Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Surprises Rule In Play-In Round

Upsets were the order of the day in Round One, with 3 teams with the lower regular season winning % taking home wins. Convincingly, too - no series went to 5 games.

Detroit topped Cleveland in 4 in a major shocker. The Katanas top-ranked regular season pitching staff was thoroughly mediocre, posting a 5.29 ERA against the Gangstaz' lineup of has-been's and castoffs. Harry Encarnacion hit .455 for DET while Robert Franco had a pair of homers.

In the other AL matchup, Richmond ousted D.C. in 4 games. The Poor Men won the critical close games, getting shutout efforts in Games 1 and 4 from Charlie Cosby and Juan Gil (plus relief help in both). Edgar Redondo had 2 longballs and 4 RBI for Richmond.

In the NL, Jacksonville stunned defending AL Champ Ottawa with a sweep. Other than the 3rd inning of Game 1 (4 runs), the Ice were clueless against the sneakily effective Jinxed staff. And J'Ville mustered just enough offense against and DeJean and Merrit in Games 2 and 3 to eke out 2-1 wins. Quilvio Marrero knocked in 3 runs for Jacksonville, but the MVP's of the series were the Jinxed staff - they held Ottawa to a .214 batting average and no homers.

San Juan's win over Vancouver may not have been a huge surprise (in fact, they swept favored Vegas in the first round last year for their first-ever playoff series win) but the way they did it was: they just beat the 'livin crap out of a very good Victory squad. They scored 5 runs in the first inning of Game 1 and kept pouring it on, outscoring VAN 27-5. The Senators OPS'd .874 for the series; Kenneth Scoroposki drove in 6 to pace the offense.

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