Playoff Preview

The American League East was competitive from opening day. Boston, Baltimore, New York, Milwaukee and Detroit were all in the race until the final weeks of the season.  The Red Sox held off a final effort from the Orioles down the stretch to clinch the division title.  Fred Lynn flirted with .400 until the final weekend, but fell short at .392.  Jim Rice was on track to catch Roger Maris' single season home run mark for most of the summer.  But September was not a good month for the slugger who almost lost the home run title to teammate Lynn, as Rice's power numbers faded.  Boston out hit (.296) and out homered (231) all of the other 3 division winners

Boston is expected to start Torrez, Eckersley and Renko in the post season.  The Red Sox team ERA (3.54) is lower than the Twins (3.72).  Nothing less than a curse should keep Boston from heading into the world series.

The Twins hit only .014 points lower than the Red Sox, but 100 fewer hits on the season translated to over 200 fewer runs scored.  Boston out slugged Minnesota by .072 points, and bashed an even 100 more home runs than the Twins.  Minnesota's lineup has some surprising performers.  They will all have to produce at a high level in the series for Minnesota to have any chance of picking up the pennant.  Boston has 6 players with more than 20 home runs.  The Twins have only one, Roy Smalley (25).  

The pressure is on the Twins pitching staff to keep the balls in the yard and the Sox off the bases.  Every batter in the Red Sox lineup has the ability to turn the game around with one swing.  For that reason, the Twins projected starters, Koosman, Zahn and Redfern, will have their hands full with every Boston batter.

Montreal is led by third baseman, Larry Parrish, who batted .312 with 33 home runs and 110 RBIs.  He will need help at the dish from Dawson, Valentine and Carter to solve Houston's pitching staff.  

Montreal had a difficult time trimming down to 25 men for their post season roster.  Their pitching staff was very deep and a couple of guys that might have been useful had to be cut.

The Expo starters will be Rogers, Lee and Sanderson with grades of 12, 11 and 11 respectively.  If they encounter any difficulty, the Montreal bullpen does not have anyone graded below a 13.  It could be a very difficult and short post season appearance for the Astros.

Houston didn't limp or hobble into the post season.  They sort of dropped and fell into it.  The Astros lost 14 of their last 15 games of the season.  If not for a final weekend sweep of the Cincinnati Reds by the Atlanta Braves, they might not be making their first post season appearance in franchise history.  It's not the way they wanted to get here, but they're here no matter how badly the regular season ended.  

Houston had 42 home runs on the season as a team.  5 different players (Rice, Lynn, Schmidt, Kingman and Gorman Thomas) hit more home runs by themselves than the Astros did as a team.  Rafael Landestoy has been inserted into the lineup replacing Art Howe at second base in an attempt to spark the top of the lineup.  Other than that, the Astros don't have a lot of options to shake things up.

But everyone knows that when you are talking about the Astros of the late 70s and early 80s, you are talking about pitching.  They have lots.  With J.R. Richard (17-XY), Joe Niekro (15) and Ken Forsch (14-Z), they maintain the strongest starting rotation of any team in the playoffs.  Sambito (19-XYZ) provides a solid closer and they have sufficient middle relief to offset Montreal's strong bats.  The question of the series is going to be if Houston can jump on the Montreal starters early and put some runs on the board before getting into the Expo bullpen.