Nationals choke and the Yankees squeeze out a tight one.

So as it turned out I was wrong about when the Nationals inexperience would come up and bite them. It is not very often that you see an epic collapse like that. When a closer like Drew Storen comes into the game with a two run lead and he gets two outs after a leadoff double, that is a situation where you need to throw strikes and not try to paint corners and just let the batter make contact and put the ball in play and let your defense take care of it. In that situation Storen needs to make sure he does not walk anybody and give them free base runners. Despite the fact that Storen seemingly blew the game for the Nationals, the fact that they were once up 6-0 cannot be overlooked either. This game was not just lost by Storen even though he will get most of the heat for this, but also the rest of the pitching staff of the Nationals. But lets not forget that the Cardinals are also a good team and should never be over looked. They put together some good at bats and earned themselves the right to advance to the next round. With the way they came back in the World Series last year, I expect a hard fought series going 6 or 7 games.

On the other hand, despite the fact that the Orioles lost their series, I believe they showed great poise under pressure despite being a very inexperienced playoff team. In none of the games were they blown out, they went into extra innings for two of the games and had a chance to win all of them. The pitching staff kept the Yankees potent bats in check for the entire series which will always give you a chance to win. But in the end they just didn't have enough in the tanks to get by Sabathia and his almost two complete games in this series. When you have a guy like Sabathia that can pitch that well for almost 18 innings in a 5 game series, chances are you will win the series. For the Yankees to beat the Tigers, the offense will certainly need to wake up, especially since the pitching staff of the Tigers is superior to the staff of the Orioles.

One thing is for sure, both the ALCS and the NLCS will be tough series lasting 6 or 7 games. But in the end the Giants and the Tigers will pull it out and end up playing in the World Series. Lets see how it plays out. Thoughts?