Filowitz's Friday Five

1) I know it’s become cliché to say this at this point, but it really is hard to get overly excited about the Rockies-Diamondbacks series. The Rockies have been a fun story and everything, but there’s not that emotional aspect to the series that adds any additional drama. What this has become, in essence, is an NHL playoff series. There are certainly fans that care passionately, but for most of us, it’s just something you watch if you have the time and otherwise just check in on to see what happened. This would not have been true, of course, if either the Phillies or the Cubs had made it.

2) How could it be that in the best sports month of the year there were two consecutive days without baseball? Baseball is all about not having very many days off. Giving so many days off in the playoffs changes the dynamic of the game. We want to see games every day. So what if all the first round series ended early? I wish, just once, a sport would care more about the sport and less about TV dollars and luring in the casual fan who doesn’t really care.

3) I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but it looks like the Celtics are going to be really freakin’ good with KG. This is a major conflict for people like me who love watching KG play, and have hoped for so long that he’d finally get a supporting cast that will help him shine. If only this wasn’t going to happen in Boston. Right now, the Red Sox are the favorite to win the World Series, the Pats are the favorite to win the Super Bowl, and the Celtics are one of the favorites to at least make the Finals out of the East. And, hey, is that a couple of horsemen I see riding towards us? So now we know it is the duty of good people everywhere to root for the Indians, and probably the Cavs, if only to stave off apocalypse and a string of really annoying columns from Bill Simmons.

4) I saw an incredible Yo La Tengo concert last night. They were at this relatively small venue, The Lakeshore Theater, and it was a sit-down thing (which is great, as in my older age, I don’t have as good a time standing around for hours.) The band sat on stage, played songs, answered questions from the audience, joked around, and generally created this very intimate setting, like they came over to your house to play a show for you and your friends. This is my favorite band, and to see them in this setting was just about perfect, inspiring, even.

5) Happened to catch an “NFL Greatest Games” showing of the NFC championship game from 1992, Cowboys vs 49ers. Do you realize how many people from that game are now TV personalities? Troy Aikman, Moose Johnson, Jimmie Johnson, Emmit Smith, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, even Michael Irvin up until his recent firing. I hated both those teams, and now they are everywhere. Things are not looking up for me right now.

The Sherman Avenue Block Party Completely Biased Baseball Playoff Preview: NLDS, Cubs vs Diamondbacks

I find it generally ridiculous when sports announcers and pundits try to use destiny or fate or other supernatural elements as reasons why teams win or lose. It is the mark of someone without anything better to say, without the ability to do any real analysis of what went on, and without the ability to admit that chance plays a bigger role in sports than most will acknowledge.

Consider the Chicago Cubs.

If they win their series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, pundits will say that they are the team of destiny, that they and their fans are finally due to get their rewards.

If they lose their series against Arizona, pundits will say things about the curse of Bartman and some billy goat.

So either way, it would have little to do with the baseball being played, and instead to do with magical forces that we cannot see or measure or truly understand.

That’s bunk.

Whatever will happen in this series will happen because of actual human agency, the free will of each player to do whatever it is they will do, in combination with the large role that chance tends to play, since the difference between success and failure in baseball has to do with fractions of an inch (in the angle of a swing, rotation of a pitch, wind speed, and many other variables.)

Considering only these factors, and the fact that I live in Chicago and have seen many, many Cubs games this year, and the fact that I can’t say for sure if I’ve seen three innings of the Diamondbacks this year, I can say with confidence that the Cubs will win this series.

The Cubs have the most solid and balanced team of any left in the National League. Their starting pitching is very strong at the top with Carlos Zambrano, and extremely solid after that with Ted Lilly, Jason Marquis, Rich Hill, and Sean Marshall. The bullpen has standout Carlos Marmol and Bob Howry, along with solid veterans Scott Eyre and Ryan Dempster. The top three guys in the lineup (not in the batting order) Derrek Lee, Alfonso Soriano, and Aramis Ramirez, are as good as any top three in the National League. To use the word solid again, the rest of the lineup is full of solid veterans like Cliff Floyd, Jaques Jones, Jason Kendall, and Mark DeRosa.

The point is, the Cubs are poised to do very well in these playoffs. There are no glaring weaknesses on the roster, and some very big bright spots. Not to mention a manager, Lou Pinella, who has been there before and knows what it takes to win in the postseason.

The only weakness of the team, really, is that they do not play consistently. When everyone is on at the same time – when Zambrano is pitching his best, when the top three are all hitting well – they look basically unbeatable, as they did for large parts of September. When they aren’t playing well, they rarely seem to have enough to pull out a game.

The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, are a confusing team. Their pitching is very good, but not ridiculously dominant. This isn’t like when they had Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. This isn’t the 2005 White Sox. They also have no offense worth speaking of – no one on their regular roster hit over .300, no one on the team had over 85 RBI, only one guy on the team had over 25 HR (I defy you to name him. Give up? His name is Chris Young. If you knew that, I defy you to describe what he looks like, or even to tell me if he’s black or white.)

And yet they had the best record in the National League. Which to me speaks to how bad the National League was this year more than to how good a team the Diamondbacks are.

So the Cubs will win because they are the better team, because they have the ability to win with either their pitching or their hitting, or both, depending on the day.

The Cubs will win because teams like the Diamondbacks that no one ever sees or cares about don’t all of a sudden become awesome in the postseason.

The Cubs will win because they have a better home field advantage, since Chicago fans are going to be insane, while fans in Phoenix will be at least a third Chicago fans anyway.

The Cubs will win because Chicago is vastly superior to Phoenix in just about every way.

The Cubs will win despite talk of superstition and karma and curses and goats and some poor guy who just wanted to catch a foul ball.

Because I say all that is bunk.

And I am often right.