The Major League fight for October's glory

The seasons are changing, and the calendar has turned the page to October, which could only mean one thing for baseball fans across the country and around the world: playoff time.  

Starting from early April, each team played 162 games apiece over the course of the next six months all culminating in a month's worth of excitement and tension in playoff baseball.  

30 teams across two leagues and six divisions began the journey, and a mere eight of them advance to post season play.  

In the National League, the Philadelphia Phillies were the champions of the East division, and finished with a franchise record 102 wins with 60 losses, finishing with the best record in all of Major League Baseball.  

The Milwaukee Brewers ended the season as the number two seed in the National League by winning the Central division, and the Arizona Diamondbacks clinched the third seed in the big dance, capturing the NL West title over the defending world-champion San Francisco Giants.  

In the wild card slot, the St. Louis Cardinals combined a torrid September with a collapse of epic proportions by the Atlanta Braves to win the final playoff spot on game 162 of the season.  

In the land of the designated hitter, the New York Yankees wrapped up the top spot with the best record in the American League capturing yet another AL East title.  

In their footsteps, the Detroit Tigers cruised to the AL Central title riding the wave of a superb September that included a 12 game winning streak.  

The reigning American League Champions and World Series Runner-ups, the Texas Rangers, return to the playoffs for a second straight year riding one of the most potent offenses in all of baseball to a relatively easy AL West title.  

In the wild card, the American League mirrored the National League with the Boston Red Sox falling victim to a September swoon of epic proportions, relinquishing a 10 game lead with a month to play to the division-rival Tampa Bay Rays.

The first week of playoff baseball has come and gone, with each game more hotly contested than the previous.  As of Wednesday, only one series had come to completion, with the Rangers handling the Rays in the five game series, three games to one.  

The Rangers, led by manager Ron Washington, kept their composure after dropping the first game of the series at home to the Rays who seemed to be riding a wave of destiny following their miraculous September onslaught.  The Rangers went on to win the next three games including two at Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, FL.  

The Yankees and Tigers have scratched and clawed over the first four games of the series, splitting them two games apiece, with a decisive fifth game set to be played Friday night in the Bronx.  

In a series that features two of the game's premier pitching icons in the Tigers Justin Verlander and the Yankees C.C. Sabathia, each game has come down to clutch hitting in big spots.  

The fifth game will be quite a spectacle, as two of the best managers in the game, Jim Leyland for Detroit and Joe Girardi for the Bronx Bombers,  go head to head pulling out all the stops to win the most important game for either team all year long because it's win and move on or lose and season over.

Both the National League Division series are still up for grabs as the Brewers and Phillies retain two games to one leads in their respective series.  

The Brew Crew and the Phightin' Phils look to move on to the NLCS on Wednesday night as each team plays away games with a chance to clinch the series.  

However, do not count out either the Cardinals or the Diamondbacks because as baseball has shown us time and time again it is anybody's game, and any team can win on any given day.

In fact, the Cardinals brought their series to a fifth game by winning on Wednesday night. The Diamondbacks took a note of the events just when their game was set to start, grabbing a win and forcing a fifth game in their series as well.

Players to watch for:

In the American League, from an offensive standpoint, no player has helped his team more than the Rangers Adrian Beltre.  

In the final game of their series, a 4-3 win at Tampa Bay, not only did Beltre hit his first career post-season homerun, but he followed it up with two more.  

His three homerun performance goes down in the record books as one of the most impressive offensive displays in the history of the MLB playoffs.

In the National League, the Phillies Hunter Pence is making his first ever appearance in the playoffs after being acquired in a trade from the Houston Astros which transferred him from the worst team in baseball to the team with the best record.  Pence had a phenomenal year at the plate, hitting .314 on the season with 22 homeruns and 97 RBIs.  

Many people think that Pence is the final piece the Phillies needed to complement their big left handed bats in Chase Utley and Ryan Howard to make a push for the team's second World Series title in the last four years.  

Look for Pence to thrive in his new spot in the lineup, the third position, right smack in the middle of Utley and Howard when teams bring in shut-down lefties, off of which Pence hit .317 with a remarkable .590 slugging percentage this season.

World Series Prediction:  Phillies over Rangers in six games.

Picking an American League champion is very difficult, but the Rangers simply have it all.  

Solid starting pitching, an outstanding bull-pen, and in this writer's opinion, the best lineup in the AL, the Rangers will wear down teams who lack in any of those categories over the course of a seven game series, and will emerge with their second straight AL pennant.

In the NL, no team has shown from the very conception of the season that they are the team to beat until proven otherwise than the Phillies.  

The starting rotation, headlined by two former Cy Young Award winners including the defending award winner in Roy Halladay, had the best ERA for a starting staff in the last 22 years.  

Combine that with the freshest bullpen in all of baseball based simply on the amount of innings pitched, and a lineup that includes two former MVPs, three Gold Glove winners and seven All-Stars (with the exception of All-Star snub catcher Carlos Ruiz) and you have one of the most dangerous teams in the history of baseball.  

Not only are they great on paper, but they proved it over the course of 162 games, and will not be stopped by any team in the post-season field.  

The Phillies will win their third pennant in the last four years and second World Series in that same span, rewarding their fans who have sold out more than 200 consecutive games over the last two seasons with another parade down Broad Street in the City of Brotherly Love.

What really happens at the end of this season? We'll have to wait and see. I, for one, am crossing my fingers to see a Phillies victory.

If there's anything that so many writers and sports enthusiasts have discovered, it's that baseball loves to be unpredictable.

Tune in and see who wins the coveted gold.