Game 5

This has been a fairly desultory round of baseball playoffs so far. The Yankees and Phillies made their opponents (the Twins and the Reds) look as though they didn't even deserve to be there. The Giants and Braves played a series of dramatic but extremely low-scoring games that were probably interesting only to the fans of the teams involved. The only series to go all five games has been the series with the two least famous franchises: the Rangers and the Rays. To give you a sense of how the powers that be feels about this series: every game so far has been a day game because TBS wanted to hold the other games for the larger night-time audiences. And, for the most part, these have been boring games. The only really interesting thing about the series is that so far every game has been won by the road team.

The Rays are certainly a better team than Texas. They played in a much tougher division and won more games. But Texas has Cliff Lee, who was dominant in the post-season last year and who completely handcuffed the Rays in Game 1. Tampa Bay will respond with David Price. He is one of the candidates for the AL Cy Young; he went 19-6 with an ERA of 2.72. But this is only his third season in the big leagues and he was clearly not up to the challenge in Game 1; he left trailing 5-0 with two out in the seventh inning, and his team lost 5-1. If Price can match Lee, the Rays should be able to win; if Lee is lights-out again, then Texas will probably reach their first ALCS in team history.