Playoff Prospectus: Tuesday LDS Game Projection

The fourth and final division series will come to a close tonight when the Rays host the Rangers and try to come all the way back from a 2-0 deficit to win the best-of-five series and advance to the American League Championship Series to face the Yankees. The Giants took care of the Braves last night with a 3-2 win in their National League Division Series, ending the managerial career of Bobby Cox. The game provided a touching moment, in which the Giants halted their celebration on the field to deliver a round of applause to the curtain-calling Cox. The legendary manager went out in style, guiding his team to the postseason and getting ejected early in Game Two, both key characteristics of his career.

In the first LDS Game Five since 2005, the Rangers will send ace Cliff Lee to the hill against the lead singer of the Rays Quintet in David Price. Both ace left-handers faced each other in the first game of the series, wherein Lee looked virtually untouchable while Price struggled. In what will be our last taste of action until the weekend—seriously, what are we supposed to do between tonight and Friday?—let’s go back to the well and see what PECOTA thinks of this game.

Rangers (Cliff Lee) at Rays (David Price)

Projected Runs Scored: Rangers 3.73, Rays 3.17

Projected Odds of Winning: Rangers 57.04 percent, Rays 42.93 percent

Rays vs. Cliff Lee

Rangers vs. David Price

PECOTA expects the Rangers to cease the Rays comeback behind the special left arm of Lee. We made some lineup changes per expectations, so things of course could change, though it is hard to fathom a set of configurations for both teams that would result in a flip-flop of results. The big boppers of both clubs are expected to resemble sort of an off-year Raul Ibanez, which goes to show how much the system thinks of these two pitchers. Aside from the lineup changes, there were various minutia corrected within this specific process that made this article possible, as otherwise it would have been no different from the Game One preview—it isn’t like our playoff projections included any type of ELO consideration to give added benefit to the “hot” team.

Lastly, as this projections series will not return until Friday with a preview of Game 1 of the ALCS, what did or didn’t work for you? This was our first time producing such a series and it is important to provide the most sought after information. Is there anything else you would like me to focus on as we get into the LCS and World Series?