American League
Boston Red Sox (98-64) v Oakland A’s (91-71)
The A’s rode the ascendancy of the “Bash Brothers” to a 9-game improvement this season and have one of the most dangerous offences in the league right now, both the loss of Rickey and Danny Tartabull will make this tough for them against a Red Sox team that is almost a permanent fixture in this part of the season and with their 1-2 combo of Clemens at Hurst at the top of their rotation, I think Boston will prevail here.
The A’s upset them with a hard-fought 5-3 win at Fenway in Game 1 and repeat the dose the following day to head back to Oakland with their tails up.
The Sox finally wake up in Game 3, with John Kruk’s 4-hit game powering them to a dominant 8-1 win and they ground out a 4-2 decision the next day to pull it back to 2 games apiece.
Full of running now, the Red Sox continue the away team win streak with a 7-4 win in Game 5 and a tough comeback 4-3 win gives the Sox their 24th AL Pennant.
Billy Hatcher is named MVP, echoing his IRL demonry over the A’s in 1990.
National League
Pittsburgh Pirates (104-58) v Los Angeles Dodgers (97-65)
We go into these playoffs with plenty of optimism for our chances, though it is decidedly of the cautious variety.
Despite our MLB-best record, there are plenty of warning signs that we’ll struggle from here on in, none more so than the 3-9 record we posted in the reg season against the Dodgers.
Our youth and broad post-season inexperience is another concern, and as for our bullpen… well, let’s not go there. Best to keep things PG at this point.
While we seem to have Buck Buechele’s absence covered thanks to Jay Bell hitting the ground running, we’ll also start the NLCS without Andy Van Slyke, although we have activated him in the hope that he’ll be available at some point.
Mitch Webster has been fantastic for us this season and he’ll start in RF while Van is out.
Our opponents are at full strength.
We fall behind early in Game 1 and never really get into the contest as the Dodgers go on to take it 4-1 but we square things up the next day 4-2 behind a fine Mike Scott outing.
The medical staff give Van the all-clear and we start him in Game 3, in which we stake Candy to an early lead but once again the big stage proves too much for him.
Hate to lump it on one guy but there’s a reason we’ve had so little success with him at or near the top of our rotation and we won’t be sorry to see him go come season-end. He gives up a bunch of runs here as we lose it 6-4 despite a 3-run homer late from Barry Bonds.
John Tudor pitches a gem in Game 4 as we take it 2-1and we take the series lead for the first time the next game as it all comes together with Scott Sanderson giving us 8+ quality innings and Bonds leading the bats in an 8-2 victory.
We head back home needing just one win and this is precisely the sort of assignment we acquired Mike Scott for.
He doesn’t let us down, allowing just one run on 6 hits while fanning 8 over 7+ (and chiming in with a pair of hits) as we book another WS matchup with our grand rivals by dint of a comfortable 9-2 win.
Lance Parrish, 0-for his first 10 in the series, has 4 hits including 2 dingers and knocks in 3 but it is Johnny Ray adjudged MVP.