Divisional Series

Rays over Rangers
Tampa Bay’s pitching staff will be too much for Texas to overcome, even in a short series. I expect the Rays to close this one out in four games.

Yankees over Twins
Minnesota’s Justin Morneau has been ruled out for the entire playoffs. He’s been gone since mid-July and the Twins have done well in his absence, but I don’t think they match up well with the firepower in the middle of the Yankee lineup. I expect the Yankees to sweep.

Phillies over Reds
What a magical season for Dusty Baker and the Cincinnati Reds. That magic ends after a short stay in the postseason, however. The Phillies just have too many good arms to lose to the Reds. They coast into the NLCS with a three-game sweep.

Giants over Braves
Bobby Cox has been the best manager of my generation, maybe of any generation.  It’s hard to imagine he’s been at the helm since 1990, and it’s even harder to believe some of the teams he’s somehow guided to the playoffs. It’s no surprise he did it again with this injury-depleted Braves squad. No Chipper, no Prado, and the Braves still made it. The talent just isn’t there to advance though. I expect errors to cost the Braves severely as they lose in four games to the Giants.

The rest of my playoff picks after the jump:

Championship Series

Rays over Yankees
You’d be hard pressed to find a MLB executive who would rather have the Rays in the World Series instead of the Yankees… the team has the worst fans in baseball and can’t even sell out in the thick of a pennant race. But this could be the last chance for the Rays. Ownership will cut payroll after the season. I think David Price wins two – if not three – games in this one, and earns ALCS MVP as the Rays nip the Yankees in a thrilling seven-game series.

Phillies over Giants
As exciting as the ALCS could be, the NLCS could be wrapped up in just four games. The Phillies are too talented… with Halladay, Oswalt, and Hamels, not to mention a loaded offense. Lincecum is an amazing pitcher, but I think he might struggle in the bright lights of the NLCS. It’s old hat for Philly. They win in five.

World Series

Rays over Phillies
I expect Philadelphia to have all the advantages in this one – home field and more rest by way of an easier Championship round opponent. I think they jump out to a 2-0 lead, but the Rays will roar back and win the last four in a row, beating the Phillies in six games to win the Rays’ first World Series.

Then, maybe, just maybe they’ll move to a city that cares about baseball.

MVP – Carl Crawford (who will be playing in Boston next season)

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Newspapers used to be great PR advertising machines for sports teams.  It wasn’t unusual for a big city paper to have a sports reporter per team, whose sole job was to find and write stories about that team.  Think of all the free publicity that creates.  But now newspapers are cutting costs, laying off staff and sharing stories across newspapers.  The Raleigh News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer used to write up separate stories about games — now they share stories based on geography.

Sports teams, sports leagues, and Web sites that recognized this shift early are capitalizing on it, and it’s paying dividends.  I just want to take a minute to look at a few of those early adopters who have helped turn sports journalism on its head and are leading the evolution of sports journalism as we enter a new decade:

Adam Lucas, right, interviewing UNC baseball coach Mike Fox

Adam Lucas joined TarHeelBlue.com in March of 2001 as an embedded reporter.  It was the first hire of its kind at a university, and eight years later most of us in the Tar Heel fan base are still thankful for UNC’s foresight.  Now more schools are following UNC’s lead, offering more than just game recaps by SIDs.  It’s both a positive trend and a potentially alarming one.  Adam’s articles are must-reads for me following a game.  They are a great change of pace from news-ed pieces, written for Tar Heel fans by an objective Tar Heel grad who has the ear of a fan base.

This is the future of sports journalism for many teams.  For example, every single MLB team has a beat writer for that team’s web site and other sports leagues are following suit.  As long as there are still independent journalists writing about teams to offer an unfiltered opinion, I’m all for embedded reporters.  Adam has proven over these past eight years that he has access to insider stories newspaper and TV reporters aren’t privy to.

Shaquille O’Neal and Chad Ochocinco have embraced Twitter in a way that enables them to reach out to fans directly.  For athletes, their names are their brand.  What do you think of first when I say, “Tiger Woods?”  How has that answer changed over the past month?  Tiger hurt his own image, which essentially is his brand name and that’s cost him advertising revenue.  Shaq and Chad Johnson realize Twitter offers them the ability to shape their own image without having to rely on sports reporters or the World Wide Leader.

Jason Peck wrote last December that Shaq had 21,000 followers at the time.  In one year, that number doubled… and doubled again… and doubled again.  Shaq now has more than 2.6 million followers, 12 times what he had last December.  Chad Johnson has more than 500,000 followers and launched his own iPhone app that at one point was one of the top two highest selling sports apps on the iPhone.  He even broke the news when the Bengals’ first-round draft pick signed with the team.  Sports journalism is evolving on the social media front because athletes realize they don’t need journalists.  They are often eliminating the middle man and reaching out directly to fans.  This will only continue to grow in the next decade.

ESPN is hoping to change local sports reporting in much the same way that it changed national sports reporting.  The WWL has started to roll out localized versions of ESPN.com in Chicago, Boston, Dallas and other cities.  In many cases, ESPN is hiring the same sports reporters in those areas who used to cover teams for the local newspapers.  It’s a big venture, one they are pushing hard on network programming like SportsCenter and live games.  The smart thing ESPN is doing, is they are going after both national and local advertisers.  On ESPNChicago.com you might see an ad for StubHub right next to an ad for a local jewelry store.  ESPN can also reuse stories and video already being published on ESPN.com in a way that newspapers can’t.  It’s Chicago site, which launched in the spring, has already surpassed the Tribune and Sun-Times in terms of traffic.  Expect similar results in the other cities over time.

MLB has pioneered the Internet and social media in ways other leagues still haven’t.  NFL dominated TV.  The NBA has dominated worldwide expansion and player marketability.  MLB is dominating the newest frontier.  The NFL is still king of the sports world, but their efforts pale in comparison to what MLB is doing on the Web.  MLB has beat reporters for each team, localized all of its content onto one site, created MLBlogs.com so fans can add free content of their own, and was the first to make games available online.  It even launched the best sports iPhone app I’ve ever seen, which lets you watch live games on your phone — from pretty much anywhere.  There’s so much MLB is doing right on the Web, you almost wish the guys making those decisions were running other areas of the league

Are there sports journalism pioneers you think deserve to be mentioned?  Tell me who belongs on this list and what they’re doing in the evolution of sports journalism.

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I saw Al Horford joined Twitter recently.  He’s @Al_Horford, started tweeting Oct. 4 and three days later already has 880 followers.  I love how more and more athletes are using Twitter and Facebook to connect directly with fans.  It takes the middlemen — PR directors and the media — out of the equation and often gives you an unfiltered look at the men and women behind the jerseys you pull so hard for.

Most people know Al Horford as one of the leaders of the Florida Gators’ back-to-back national championship run.  Horford was then selected with the third overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft by the Atlanta Hawks.  He had a great rookie campaign but Kevin Durant narrowly beat him out for Rookie of the Year honors.

In some of his first tweets, Horford roots for his hometown Detroit Tigers as they take on the Minnesota Twins with a spot in the playoffs on the line.  Horford went to high school in Grand Ledge, Michigan, before heading south to Gainesville for college.

I follow a handful of athletes on Twitter, including the ever-popular Shaquille O’Neal, who will occasionally tell his tweeps where he’s at so they can say hello if they’re nearby.  While I wouldn’t advise this for someone like… supermodel Brooklyn Decker… I don’t suppose anyone will tug on that Superman’s cape.  But the fact is — social media applications are giving fans unbridled access to some of the world’s biggest stars.

Chad Johnson frequently tweets back and forth with fans and Ustreams live shows.  After one of OchoCinco’s preseason games, he logged onto Ustream and held a live show from the team’s plane.  It was pretty neat to see Chad interact with Bengals fans while munching on a cheeseburger, and it was funny when the plane ran out of cheeseburgers… worrying Chad that he might have to settle for a chicken sandwich instead.  Luckily a teammate came to the rescue and gave Chad his burger.  Crisis averted.  I never disliked Chad Johnson, but thanks to Twitter and Ustream, you can now count me among his 215,000-plus fans.

But anyway, all this brings me back to Horford.  I love messing around on Photoshop and felt like creating the Hawks star a background since he just has the generic Twitter background right now.  What do you guys think?

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