Every. Game. Counts. (A Regular Season Wrap Up and Playoff Preview)

Let’s just put aside the fact that I had an actual rooting interest last night — everything that happened in baseball over the last 24 hours makes my brain scream this song:

As someone who has spent the last two weeks watching the Cardinals wait until the last inning to win or lose what seemed like 95% of their games, one of the most surreal things about last night was that St. Louis was the only team that got their game settled right out of the gate, batting around in the first inning and scoring five runs before recording a single out.  Which left me free to enjoy the one day MLB.tv subscription I paid 3.99 for Tuesday night as a mostly impartial fan (possibly the best 4 bucks I’ve ever spent, even if I couldn’t get the Rays-Yankees because of blackout restrictions, and had to switch to the Phillies-Braves radio feeds for the latter innings because of too much traffic on the video feed (and my crappy bandwidth).  At one point, I had three GTalk conversations going and was on the phone to my parents; 99.5 % of the discussion revolved around baseball (I did manage to discuss Christmas arrangements with my folks.  I’m not totally obsessed.)

Some of my favorite blog posts on last night:

• Rob Neyer has the stats.
• Joe Posnanski, as usual, nails it.
• The MLB network guys freaked out like everyone else.
• And for the flip side, poor, poor Jack Wilson.

So.  It took the full 162 games to get there, but we have our playoff teams.  Will the wild cards ride their momentum to some upsets?  Or will the division leaders demonstrate why they didn’t need to engage in all this last minute, come from behind tomfoolery?

I, personally, like the Phillies and Brewers for the NLCS, and the Rangers and Tigers (I think people are really underestimating Detroit) for the ALCS.  While I’d love to see a Brewers-Rangers series, I think we’re probably looking at Phillies-Rangers, with the Rangers taking it in 7.  But really, I’m practically closing my eyes and pointing at logos at this point — I have absolutely no idea what might happen now. Let’s ask some other Ladies!

Raven: I hadn’t really paid much attention to the NL playoff picture, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the DBacks in there.  I’m really rooting for anyone but the Yankees (sorry Bee).  I was so proud of my Orioles for playing spoiler this month.  I’m one of those fans who goes to the game regardless of record.  I love my team through thick and thin, so I was pretty stoked to see them end the year on a high note.  As for predictions, I’ll take Phillies over Cards, Brewers over DBacks and Rays over Rangers and Yankees over Tigers.

Bee: Holy Hannah those National League matchups are going to be fun to watch! The Diamondbacks success makes me  miss Ian Kennedy.

And can the Rays just die already? I am annoyed that we still can’t get some retribution on 2004 from the Red Sox ;) Maybe the rest of the world doesn’t want to see these two teams tear each other apart in another ALCS, but I do.

Who are you pulling for/rooting against?  Do you think you can survive another month of the playoffs if they are even half this exciting?

CuteSports: Holy crap, the Brewers are National League Central Division Champions and have home-field advantage!

Last night was an incredibly fun night to watch baseball and for me, this whole thing only looks to get better. The Brewers limped into the playoffs in 2008 and were quickly out, so it almost didn’t count. We knew they weren’t going to go far, so this year is just so much more exciting. The Brewers really have a chance to go far through the postseason and I’m just beside myself with excitement.

We bought a full strip of postseason tickets and I can’t wait to use them. Let’s be honest – we’re a small market, this might be the last time for another 20-something years I get a chance to see the Brewers do this well.

I’m picking the Brewers over the Diamondbacks and am looking for the red-hot Cardinals to knock off the Phillies. I’ll take the lucky, lucky Rays over the Rangers and Tigers over Yankees.