This past week, we’ve seen some intense playoff baseball as the final 4 teams battled it out to decide who would advance to the big dance, AKA the World Series. Both the ALCS and the NLCS were chalk-full of amazing player performances and key moments. There were close nail-bitters that included fantastic defensive and pitching performances, while there was also multiple one-sided blowouts where teams would exchange turns in kicking each other in the nuts. Here’s some recaps of the two series that we saw the last week:
In the ALCS, we saw the Astros reign victoriously in 6 games against the Boston Red Sox. At the end of the day, this series came down to whose offense had the the most spark, and in the end that was the Astros. They scored 23 runs in their last 3 games, largely in thanks to the ALCS MVP Yordan Alvarez, after falling behind in the series 1 games to 2 in Boston. The Astros pitching was also able to effectively stifle Boston’s red-hot offense the last few games, as after Eduardo Rodriguez’s mocking of Carlos Correa in Game 3, the Sox only scored 3 runs combined for the next 3 games. With strong performances by pitchers such as Kendall Graveman, Ryan Pressly, Christian Javier and Ryne Stanek out of the bullpen, and the gems twirled by Framber Valdez and Luis Garcia and games 5 and 6, the Astros look to capture their 2nd world series title in the past 5 years in this upcoming World Series.
In the National League, the NLCS also concluded in 6 games with the Braves coming out on top over the Dodgers. Due to insane hitting performances by the NLCS MVP Eddie Rosario and the strong performances out of the bullpen for Atlanta, especially by Tyler Maztek, A.J. Minter, Jesse Chavez, and Will Smith, they were able to hold off the injury-riddled Dodgers, whose offense lacked consistency throughout the postseason and came back to bite them in the ass.
With the World Series coming up this week with Game 1 on Tuesday night, there’s plenty to be excited about if you’re not just an Astros or Braves fan, but a baseball fan in general. I’m expecting this to be a well-fought series, and I don’t want to make any predictions, because, well, jinxes exist. However, I’m still hoping my ‘Stros can find a way to pull it off in the end and deliver happiness to Houston sports fans again.