World Series Update: Now A Best Of Five

We at TOOOAST!!! are doing our damnedest to keep you up to date on World Series CVI: This Time It's Extra Geigh. You may have noticed the most sexcellent live blogging by our own BMFS. In the interest of piling on I'd like to offer a slightly more dispassionate look at the remains of this series.

After Thursday night's slug-fest in the Slugdome (seriously, how much shit does that place suck? I submit it is not possible to suck the necessary tonnage through an extra wide straw), the World Series is now a best of five with Your Philadelphia Phillies having home field advantage over Your Tampa Reyes Rays. The next three games will be played here, a mere 40 blocks or so from the home of your humble author. Yes, you really can see my house from there. Well, almost.

To me the distinguishing difference between these two teams as they stand now (i.e. not necessarily the way they played in the regular season) is the depth of the Rays starting pitching. BMFS makes that point here, albeit in a Phillies-centric way (props to you, bro). The remaining pitching match-ups, baring Brett Myer's wife repeatedly smashing her face into his fist again, look thusly:

Game 3: Matt "Anyone around here seen a spittoon?" Garza v. Jamie Moyer
Game 4: Andy Sonnanstine v. Joe Blanton
Game 5: Scott Kasmir v. Cole Hamels
Game 6: Brett Myers v. James Sheilds
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Looking that over, there is only one game in which the Phillies have an advantage, though if you want to be generous you could say that Game 6 looks even enough. This, my friends, is why everyone picked the Rays to win this series. Nobody questions that the Phillies are the better team when Hamels is on the mound, its just that the Rays have the advantage with any other starting pitcher. That makes it difficult to win.

But, not impossible. Something that is routinely ignored is that anything is possible in a short series. If this series featured the Rays against the Washington Nationals and you played it 100 times, there would be times when the Nationals, the worst team in baseball, would win. Many times, in fact. Thats just the way baseball, and sports, work. Sometimes the best team doesn't win. Which isn't to say the Phillies aren't the best team. Its certainly debatable, much like who is better, Pidgie or Grover? (Well, Grover hates me, but I still like him. Take that, Grover!)

In any case, I'm not solving anything with this rambling. Lets close this mf'er up. Like in the first two games, the next five will be decided for the most part by the starting pitchers. The Rays have an advantage in this area on paper, but as the increasingly annoying Kenny Mayne says, games aren't played on paper, they're played inside television sets.

**Yes, that is a picture of Ryan Howard.