MLB Postseason Recap

Congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies, who defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 1 to advance to their first World Series in 15 years.

Philadelphia Phillies 5 Los Angeles Dodgers 1: Jimmy Rollins set the tone in this game for the Phillies with a leadoff HR to start the game and the Phillies didn't look back from there. Cole Hamels took the mound and threw 7 strong innings giving up just 1 run. Hamels has been excellent throughout this postseason and is starting to become a true ace in every sense of the word. Hamels does not get as much attention as he deserves when it comes to being an ace pitcher, but he is certainly one of the best pitchers in baseball. He will now get even more national attention since the Phillies will be in the World Series. Hamels has now pitched 29 innings in the postseason giving up just 4 runs.
The reason why I felt the Dodgers would not advance out of the first round was because I didn't feel that their young hitters would step up around Manny. I was in fact wrong about that, because they did step up in the NLDS series against the Cubs. However, against the Phillies both Russell Martin and Andre Either struggled and this really hurt the Dodgers ability to score runs. Rafael Furcal hitting only .211 in the series also played a big part in their inability to score. The other big factors in this series were Furcal's throwing error in Game 1 that really cost the Dodgers and Joe Torre's taking Derek Lowe out of the game too early in Game 4 and then mismanaging the bullpen. It also didn't help that Chad Billingsley completely blew up in both of his starts after having such a strong season before the NLCS. Other than a Ryan Howard error in Game 4, the Phillies really didn't make any major mistakes and it proved to be that the more consistent team ended up winning the series.

The Phillies are the type of team you definitely like to see make the World Series. They have a bunch of home grown players making big impacts on their team like Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Cole Hamels, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard. I love to see teams with a core group of home grown players who may not have always been on winning teams finally get a chance to play for the World Series. Other than the home grown players, the players who had the biggest impact on this teams are Shane Victorino and Brad Lidge. The Phillies deserve a ton of credit for getting Brad Lidge back to his old self to lead their impressive bullpen and also for sticking with players like Victorino and Jayson Werth who were instrumental in their success all year.

NLCS MVP: Cole Hamels