The World Series Ed Leyro wrote about yesterday is likely to come to fruition—Yankees/Phillies, unless the Dodgers and/or Angels sweep the remaining games. And the way New York and Philly are playing, that’s about as likely as snow in the Caribbean. So we’re going to have to face facts here. Yes, a Yankees/Phillies series is going to be like a Mets/Red Sox series would be to a Yankees fan—and we all know how that one turned out.
But why I’m writing this is because you have to know this has been coming all season. The Yankees led the majors in home runs with 244, while the Phillies led the National League with 224 (tying the Rangers for second place in MLB). The Phillies only batted .258 while our Mets hit .270, but the Phils had the 224 homers and 788 RBI, while we had a paltry league low 95 homers and just 631 driven in. The Yankees had CC Sabathia flat out dominate the American League all season, and even though AJ Burnett was not at his best, he was far better than anything we had at the #2 spot. Heck, we limped home with three or four #4 guys. The Phillies had all world Cliff Lee and then playoff tested Cole Hamels as the #2 starter, and lookie here…they got seven innings of two hit ball from none other than Pedro Martinez last Friday.
So a Yankees/Phillies series was inevitable if you look at it all that way. The numbers don’t lie. Even with guys like Jimmy Rollins not hitting the cover off the ball and shaky closer situation, the Phillies find a way to win, as they did in the ninth inning Monday night. They’ve been doing that all year. The Yankees, well, they just haven’t stopped winning since A-Rod came back in May.
I guess we’re going to have to suck this one up, because you can’t deny how talented these two teams are, and the fact that if they do reach the Fall Classic, they truly deserve to be there. So let’s try to enjoy it for what it is, two teams we hate beating up on each other.
