I'm at the game.

Pierre is starting over Kemp. Rage appropriately.

So all we've got to do is hold serve here, and everything's good right? If not, could we win one game so I can use my tickets for game five.

It's okay, the Phillies were supposed to win with Hamels on the mound. Let's take the next three.

Kuo's out, Saito's in. Have to to say this takes the sting out of having to wake up at two in the morning this week.

As soon as my hangover from the Cubs series faded, we roll right into the next big thing. The Dodgers enter their first NLCS since 1988 and we at least have history on our side because it could be against the one franchise that's been as pathetic as the Cubs.

The Phillies have two major strengths: A very dangerous lineup filled with three true outcomes hitters, and a solid defense to backup what looks to be a thin pitching staff. Combine this with one of the best closers in baseball and you have a very dangerous opponent.

On paper, the Phillies should have an elite defense with Chase Utley and Pedro Feliz being arguably the best in baseball at their positions, Jimmy Rollins leading shortstops in +/- this year, Shane Victorino being all around mobile and Jayson Werth, a competent centerfielder, in right. Despite this, the team finished only 10^th in defensive efficiency this year. This is probably due to having two absolute butchers, Pat Burrell and Ryan Howard, in the field. This solid defense does help the back end of the Phillies rotation who can't strike anyone out, but it's not quite to the level of the Cubs.

The Phillies lineup is very scary 1-6, but they do have a mid June Dodger style black hole at the bottom of their lineup with the deadly trio of Pedro Feliz, Carlos Ruiz, and the pitcher. Feliz does have some pop, but as long as you keep the ball at least two feet out of the strike zone, he's an easy out. The Phillies can fix this by platooning him with Greg Dobbs, but this does hurt their defense.

One of the scarier things about the Phillies lineup is the balance they have, the lineup won't suddenly fold if you bring in a pitcher who throws the ball with the correct hand.  Chase Utley and Ryan Howard are murdering righties this year, while Jayson Werth and Pat Burrell are both beasts against lefties. Unlike the Cubs series, Joe Beimel is going to need to come up big time with the Phillies likely hitting Utley and Howard three and four in the lineup.

The biggest hope we have in this series is that we beat up on Cole Hamels. Outside of their ace, the Phillies pitching just isn't that scary. Brett Myers has put up a four ERA after working out some mechanical issues early by mid May, but that's far from unstoppable. After Myers, the Phillies have Jamie Moyer who has worked miracles by only allowing 20 home runs in Philadelphia but isn't exactly the type of power pitcher you want going for you in the playoffs, and Joe Blanton who somehow managed to improve despite going to a much more hitter friendly park with a worse defense behind him during the season. Hamels is the only shutdown guy the Phillies have, and taking even one game against him could go a long way towards winning the series.

Aside from beating up on Hamels, the other key to this series is getting to the Phillies starting pitching before the 8^th. Brad Lidge has been a deadly closer this year, but after that, the Phillies pen is just full of middle relievers. Unlike the Cubs who could potentially throw Marmol and Wood out there for three, or even four innings if it really came down to it, the Phillies have to go to Ryan Madson who put up middle relieverish numbers all season. Guys like Blanton and Moyer have to go long in the game or else the Dodgers get a huge advantage. It's very possible we'll see some big sixth and seventh innings out of the Dodgers this series.

The sudden shift in the media from the Dodgers facing an unstoppable juggernaut in the Cubs to it being a foregone conclusion that Manny is going to face Boston in the World Series just isn't true. The Phillies are a very talented team featuring a lot of the same strengths as the Cubs, I'm much more optimistic about this series than the last one, but just remember what overconfidence did for the Cubs.

I asked a few questions to Peter Baker of the Good Phight. You can see my end of the conversation here:

Do the Phillies have much hope if Hamels has a bad outing or two?

Frankly, no.  Although Brett Myers and Joe Blanton both came through with terrific starts during the Division Series against the Brewers, the Phillies are absolutely relying on Cole Hamels to pitch big in this series.  With over a week's rest since Game One against the Brewers, Hamels should be fresh and hopefully poised to dominate.

Even though Brad Lidge was perfect this season, does he still scare the hell out of you?

Far too often, yes.  Particularly since he was (Clint) Hurdle'd in the All-Star Game (forced by the Colorado manager to warm up multiple times during the marathon Midsummer Classic), he has not seemed particularly fresh, often allowing multiple baserunners and frequently requiring over 20 pitches to close out a game.  Still, the numbers are great and he has yet to blow a game, so it's hard to quibble too much... although my nervous system may disagree.

Do you think of anyone on the Dodgers except Manny as any kind of threat?

Andre Ethier has been an absolute monster since mid-summer.  A lefty hitter who kills righties (.953 OPS), Ethier is likely to feast on the likes of not just Myers and Blanton, but righty relievers Condrey and Durbin as well.  Russell Martin, as well, is a terrific and scary right-handed hitter, not to be taken lightly.

Additionally, and not very rationally, Phillies fans have seething hatred for Juan "F." Pierre, who as a Marlin in 2003 seemingly devastated the Phillies all season long.  At least anecdotally, the influence of Pierre on the Phillies' decisionmaking process was long-term, detrimental, and two-fold, and led to both a counterproductive fixation on stopping Pierre himself, and to the ill-advised acquisition of Endy Chavez to be "our Juan Pierre" in 2005.

Any kind words for handing you two thirds of your outfield?

As far as Jayson Werth goes, thank you.  It was a case of misfortune on his and your parts that his wrist injury abbreviated his Dodgers career.

With regard to Shane Victorino, the Dodgers had the opportunity to take him back when the Phillies failed to keep him on the 40 man roster for the entirety of the 2005 season.  And the Dodgers could have had him back, but for their decision not to pay the $50,000 it would take to get him back.  $50,000 versus Andruw Jones salary.  I can't make too much fun, however; the Phillies are on the hook for about $8MM for Adam Eaton next season.

I'm at National Sports Grill with some friends so I sadly won't be joining y'all. Just assume I would have said "more like HIroki Kublowda" at some point.

Let's do this like Brutus

The last time the Dodgers had a lead in a playoff series, I was four, and I don't think I realized that players took their swings at home plate. 16 years later, I finally learned what a playoff win was like, but after that high died down I was left with the idea of Odalis Perez and Jeff Weaver shutting down one of the best offenses in recent memory to take the series. For the first time, I actually have hope in October, and I like it.

Tonight we send our ace against Carlos Zambrano who is getting by on name recognition at this point. His peripheral stats are like Jeff Weaver's in 2004, just with less control, would you be scared about facing Jeff Weaver? While his no hitter in early September got a ton of publicity, it hid the fact that over the last two months, the guy had two good starts, leading to a 7.28 ERA since August. Despite what the mainstream impression is, the Dodgers have a huge advantage on the mound tonight. We are the favorites in a game that could have us coming home with a 2-0 lead. How's that for hope?

This certainly can't go any worse than the last game one we had, can it?

And so it comes down to this. A month ago we were looking at an offseason of posts saying "we got nothing for Andy LaRoche, Carlos Santana and Bryan Morris" but now here we are, on the verge of getting a better post season hero in my life than Jose Lima. The question is, do we actually have a chance of getting Lima out of the Dodger canon?

According to Baseball Prospectus there are three factors that have a direct correlation with post season success: a good closer, a strong defense, and a strikeout heavy rotation. The combination of these stats is referred to by BP as the "Secret Sauce". Over the last 10 years, a team that was in the top three among playoff teams in secret sauce has won the World Series. Now, this doesn't mean that not being good at the secret sauce is a death sentence, the 2006 Cardinals and 2003 Marlins were both the least saucy teams in the playoffs, but it certainly appears to help.

The Cubs are definitely a saucier team than the Dodgers this year. The Cubs trail only the Red Sox in sauciness thanks to the second best defense in baseball, and a rotation with big strikeout pitchers Rich Harden, Ryan Dempster, and Ted Lilly (surprisingly,  Carlos Zambrano doesn't make that list this year with only a little more than six strike outs per nine). The only thing keeping the Cubs from being saucier than anyone is a few badly timed meltdowns by Kerry Wood, since Wood might not even be the best reliever in the Cubs bullpen, this isn't as tough of a pill to swallow. A good closer means more in the playoffs since they come in for multiple innings far more often than they do in the regular season. Since there's no need to use Wood for extended sessions when you have Carlos Marmol in the bullpen, the Dodgers still have to worry about facing shutdown relievers as early as the sixth inning.

The Dodgers meanwhile come into the playoffs with less sauce than anyone. The additions of Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake boosted a struggling offense, but they killed the team defense. However, things aren't as bad as they seem now that the stone gloved Angel Berroa and Jeff Kent have been replaced by Rafael Furcal and Blake DeWitt. Power pitching isn't the Dodgers strong suit. Chad Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw have strong strikeout numbers, but Derek Lowe and Hiroki Kuroda are pitch to contact type of guys. Secret sauce likes strikeouts since power pitching works much better against big time hitters, and the Cubs lineup is loaded with them. Up to three of these games could be pitched by put the ball in play type of guys, and history says that's not a good thing.

Like the Cubs, the Dodgers don't have a truly dominant closer unless Saito suddenly recovers from his two month layoff, but like the Cubs have Marmol, we have Jonathan Broxton to make up for it. On paper, we have far more bullpen depth than the Cubs, but that really isn't true. Joe Beimel is the only other scary pitcher we have. He's quietly evolved into one of the most dominant LOOGYs in baseball and hasn't allowed a home run since July 21^st 2007. However, the only lefty weapon the Cubs have is Jim Edmonds so this will be neutralized. A last minute change has cut Ramon Troncoso, who quietly had a great year with terrible luck this year, he struck out a batter an inning, a better than three to one strikeout to walk rate and a better ground ball rate than Derek Lowe. He'll be replaced with James McDonald who has wildcard written all over him. Cory Wade is living off fairy dust with mediocre peripherals and a .222 BABIP so he could disappear at a moments notice. Without Troncoso or Hong-Chih Kuo the Dodger bullpen is really just Saito and Broxton, and the Cubs can match that with Wood and Marmol.

While pitching and defense are more important in the playoffs, you can't just ignore offense. On paper, the Cubs have the superior offense, outscoring the number two Mets by 56 runs and the Dodgers by 155, but as wide as the gap seems, the two teams aren't as different as they would appear. The big thing is that the Dodgers aren't the same team now that they were for the first four months. Manny has been arguably the best trade deadline acquisition ever, and while Casey Blake hasn't set the world on fire, he's been an upgrade over the nothing we got from Blake DeWitt and Andy LaRoche earlier this year. We've also stopped messing around with Andruw Jones and Juan Pierre and given Andre Ethier the full time job, and we've been rewarded with the VORPiest season by a Dodger outfielder since Shawn Green in 2002. Finally, we've managed to rid ourselves of Angel Berroa at last and we can get Rafael Furcal in there. He's a wildcard, sure, but he's got to be better than Berroa.

Meanwhile, a lot of the Cubs offense has come from sources that could disappear at any moment. Jim Edmonds rose from the dead and is contributing again after two very disappointing seasons, and players notable for their blandness have set the world on fire. Did you know Mark DeRosa had 21 home runs this year? How about Mike Fotenot dropping a .909 OPS? These are numbers that could just disappear at any time. With all of these factors, The Hardball Times has declared that we have the best offense in the NL. I wouldn't quite take it that far, but that almost one run per game gap between the Cubs and ourselves isn't as scary as it looks.

The Cubs are a very dangerous team, by far the best in the NL, so I can't say that we're the favorites, but Ned Colletti has shaped this into a very different team over the course of the season, and we're better than our 84 wins would indicate. This is far from impossible.

The Padres have named the two players to be named later for the Maddux trade, and it turns out we'll be losing pitcher Michael Watt and Eduardo Perez for that five ERA Maddux dropped on us.

Losing Perez isn't going to mean too much, he's a 23 year old who split time between A and high A this year with an OPS in the .760 range while he struck out a lot, he's your basic organizational filler.

Watt's the big loss here, he was a second round pick in 2007 and pitched for the Ogden Raptors this year. Watt and 79 strike outs and 21 walks in 80 innings, but was a bit unlucky and ended the year with a 4.35 ERA. According to Paul DePodesta, Watt already has an above average change and scouts love his makeup. Statistically, Watt seems pretty similar to Blake Johnson, who we gave up in the Odalis Perez trade. Johnson has been pretty uninspiring during his age 23 season in AA, so it's not as though Watt is a sure thing, but he was someone we were willing to give almost 400 thosand dollars to out of high school so there was obviously something we saw in him.

In the end, it seems like another classic Ned move, give up something of potential value for nothing, then wonder how we end up starting Angel Berroa most of the year. It's a tad depressing.

If you can remember your presason predictions this year, you can see how you stacked up against the nations sports writers here. I had the exact same picks as Keith Law, so I tied him for first. Go me. Picking the Tigers killed a lot of people's dreams in this contest.

YOUR 2008 NL WEST CHAMPION DODGERS play out the string.

partying at wrigley

I'm somewhere over Dallas right now.

Juan Pierre's home run tonight snapped the fourth longest homerless streak in the last 15 years. Pierre had taken 1,079 at bats across 276 games before homering in the sixth inning tonight.

Jason Tyner's record of 350 games without a home run looks like it's going to be safe for a while. Miguel Cairo will take over as the most powerless hitter in baseball, going 251 games without a home run.

I'm 9 rows behind home plate at Angel Stadium so I Wont be joining in.

First place, first place, first place!

First place here we come.