So I Guess Anyone Can Be An Expert These Days

That was easy... Too easy...

It's a trap!


Ok, maybe it's not a trap. Rather, it's a trip to the NLCS, the second year in a row for the Dodgers. And as I said on my Twitter account, I'd really just like to dedicate this series to the "experts" who picked against us.

First though, a little credit for those who got it right. What's that, Eric Neel? You picked us? In 5 games? Ok. Half-credit for you.
Also, congrats to Jeff Bradley, Peter Pascarelli, Enrique Rosas (who?), Jon Sciambi, and Gene Wojciechowski. Of the 24 people who made predictions for ESPN, you were the select few who picked the Dodgers correctly. Did any of you have the Dodgers in 3? I seriously doubt it, but that's ok. Everyone gets half credit.

Now, on to the wrong people.

Who had the Dodgers and Cardinals battling it out to five games, only to have the Cardinals come out on top?
Wow, look at that. Pedro Gomez, Buster Olney, and Keith Law amongst the moderately wrong people. Include in that list magical baseball stat gnome Tim Kurkjian, who stated in an article his prediction of "Cardinals in Five."

And I'll just include these names here, as their predictions didn't have a number to go with them, but good work to Dave Campbell, Jerry Crasnick, Peter Gammons, Steve Phillips (who knew he was a bad decision maker?), and Jayson Stark who all picked the Cards. Also, I'd like to acknowledge the select few who picked the Cardinals to win the World Series: Jorge Arangure Jr., Dave Campbell, Jason Grey, and Steve Phillips. I'm no "Expert" but I have to imagine the Cardinals elimination in the NLDS is probably detrimental to their World Series hopes.

Who's left who did have a number attached to their prediction? Why, Jim Caple of ESPN.com, who predicted this:
Cards in 4, eh? (He also picked the Cards to win the World Series) Yeah, I guess the Cards would pretty much just beat down on us like they did in 2004, and maybe the ghost of Jose Lima possesses Vicente Padilla or something and we scrape out a win. Sure thing. Expertly picked, buddy.

Which brings me, finally, to this. Karl Ravech. Who was absolutely correct in one sense... he predicted a sweep.
A Cardinals sweep. Ravech, my friend, turn in your card, and go home. You could have sat a monkey down at a computer and told it to make a prediction and there's only a 1/6 chance that he picks as badly as Ravech does. Ravech's prediction could only be more wrong if he predicted something like "Dodgers forfeit the series after Game 1" or "Cardinals in flurple!" Karl Ravech, you are so so so wrong, that I'll ask this of you one more time: turn in your "Expert" card, and go home. Otherwise, the people may have to rise up and seize your card from you. (By the way, as I typed this article, the Angels just completed a sweep of the Boston Red Sox, and you'll never guess which team Ravech picked there. Don't worry though, he had the Red Sox in 4, which is lucky, because I think if someone was so wrong in such a short span of time, they'd probably burst into flames.)

So there you go. A special thanks to all of you who picked against us. In all honesty, it probably helped us win. We didn't have the pressure on us of being the heavy favorite while having the horrible fear of a tremendous collapse in the back of our minds. In fact, you almost put us in the mentality of a team playing spoiler at the end of the season. You'd written us off, and counted us out. Some of you, like Ravech, made it seem like we didn't even need to show up. Why bother? We're only going to get swept anyway.

But here's where you guys are so fail. We don't mind playing underdog. We've done it all season. I've said it before, but we don't give up. We have that something special about our team. Something you experts would probably notice if you cared to stay up late enough to watch West Coast games (it might have helped some more of you pick the Angels, too).
In any case, I noticed no one, not one person in the 24 who made predictions for ESPN picked the Dodgers to win the World Series (though I imagine that would be hard considering 18 of you already had us eliminated). But again, that's ok. Do whatever you guys gotta do. We'll just keep doing what we're doing. And I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

But in the meantime, someone needs to find Karl Ravech and tell him to surrender his card.