of favoring the Brewers over the Dodgers. I do agree with that method favoring the Blue Jays over the Mariners. I just I feel like the Blue Jays are a slightly more complete team top to bottom than the Mariners are. I feel the same way as when you said that before. I thought, yeah, I kind of have the Blue Jays as a big favorite against the Mariners. go out and say I don't think I think that's going to be a it could be a short series. Right. Right. When I look at those teams top to bottom, they both

And the reason why I think you could end up having that is when you look at the two teams, they're actually pretty similar in a lot of ways in terms of how they're constructed, what they're good at. The blue day lineups a little bit more balanced, balanced and deep. But in terms of how they want to play the game and approach the game, they actually seem like they're two similar versions of one another. And I think the blue J version is just a little bit better. But when you have a match up like that.

A lot of the times it can end up in a blowout because since they're able to do all of the same things a little bit better, it's not like the Mariners have some other style that they can go to to try and like catch them off guard. They just have to try and beat them at their own, beat the Blue Jays at their own game, which the Blue Jays are better at.

Almost Cooperstown (24:55.916)
You know, tonight's game that will have happened the night before, Bryce Miller is starting for Seattle. And so what happens when you have all these playoff series right up against each other and you're getting ready to start another way, especially when you have a 15 in a game and we're long past the day where we could sort of line up. OK, they're trying to set the rotation to have their number one starter going, game one, the number two starter going to.

And like we don't have that anymore. No, we're just getting a guy who can throw the darn ball. Because you lost the ability to do that as you expanded the postseason series. Well, now you don't just have an LCS series where you can actually very directly set up the matchups you want. Now you just want to make the LCS. Chris Bassett, who's been out with a an injury, is supposedly going to come back and maybe start game four. And, you know, that's a big risk to take to a guy who has, but that's.

might be their best play because they just don't have enough pitchers to go around. Right, I don't think they were starting Max Scherzer in any games. No, I don't think that's going to happen. But when you look at the pitching for the two teams, I think the Mariners are favored pitching-wise overall over the Blue Jays. And thought, gee, I really like the Blue Jays starters very much. And Jose Berrios is not even pitching for the Blue Jays. But I think the Mariners bullpen is better.

And so I think overall it might make their overall pitching a little bit better because they still have Gilbert and Luis Castillo. It's not like the Mariners starters are scrubs by any stretch. Right, right. So I think then it comes down to OK, how can we've seen like the Tigers pitching?

hold down the Mariners offense for the most part, know, Kyle Raleigh went eight for 21 in the series. And I guess that was about the best, it wasn't a thumping eight for 21 like you can do. It's sort of the same thing that the Brewers are looking at with the Dodgers. The Blue Jays have to be thinking about like, okay, Julio Rodriguez might get his, Kyle Raleigh might get his. What we got to make sure is that the JP Crawfords of the world, the Polancos of the world, the Nailers of the world, those are the guys in this series that you got to limit.

Almost Cooperstown (26:51.436)
Because if you're able to limit them from killing you, that's how you're going to make this a much easier series. Because yeah, Raleigh might go 8 for 21, but if nobody's ever on base, what does that really matter? A lot of people are focused on Josh Naylor because, he's a Canadian.

So he's not that many Canadians are playing major league baseball and he plays in Seattle, but he plays really well in Toronto. guess he's got like a 311 career average there. so, you know, he's going home, you know, so to speak. It could be a huge. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a very interesting sort of side dynamic of, know, how, that's right. Right. A rare opportunity for a player who would, you know, very hard for him to get that. And I think from a fielding perspective.

Toronto's a very good fielding team. So is Seattle. And I think Toronto's better, so I wonder how much that's going to play out in this LCS. We saw it happen that way last year. Well, it heightens the impact of any mistakes. Because there's going to be fewer in a series with two very good defensive teams, same thing you'll see over in the Dodgers and the Brewers series, any one individual mistake becomes that much more punishing because of the absence of all the other ones. And we didn't talk about the managers in the NLCS, but in the ALCS, we've got two managers that...

haven't spent a whole lot of time, you know, at this stage, John Schneider has never been, I think, stage, and neither has Dan Wilson. Neither really has Pat Murphy. So you can really look at Dave Roberts, and that is one of the few concrete edges that you can say a team definitively has. Yeah, the Dodgers are a much more postseason experienced team. Been there, done that, seen that. Been through it. Right. They know what it takes to win a World Series, and they know what it feels like when you're losing a World Series.

and that could be an important thing to recognize as anything else. So do you want to go anything else to offer? We might as well predict the series here. What do we think our World Series matchup is going to be? I think I know what I'm going to say. I have to say that I've been on the Dodgers for a long time, so I'm going to stick with that thinking that they're just a battle tested bunch of guys that know when to turn it on. And for whatever reason, they're one of the few teams that really can turn it on when they need to. Honestly, up until this exact moment,

Almost Cooperstown (28:54.238)
I was going to pick the Dodgers to win this series, but go with the home team. I'm going to go with the I'm going to go with the home team. I just have a feeling that there's for some reason that if I pick against the Brewers here, Brewers Mojo, that I'm going to regret it, that this is the year that I don't know if they're going to win it, but I think they're going to make the World Series and pick them over the Dodgers. And on the other side, you know, I think if I were going to say Mojo, I actually might pick Seattle because they.

They haven't been this far. They've never been to the World Series. They had a 60 home run guy, you know, as a catcher and all that stuff. But I just I feel like I picked the Blue Jays for years. This is the first year I didn't pick the Blue Jays. And of course, they go on and they win the division. Now they're to go. So I say this is the Blue J team. thought they were all along. So this is the dark horse we've been predicting to win the ALE. Finally got it. So I'm going to pick them. And I am a bit of a heavy heart. Not to have anything against Toronto. But, you know, the Seattle story is kind of fun.

You know, and it's part of me that would like to see them get to the World Series just so they don't have to listen to people say they never been there. Right. And much like much like I had that feeling about the dot that the Brewers Dodger series, I have this feeling that the Seattle story here ripe to end in a 4-1 loss to the Blue Jays. That's how I said that they get it. They get I hate calling it this, but a pity game at some point in the series. And but they otherwise are handled in the great, great year of the Mariners ends here in the ALCS. So if.

the which of the two teams that the Blue Jays or the Mariners, if they lost the LCS, would still be able to hold their head up high and say, you know what? Still a really good season for us. Is there one that has more of that than the other or they are they the same? Depends how they lose. I think the Blue Jays have an easier time doing it than the Mariners. Depending on how they lose to the meaning that good season and we're fine, could lose to the Mariners and it could just feel like team of destiny thing. OK.

Whereas I think the Mariners are going to be crushed if they lose no matter what. I'd say that's probably true. And in the National League would be the same thing, right? That the Brewers, you know, it seems like we finally have the opportunity, you know. Right, right. They would be much more crushed than the Dodgers, because the Dodgers won last year. They won recently. They know how to handle it. I don't think they would be as crushed as the Brewers would be. And there are so many people that, you know, the Dodgers are not yet at astro status in terms of not liking the

Almost Cooperstown (31:17.322)
team for whatever reason. But I think people are sick of the Dodgers or a lot of people out there that are sick of the Dodgers and I'm not that way. No, I don't hate that. like great, great teams and I have the Astros because of the scandal will always have a different connotation to that. And the Dodgers should would be only because of the money, just as if the Mets were to say, like, well, they spent the most money. didn't get there by cheating. Right. Right. So yeah. And we can never say that the Astros didn't cheat because they got punished.

But they're not here, they're watching on TV. And so are we.