New York Yankees vs. Detroit Tigers –

 The New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers were both pushed to the brink in the five game division series.  New York was forced to start CC Sabathia to defeat the Baltimore Orioles 3-1 and Detroit similarly used their ace and last year’s American League MVP, Justin Verlander, to finish off the Oakland Athletics 6-0 in their clinching game.  Detroit, though they finished seven games behind the Yankees during the regular season, has a very solid team with Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera and star first baseman Prince Fielder leading a solid offense during the regular season.  But this offense scored only seventeen runs against a plethora of Oakland rookies.  The Yankees also underperformed offensively, scoring only sixteen runs in their five game series as a result of poor performances by Robinson Cano, Ichiro Suzuki, and Curtis Granderson.  This series is truly a tossup and depends greatly on which team sparks.  Going with experience paid off for me in the division series round so I will stick with it here.  The Yankee aura will edge out the Detroit stars.

Yankees in 7

St. Louis Cardinals vs. San Francisco Giants –

First of all, how did this happen?  I am a loyal Cardinal fan, but I quit watching the game after the score was 6-0 and the Cardinal offense was showing no sign of life.  But then I saw them edge back into the game, chipping away at the lead by scoring in five of the last six innings, capping it off with four runs in the ninth to capture an unlikely 9-7 victory over the Washington Nationals in Game 5 of the NLDS.  I saw Game 6 of the 2011 World Series and this game was almost as improbable and equally as exciting to watch.  The San Francisco Giants, though they stormed back to win three straight in Cincinnati after losing both games at home, have to be worried.  The heroes of the Cardinals’ implausible comeback were not Matt Holliday, Jon Jay, or Allen Craig, but Daniel Descalso, a .227 hitter during the regular season, and Pete Kozma, a shortstop almost cut from the 40 man roster earlier this year.  The Giants have to be looking at this team and wondering what their offense will look like when the middle of the lineup gets hot.  Even if they aren’t concerned about that, they have to be asking the same question everyone outside of St. Louis is asking themselves: “Can the Cardinals be defeated?”

Cardinals in 7     

If these predictions hold true, the World Series will be a showdown between the two most storied franchises in baseball history, with 38 World Series titles between them.  The two teams haven’t met in the World Series since 1964, where the Cardinals defeated them in seven games.

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