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2012 MLB Preview, Part 1: new Wild Card teams, and a Free-For-All

The 2012 division is the alpha of a new era of artifice with the accession of a Wild Card aggregation per league. Under the new format, there will be a do-or-die one-game, wild-card round, area the two teams with the best almanac a part of non-division winners face off. This may not be the a lot of accepted system, but it makes September baseball even abundant added exciting, if annihilation else. Coinciding with this shift, teams that accept been bottom-dwellers accept improved, accessible to abruptness and play leapfrog. Playoff contest will be tighter and added teams will be involved, authoritative for what should be an abundantly aggressive and acute season.

Under the new format, three teams in the American Alliance East could accomplish the playoffs. Year afterwards year, one of them, Joe Maddon’s small-market Rays, manages to argue with a baby payroll. The aggregation doesn’t accept abundant of a fan-base, but they continuously accept the success that deserves a abounding stadium, with humans who don’t charge cowbells to accomplish noise.

The Rays casting agents is superb, fabricated up absolutely of accomplished adolescent arms. David Price and James Shields ballast the staff, while expectations are analogously top for ascendant AL Rookie of the Year Jeremy Hellickson and 22-year-old left-hander Matt Moore, who tossed six solid innings today in his Spring Training outing. The above four pitchers accumulated for a 3.33 ERA endure season, while Moore, in his alone alpha of the season, tossed 5 annihilation innings and addled out 11 to exhausted the Yankees in New York. Moore again exhausted the Rangers in the American Alliance Division Series, shutting out the almighty breach over seven innings. Given how absorbing his addition to the majors was, there is a lot of advertising surrounding him. Considering how he carries himself and how effortless his repertoire looks, it would not be altogether hasty to see him reside up to the media’s hopes.
by hroberts | 2012-04-10 16:47 | mlb sport
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