Richard Castle - contributing reporter
Hartford was the first to secure and getting a bit of rest in. You know the Hartford faithful are excited for their teams first ever NL league title and World Series appearance. Could they win it all their first try? This World Series appearance is much deserved as they've been battling the likes of Buffalo, Chicago and New Orleans the last few season. Owner jverrier85 has does wonders to a franchise who had only finished above 3rd place once since S34. In just his 3rd season, he had already made it up to 2nd place in the division with a 90 win season. While their record may have regressed from last year's 105 win season, they are still just as strong. Coming from the AL side, we see Houston finally break the Atlanta in the World Series streak where they've been the last three seasons and four of the last 5.; winning twice. Have the guards changed, is the AL now belong to Houston's young club? We'll see what moves Atlanta makes in the off-season. Earlier this season the blog made our predictions and while we had the final four teams correct, we had Atlanta v Chicago in the World Series. Congrats to both teams, let's do this!
Editor note: Considering all the lineup changes it's hard to do a straight position battle comparison, so I kept mostly to RHP + DH lineups for positions.
DH: Dario Lester (Hou) slight edge over Alex Perez (Har) - Lester, the rookie who had just 200 at-bats this season, will be hitting #3 for the Space Cowboys and managed a .300 average, providing good power. Should be a power versus power battle, but we'll take Lester's higher average over Perez any day.
C: Marvin Johnson (Har) over Peter Kang (Hou) - Kang was covered in our trade review, and while he doesn't offer much in terms of a bat; he's fantastic behind the plate for the Space Cowboys pitching staff. Pitching will be key in this series. He has limited power, but we like Johnson's ability to get on base, much like we preferred Lester over Perez at DH; though he's a bit more of a liability behind the plate.
1B: Carlos Soto (Hou) over Tom Hines (Har) - Hines is a bit underrated, he offers 25-30 HR power with a .300 average and limits strike outs, but he's no Soto; who offers 35-40 HR power and a .310 average - Soto is known to be a little streaky though. So we'll see who shows up for the World Series.
2B: Yohan Nova (Hou) small edge over Bernie Molina (Har) - The battle of the #2 hitters who player 2B, and this one is closer than people think. Molina has less power but has slightly more speed and higher OBP. While we'd typically take the Molina type player, we've gotta go with Houston's.
3B: Bennie Serra (Hou) over Leonel Martinez (Har) - This is no knock on Leonel but Sierra is a bigger masher than him, 50+ HR, .275 AVG to 37 HR, .250 AVG; though props to Martinez as he'll make it up in fielding and plus plays. The wRAA split favors Serra as well, 38 to 17.5.
SS: Michael Woo (Hou) slight edge over Bruce Sager (Har) - One of the smartest moves Hartford pulled was finally getting rid of Garabez Belliard who was costing the team so many runs without giving the perks for a plus defender. The shift to Sager has been at least a 60 run difference on the season, even though he no longer received full playing time. Woo's game isn't all in the field either, he'll be a slight downgrade at the plate but offers plenty more at Short.
LF: Warren Cobb (Har) over Lisalverto Lobaton (Hou) - Similar on paper, but Skynet prefers Cobb. Go figure right, Skynot not liking something from Houston? No surprise there. Lobaton in nearly twice the at-bats barely has more HR and SBs and a slightly lower average.
CF: Bonk Burnett (Har) over Josias Albaladejo (Hou) - Bit of a down power year for the Bonkster but he still offers an improvement over Josias as seen by their nearly 35 wRAA difference. Bonk's wOBA falls just short of the excellent rating where Albaladejo is just a hair above average.
RF: Noe Lecuona (Har) wash with Bernie Mendez (Hou) - While Mendez has been an improvement and was a solid trade for Houston. Similar average and mostly similar wOBA, Lecuona slightly better wRAA but Mendez is the better fielder and offers more speed.
vPitchers: Houston over Hartford. Houston looks to open with a lefty then goes with two righties, while Hartford will go opposite with a right then two lefties. The two teams are quite similar against the splits, hitting .265-.270 against righties and .280-.290 against lefties. With Hartford throwing more lefties out there, we've gotta take the Houston lineup.
The position count is Houston's 6 and Hartford's 3, tying RF, not quite the close matchup we saw last year in Atlanta and New Orleans but should be a fun one to watch. For the post season thus far, Houston is hitting .280 with a .785 OPS while Hartford is hitting .273 and a .779 OPS.
Now let's take a quick look at the pitching.
SP: Mitch Dillard (L), Carmen Arnold (R), Arismendy Costilla (R), Norm Cunningham (R) (Hou) slight edge over Nigel White (R), Victor Ortega (L), Juan Sanchez (L), Avisail Mujica (R) (Har) - Two Cy Young candidates facing off in Game 1 and Ortega puts up a tough battle against Arnold but after that the starting rotation clearly favors Houston. Sanchez and Mujica have their spots but they are the lesser starters on either staff.
RP: Diory James (LR), Brian Polo (LR), Radhames Machado (Su), Brandon Daniels (Su), & closer Seth Buford (Hou) over Phillip Richard (LR), Trey Scharein (LR), Kenny Barber (Su), and Ichiro Suzuki (Su) (Har) - We typically only cover the LRA and SuA pieces, but interesting enough S55 Cy Young candidate Darby Hatcher who closed out 47 games finds himself as a SuB and yet ot make a playoff appearance. Does Houston know something the blog doesn't...very likely. We agree with Buford closing out, his 154 ERA+ is tops of the bullpen. On the Hartford side, once again they are missing Marcos Owen for the playoffs and Bonilla has been demoted to SuB role. First the long relievers in case the starters get pulled a little too early, are Scharein and Richard; both have been league average this season with mid 4 FIPs. While Scharein started plenty of games this season he also has given up 3 of the 6 inherited runners when coming out of the pen. For the front-line setup men Barber has been below average and we are surprised to see him over Bonilla. Suzuki we like and excited to see him pitch. Hopefully he comes out first and the bats can do their thing to strength any lead the team may have.
Closer: This one is a little different this year since Hartford doesn't use a true closer and relies on closer by committee. Houston has recently changed out closers so we've grouped everyone in the RP section this year.
Manager: rawdk27 slight edge over jverrier85 - This one is crazy, both owners have a .527 career winning percentage, but jverrier has a better post season winning percentage .550 to .540. Both are experienced owners who know how to build a team. rawdk only has Cobbfather, while jverrier is managing three teams currently, with one in the pre-season in Gehrig. I didn't want to leave this one as a tie, so I used the lowest number in their name as the tie breaker. :P
BLOG PREDICTION: Houston over Hartford in 6. Let's see if this turns into an underdog story or not. We hit last season's prediction of NO over Atlanta in 7, maybe the blog goes 2-0.
COMMISH PREDICTION: Hartford in 7. He's an NL homer for sure!