If you think I’m way off base, or would like to post your own predictions, please post a comment below.
I normally don’t do this, because I like to think my prognostication skills are right up there with some of the great Powerlock pics on XM’s “Baseball this morning” radio show.. :) However, I decided to take a stab at it this year so I can get this down before any of the games start and see if any of these are right.
ALDS: Athletics vs Twins
I say the Twins will win this in five. Having seen Oakland a lot, I’m more familiar with them, and I’m not picking the Twins because I don’t want the A’s. They seem to be the same team for the most part, and I have to give the edge to Minnesota’s pitching over Oakland’s. Plus Esteban Loaiza in the playoffs has bad memories for me as a Rangers fan. :)
ALDS: Tigers vs Yankees
Given the Tigers limped into the playoffs, one would think they’re prime for a sweep by the Bronx Steinbrenners. While I do think the Yankees will beat the Tigers, I don’t think it will be a sweep. I say the Yankees in four.
NLDS: Cardinals vs Padres
Last year when the Padres made it into the playoffs, everyone expected them to get annihilated, and they did. This year however, I think they have more of an edge due to the near total collapse the Cardinals had at the end of September. That does’t mean they’ll stink up the joint, but I give the Padres this in either four or five, I’m not sure.
NLDS: Dodgers vs Mets
The Mets are probably the best overall team in the NL, especially in the playoffs, but their starting pitching is suspect. The Dodgers aren’t world beaters either, but my gut feeling says that they don’t have enough to overcome the Mets. I say Mets in five.
It’s harder to predict the second round, as you never know who might get hurt, what roster changes might get made between rounds, but I’ll take a stab at it. This assumes everyone stays healthy. If someone gets hurt, I might want to revise my guesses.
ALCS: Twins vs Yankees
While I like the Twins, and would dearly love to see the Yankees knocked on their ass again, my gut feeling is that the Twins don’t have enough to overcome what Steinbrenner’s pocket has bought. Yankees in six. I say the Twins have enough to pick off a couple of games, but not the whole series.
NLCS: Padres vs Mets
Assuming I’m right in that the Padres get past the first round, they’ll probably be charged up to make a run at getting to the World Series again, but I don’t think they match up as well against the Mets, so I’m going with Mets in six.
World Series: Yankees vs Mets
This combination is something that I’m sure the sponsors will love, but I wager most everyone outside of New York couldn’t care less about. The only thing more boring than a Yankees/Mets World Series is a Yankees/Braves world series. Course, Yanks/Mets doesn’t have that godawful “chop” Braves fans do.
Anyway, barring injury, I say Yankees take it in seven. I don’t have any real reason for that, except I’ve picked my other series at 6, and they don’t all usually go in six, and I think the Mets are better than just one game winners.
Yawn. If it really does end up being Yankees Mets, I probably will only watch the final game in the series, and perhaps the announcements of the lineups for the first home game (as I do like watching that). But I can’t get excited about Yankees/Mets AT ALL.
Now those are what I think is going to happen. What do I WANT to happen?
ALDS: Twins over A’s, because I don’t want the A’s to win as they’re from our division.
ALDS: Tigers over Yankees, because outside of NY, everyone wants the Yankees to lose. Plus the Tigers are DUE!
NLDS: Padres over Cardinals: Mostly so I can feel good about the ex Rangers there having some success.
NLDS: Dodgers over Mets: As I’m a Phillies fan, I’m no fan of the Mets, plus I want both NY teams out early.
ALCS: Tigers over Twins: As I said before, the Tigers are due. I’d like to see that.
NLCS: Dodgers over Padres: I would prefer the Dodgers in the World Series, they’re due as well.
WS: Tigers over Dodgers: While I wouldn’t mind if either of these teams won, if I have to pick one, I pick Detroit, mostly due to the several former Rangers are that are on that team.
Now that that’s all over, can we sign Gary Matthews to a 5 year, $25-$30 million contract, so we can have something Ranger related to talk about? :)

Since Giardi has now been unfairly dumped by the Marlins, I thought this on the picture that’s making the rounds in the stories of his dismissal.
Is it just me, or does Joe Girardi look like Joe Satriani in these pictures?

Now that the season is over, we’ll start seeing a bunch of “Season in Review” stories and links. I’ll try and keep up with all of them. If you know of one that I do not have listed below, either email me about it, or leave a comment here with that link. Thanks.

• MLB.com’s Season in Review

Well, today’s the first day of the post season for 22 teams. That usually means the managerial carosuel gets going, and this offseason is no different. The Cubs announced today that they’ve parted ways with Dusty Baker. Frank Robinson is already out in Washintgon. It’s probably the worst kept secret in baseball that the Marlins will likely let Joe Girardi go after one (really good) season. There’s several others who are expected to be on their way out, including Felipe Alou in San Francisco (update: Alou’s gone now), possibly Charlie Manuel in Philly (although not likely), and I’m sure some others too who I’m not sure about. And of course if you believe the local media, our own Buck Showalter. If Buck goes, are any of these guys on the carosuel the ones you want replacing William Nathaniel Showalter? If he was about 10 years younger, I’d be all over Felipe Alou, I’ve always thought he was a great manager, but I’m not so sure about now. Girardi is rumoured to be the same style of manager that Showalter was, so that’s not likely to happen, even though I’d like to have him. I think the choice of Showalter’s replacement, should there be one, is probably not on the carousel.
I wonder how much love the franchise would generate from the fans if they named Rusty Greer the next manager? Or, as been rumoured giving the job to Rudy Jaramillo as he was up for the Mets job, and then hire Rusty Greer as the hitting coach? I see a love of fan generated love in that, and I’m sure the current core players would like to see that kind of move, I would think. I’m not personally convinced that Showalter needs to be removed, but then again I’m not in the dugout or the front office, either.
On the non managerial side, there’s also a good article over at MLB Trade Rumours about Gary Matthews Jr. free agency. Man, I seriously hope we hang on to him. We finally found a center fielder that works. As I’ve said before, we need to give him some of the money that would have gone to Carlos Lee, and let Lee go. I’d rather the Rangers make a run at Soriano again to play left field instead of Lee.

The last three games of the season. For the Rangers, it doesn’t matter much of anything, except possibly being over .500.
For the National League.. Damn Bud Selig and his inventing the Wild Card. It’s no good, it doesn’t add any exceitement at all, does it?
That issue aside, my hometown Phillies might be able to dump the ghost of 1964 if the Cardinals really blow it here. That would be a most impressive collapse.

I don’t have much to say about this, other than I wanted to point it out.
Jon Heyman over at SI.com has a nice article online today about Arod, and the possibilities he might be traded from the Yankees in the offseason.

I haven’t given up. :) I just have gotten busy, and yeah – the end of another season where we won’t get into the playoffs has taken it’s toll on me.
Still, I will play catchup on Thursday and get ready for the final three home games of the season; I’ll probably be at two of them.

Here’s a picture I took back on Feb 1, 2003. It’s actually 9 pictures that I spliced together, but is one I’m rather proud of. I just added it to the Wikipedia page for The Ballpark in Arlington, so I thought I’d mention it here. This picture was taken sitting in the middle seat of the last row of Section 225, which was about the most “straight in the middle” of the park seat I could figure out.
If you’d like to check out larger versions of this picture, you can do so at the page for it in my photo gallery here on this site.
I also have an older panoramic shot of Mark Holtz lake taken standing in the upper councourse.

As you can see if you’re reading this (unless you’re reading on RSS, or are reading one one of those sports leech sites that bring in news from everywhere else and bypass us, the original author), I’ve changed my site layout..
I moved the site into a template based system back in April when this season started. That makes changing things around easier to do, since all I need to do is change the css and templates. While the site has had always had a minimalistic look to it which I’ve liked, it has had an inconsistant font design. Various sections had different looks to them. I’m aiming to change that. I’ve kept the overall minimalistic layout, but I now have a more consistant font control.
There’s a few things that haven’t been changed. They are:

• The Forums – I’m undecided if I want to put the forums in this template layout. It would require “squashing” them to put the menu on the right there. Otherwise it should be pretty easy.
• The Photo Gallery – That, like movable type here, is template driven. However, gallery is a lot more complicated with it’s template work. I might leave well enough alone.

There is also one known issue. It’s this new “date image” thing I have. It looks fine in Firefox, but looks weird in Internet Explorer. While I think everyone should use Firefox, I do know it should look right in IE – even if IE does’t interpret the HTML properly. I’ll look at that later, but just to let you know I’m aware of that.
I really would appreciate feedback on the new site layout, please leave a comment here. Also, thanks to “RedSplat” for doing that date bar image.

Sorry about my freakout there. I honestly was really bummed out over the Devil Rays series. I have no intentions on stopping the site – far from it (more on that in a minute). But I’ve reached the point where I don’t think we can come back from the position we’re in. Would I love us to? Oh hell yes. It’s just my gut feeling that we won’t is what drove me to say that. :)
Additionally, I see that Eric Young was purchased from AAA for the stretch run in September. I hope that EY can do for us in 2006 what Dave Valle did for us in 1996, and making me look like an ass for “giving up”. Go ahead EY. Do it. :)