Baseball-Reference.com<\/a>, we can see that the Cubs were only swept in a three-game series three times during the course of the regular season (at the hands of the Rays, White Sox and Astros).\u00c2\u00a0 Whether you want to put it down to the team choking in October or simply the law of averages coming into play depends on personal preference.\u00c2\u00a0 A team doesn’t win ninety-seven games without being able to cope with pressure, so I’m inclined towards the latter position.\u00c2\u00a0 That won’t make it any easier for Cubs fans to swallow after they had such high hopes that this could finally be their year.\u00c2\u00a0 The Cubs were swept in the division series against the D-Backs last year and it’s another three and out this time around.<\/p>\nThe Dodgers were clearly favourites to wrap up the series after winning the first two at Wrigley.\u00c2\u00a0 Watching the condensed game footage on MLB.com doesn’t really give you a full sense of the flow of the game, but looking through the box score and the play-by-play as well suggests that the Cubs never really mounted a strong challenge after conceding two runs in the first inning.\u00c2\u00a0 Hiroki Kuroda held them scoreless over 6.1 innings and, aside from a rally in the eighth, the Dodgers had the game under control.\u00c2\u00a0 They convincingly won the series by a combined score of 20-6.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
While it wasn’t of ‘Rockies’ proportions, the Dodgers entered the postseason on a good run of form (17-8 in September).\u00c2\u00a0 The return of Rafael Furcal on 24 September after nearly five months on the disabled list has added to the feeling that they are coming good at the right time.\u00c2\u00a0 L.A. will not fear the Brewers or the Phillies in the NLCS, so there’s every chance that Joe Torre will be managing in another World Series.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
I’m sure that will please Hank Steinbrenner.<\/p>\n
The odds are still in favour of the Phillies becoming the Dodgers’ opponents, but the Brewers are not dead and buried just yet. If you are going to lose the first two games of a five-game series, the best you can hope for is that you lose them on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 Although it’s still a deep hole to be stuck in, you can at least prepare yourself psychologically for game three by writing off those losses and believing that you will win your two home games to level the series.\u00c2\u00a0 The Brewers completed part one last night, but they’ll need a strong outing from Jeff Suppan to take the series back to Philadelphia.\u00c2\u00a0 They haven’t had one of those for a while (since his victory over the Pirates on 30 August, to be exact) and the Phillies knocked him out of the game after just 3.2 innings the last time he faced them on 14 September.<\/p>\n
However, if he can get the better of Joe Blanton today, the Brewers will be able to send CC Sabathia to the mound in the game five decider on Tuesday.\u00c2\u00a0 He struggled in game two, but the Brewers will hope that pitching off four days’ rest will get their ace back to his dominating best.\u00c2\u00a0 The Brewers will need nothing less from Sabathia if Cole Hamels pitches as well as he did in game one.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re getting ahead of ourselves though: that mouth-watering contest will not take place if the Phillies prevail in game four.\u00c2\u00a0 British fans can follow the game in the early evening, as first pitch is scheduled for 18.07 BST.<\/p>\n
The Rays-White Sox game is also being played at a convenient time: 21.07 BST.\u00c2\u00a0 Matt Garza should get the start for the Rays, looking to make it yet another first for the organization by getting to the Championship Series for the first time in their short history.\u00c2\u00a0 John Danks is the man charged to bring an end, or at least a temporary reprieve, to the misery sweeping over Chicago right now (pun unashamedly intended).\u00c2\u00a0 The Cell has been host to what have amounted to two sudden death victories for the White Sox over the past week.\u00c2\u00a0 They need two more to take the series back to Tampa and they don’t have to look far to know what it will feel like if they are unable to make that happen.<\/p>\n
Game three of the Angels-Red Sox series will be the live game on Five tonight and will be previewed in more detail later today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The hope that this year’s postseason would provide plenty of close series seemed to have been dashed, for the division round at least, as the Dodgers, Phillies, Rays and Red Sox all took 2-0 leads against their respective opponents heading into the weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 Being up two-nil is a great position to be in, but then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7322,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/7322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}