Good morning all, and welcome to the first day of real playoff baseball. We have a full slate of games today, starting with Rangers-Orioles in Baltimore.
The series I’m most interested in is Phillies-Braves. Now, I’m a fan of an NL East team so I may be a bit biased, but this rivalry is easily the best of the DS matchups. I believe the Phillies win this series against this historic Braves team, as they have the momentum coming in and haven’t even gotten Bryce Harper going yet. Also, the two games in Philly are going to be LOUD. I love the Phillies so much in this series I’m going to put a unit on it +145.
I believe the Rangers, Astros and Dodgers will win their series’, but I won’t be making official picks for those.
The Orioles are young and have almost no playoff experience, so it’s going to be tough winning a 5-game series against a loaded Texas team.
The Astros just turn something on in the playoffs, and I expect them to do the same this year. A core of Yordan Álvarez, José Altuve and Alex Bregman can get you to the World Series. Add in Kyle Tucker, José Abreu and a fantastic pitching rotation and they’re scary. I’ll be very surprised if they aren’t back there this year. The Twins had their moment in the playoffs, winning a game for the first time in a full adult life. However, this is where things get very tough, and Houston is the better baseball team.
The Dodgers, like the Braves, are a historic team when it comes to producing runs. The Diamondbacks, like the Orioles, have very limited playoff experience. Although the Dodgers are somewhat known for choking in the playoffs, I expect this to be a pretty quick series in the other direction. The Diamondbacks were a nice Cinderella story in the regular season but their time is coming to an end.
In other news today, we have the last Big 12 iteration of the Red River Shootout in Texas. In honor of that, I’ll be taking over 60.5 in that game.
Enjoy this rainy day filled with great matchups and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for some NFL picks!
Tough Money Sports 