Cody Goggin
10-30-2013 12;58 pm
OWENSVILLE, MO-And then there were eight. Just eight teams remain in the battle for the World Series. In the American League, the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays were matched up and the Oakland Athletics and Detroit Tigers faced off in the other battle. The American League Divisional Series is a five game series with the top two teams advancing to the championship and a chance to go to the World Series.
In the first game of the ALDS, a
close game is not at all what took place. Boston blew out Tampa Bay by a score
of 12-2. After spending their top two pitchers on the tiebreaker game and Wild
Card game, the Rays were just out of arms to shut down the high-powered Boston
offense. After the second game of the Red Sox putting up multiple runs and
defeating Tampa, it looked as if the number one seed Red Sox would sweep the
Rays and easily advance to the ALCS. A sweep was not in the plans for Tampa
though as they would show some fight with a win in their first game back home.
This game was won on a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th by Jose
Lobaton to give the Rays a 5-4 win. Game 4 of the series was a straight
pitching duel as no one scored until the seventh inning. In that seventh
inning, the Red Sox scored two runs which would ultimately be the deciding
factor. Koji Uehara came in for the save and sent the Red Sox to their first
ALCS since 2008 when they won it all.
On the bottom of the bracket was the Oakland Athletics and the
Detroit Tigers. These two teams were pretty evenly matched. It was a bunch of
young, upstart players (A's) vs. the superstars (Tigers). Lead by Max Scherzer,
Prince Fielder, Justin Verlander, and Miguel Cabrera, it is impossible to know
who will stop these Tigers. All of these games have been tightly contested and
came right down to the final out. Game won resulted in a 3-2 tigers victory,
but the A's would come back with a 1-0 walk-off after pitcher Sonny Gray
pitched a gem. The Athletics would keep their momentum going into Game 3 when
they won 6-3 after a bench-clearing altercation in the ninth. Detroit then came
back to tie up the series, forcing a decisive Game 5 in Oakland. In this final
game, Detroit ace Justin Verlander pitched amazingly as he shutout the
Athletics over eight innings, only allowing two hits as the Tigers went on to
win by a score of 3-0.
So now that we are down to the Major League Baseball version of
the "Final Four," the championship is so close that it can be smelt
by these teams, but who will it be hoisting up the trophy in a few weeks? It
will either be Los Angeles, St. Louis, Boston, or Detroit.
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