Allsports Thinks the Tampa Bay Rays have come of Age

The other night, the Tampa Bay Rays seemed to have come of age, holding off the experienced and reining champion Boston Red Sox to capture the American League Pennant in seven games.

I thought, from all the baseball sports news on the Web and in the other media centers, that Boston may have had them right where they wanted them after their miraculous come back in Game Five and then winning Game Six. But the Bosox could not pull that last rabbit out of their hat and take Game Seven.

The Rays have been the cellar dwellers of the American League East for years and have received very high draft picks for their efforts, or lack there of. Never winning more than 70 games in a year until this year and going from worst to first in the division. Their drafting has come to fruition and now they are the American League Champions.

So now who is going to win the World Series?

Both teams are very solid, as they have had to be to get to this stage. The Rays won five more games in the regular season than the Philadelphia Phillies did, and they won them in the toughest division in baseball, the American League East.

They battled the Yankees, Red Sox, and, to a certain extent, the Toronto Blue Jays, as well with their excellent pitching staff, all year long and came out on top. Then they knocked off the Red Sox, the defending champs, in seven games to get here. Talk about a character builder.

So I am picking the Tampa Bay Rays to win the World Series in seven games, based primarily on whom they had to face to get here.

If you search the web for baseball news stories, you will find that there are many out there that think the Phillies will win, and if my track record at picking the winners hold true, they likely will. The way these MLB playoffs have gone, the good money would have been bet against me cause I am not batting anywhere near 1,000 with my picks.

The guy that I think will have a big series, if the Phillies win, is a good old Canadian boy, Matt Stairs, and it would not hurt my feelings if he finally got his ring.

For other articles on baseball news here on the Web, there are a couple of good write ups on the Bleacher Report and TSN.

Rays Win