Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

I'm very mad about this . I am probably going to write more about this for FanHouse later, but doesn't it sicken you that the way baseball is presented and, by extension, played in the playoffs doesn't even resemble the regular season sport? Playing baseball at the end of October is like watching an X-Files episode without Mulder and Scully. It's technically the same idea as the regular season, but nothing's the same. Bud Selig allows the season to go far beyond its natural end, and FOX's presentation of the games just pisses all over everything else. Hey! Game 5 is delayed again ! I bet that decision has nothing to do with FOX wanting to show House at 8 PM tonight instead of baseball. Nope. Nothing at all.

The Rays and Phillies kick off what should be an interesting and virtually unnoticed World Series tonight at 8 or 8:30 or whenever FOX feels like getting things started. I've done a video preview and a guide to the potential hyperbole in the Series at FanHouse already today, and we'll be running a chat tonight during the game. We also did a roundtable where I gave some analysis and a prediction, but I'll go a little more in to that here. I just don't think the Phillies match up well with the Rays at all. After Hamels, their rotation has nothing on the Rays rotation. Their lineups might be a push with Howard hitting, but he's been rendered impotent by the Jason Bay pitch in these playoffs and the Rays have several lefties in the bullpen (Miller, Howell, Price), as well as Kazmir in the rotation to deal with him. The Phillies have an edge in the bullpen, but Lidge hasn't looked great and if Price takes some innings from Wheeler and Balfour, I think the Rays will...

I mean to post this last night, but I think many of you will still appreciate the win probability graph from last night's Rays/Red Sox game. The Rays were like a pixel away from winning in the seventh inning with two outs last night. Friggin' Red Sox . I hope you guys saw Jason Bay draw those two clutch walks. On the bright side, at least there's baseball this weekend and we don't have to wait until Wednesday because of baseball's stupid refusal to reschedule the World Series when the LCSs end early.

Was anyone extremely depressed after the Phillies clinched last year to hear ESPN and FOX repeatedly note that "THIS IS THE PHILLIES FIRST WORLD SERIES SINCE 1993!!!" like 15 years is such a long time to not go to the World Series? And if the Rays win tonight, that means that since the Pirates last had a winning season, four franchises will have been created in Major League Baseball and all of them will have been to the World Series. Talk about your all-time depressing stats. Well, at least we're not Expos fans .

Just when it looked like Jason Bay had "best post-season by an ex-Pirate" all locked up, Matt Stairs goes and wallops a two-out, pinch hit home run to give the Phillies a 3-1 lead in the NLCS. Who saw that one coming? Make sure you check the FanHouse feed in the corner, as I've been doing a LOT of writing over there during these playoffs, which is why WHYGAVS has been so sparsely updated. Though I do have a post coming here probably for this afternoon.

You know what's certain to make you feel better about the playoffs? A celebration of the 48th anniversary of Maz's homer . Some day, the Pirates will be in the playoffs on October 13th and that celebration will be kick ass. I've been putting most of my free time this week in to FanHouse posts because of the League Championship Series starting. We should be liveblogging just about every night and I'm going to helping out with a lot of those. We've also got previews, game wraps, etc. Anyways, what's everyone think about these series? If you look through our roundtables at FanHouse, you'll see I picked Dodgers and Rays and I'm not changing that pick, even with the Dodgers losing last night.

Living vicariously through others ... Jason Bay hit .412/.474/.882 with two big homers and a ground rule double in the bottom of the ninth last night that resulted in him scoring the series winning run. I don't think any "vicarious fan" moment tops seeing him slide in ahead of the throw coming from right field and the Red Sox celebrate around him. If anyone deserves it, it's him. Jason Kendall hit .143/.143/.143. That's two singles in 14 at-bats. That's awful, I was impressed seeing him catch the whole series after playing 151 games during the regular season at the age of 34. Salomon Torres picked up a save in the Brewers only win and threw two scoreless innings, despite giving up four hits. One of my favorite playoff moments was Torres going nuts after the Brewers Game 3 win, then he and Kendall walking off the field together in celebration. Daryle Ward had an RBI single in three pinch-hitting appearances. Joe Beimel made the Dodgers post-season roster b...

I meant to do this yesterday, but forgot. How 'bout that Jason Bay last night? I feel pretty good about all the time I spent upholding his clutchness a couple of years ago. Today, the Rays play their first playoff game ever (they're already winning!), CC Sabathia tries to keep the Brewers from falling deep into a 2-0 hole, and the Cubs try to avoid throwing most of Chicago into a panic over falling behind 2-0 to the Dodgers. I could be wrong, but I think the list of ex-Pirates in action today is Jason Kendall and Salomon Torres with the Brewers, Aramis Ramirez and Daryle Ward with the Cubs, and Joe Beimel with the Dodgers.

If you read one thing about Pedro Alvarez this winter, I'd recommend that it's the Q&A he did with Colin Dunlap in today's PG. Very interesting stuff. And people can say what they want about him, but he seems like a good kid to me. I hope Huntington finds a way to get him in to Hawaii. Lots of playoff stuff going on at FanHouse. We've got blogger predictions , debate-style series previews , and Mullet is going to be liveblogging the entire marathon session of games today, with help from most of the supporting FanHouse cast (I should be dropping in and out). I'm also writing the Penguins preview for NHL FanHouse and that should be done tomorrow morning. And I'll also have a playoff column up tomorrow morning. Which means I'm going to be rather busy the next day or so and might not get a lot posted here.