Sports Time Radio

The American League playoffs kicked off yesterday with the Houston Astros, Chicago White Sox, Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees all picking up wins in Game 1 of their series.

Now today not only does the National get their wild card series started, but the American League will play their Game 2’s today. That means there is going to be a ton of baseball on television to watch, but how are you going to watch it all?

The games today have scheduled start times of 11:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m. 1:00 2:00 p.m. 3:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Obviously there’s going to be quite a bit of over run in these games and that’s going to make them difficult to keep up with.

Now while I do have multiple televisions and a couple of other devices that I can stream on, but I don’t have nowhere near enough screens to watch all of these games at the same time. If you have the ability to watch all of these games at the same time I’m very jealous of you.

Let me know if you’re going to try and keep up with all of the games that are going to over run each other or if you just have one or maybe two games that you’re going to focus on.

Humorously we had some technical difficulties yesterday while doing the Sports Time Radio podcast. We where about halfway through the podcast when I got dropped off the line and I was unable to reestablish a connection; so we only about 30 minutes into the podcast.

Now we had covered the American League games that had been played and we where getting ready to move onto the Cleveland Indians/New York Yankees match up when I dropped off. In what was a funny turn of events dropping off may have been the best thing for me.

As we where getting ready to preview Game 1 of the Indians/Yankees series I was going to talk about how I thought that Cleveland was in a good position to beat the Yankees in this short series because of there pitching. I had planned to talk about how Shane Bieber will easily win the American League Cy Young and should be able to handle the Yankees line up in Game 1. Well Bieber had what has to be his worst outing of the 2020 season. He pitched 4 2/3rd inning; he gave up 9 hits and 7 runs while walking 2 and striking out 7. When Bieber exited the game the Indians found themselves down 7-2. That’s not exactly where I thought they’d be with Bieber starting, but it was another case of what do I know.

Facing Bieber was Gerrit Cole and he showed why the Yankees gave him that 9 years $324 million dollar free agent deal this past off season. Cole pitched 7 innings; he gave up 6 hits and 2 runs while striking out 13.

Bieber may have shown during the regular season that he was the dominant starting pitcher in baseball, but come playoff time Cole step up and staked the Yankees to a 1-0 lead and set them up to just have to win one of the final two games to move on to the next playoff round.

Today the Yankees will send out Masahiro Tanaka to try and get them to the next round. The Indians are countering with veteran Carlos Carrasco to try and stave off elimination.

So what do you think; do the Yankees eliminate the Indians today? While you’re at it do you see the Rays, Astros or White Sox finishing off their series today?

I’d also be interested to know what surprised you about any of the Game 1’s that where played yesterday. I think it’s clear that I was very surprised by how easily the Yankees knocked Bieber around and cruised to a Game 1 victory. What surprised you?

While we’re on baseball the Boston Red Sox have decided to make a change at manager after a disappointing season. The Red Sox where 24-36 and finished last in the AL East and while I didn’t expect them to finish in last place I didn’t think they where a playoff contend in any way.

Once the Red Sox lost Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez for the season you knew they where in trouble. There’s no team in baseball that can survive losing their top two starters and still contend.

Now you have to ask yourself; was Ron Roenicke given a fair chance to manage the Red Sox properly or was this the plan all along. I know you’re wondering what plan. Well remember Alex Cora was let go by the Red Sox before the 2020 season for his part in their cheating scandal. Now only was Cora fired by the Red Sox, but he was suspended for one year by Major League Baseball. Well that year is now over and the Red Sox need a manager. I fully expect for the Red Sox to name Cora as their manager again and Roenicke will go back into his role as bench coach. So basically Boston is making a mockery out of Rob Manfred and baseballs rulings.

Don’t forget to listen to the Sports Time Radio podcast lie on BlogTalkRadio.com, but if you miss the live edition of the podcast just head on over to TuneIn.com and you can listen any time you want to.

I’m also on Twitter if you want to look me up. I’m @Burketime