Pitching is key in playoffs

The old adage in football and even basketball is that offense wins games, but defense wins championships. Over recent years, this axiom has held fairly true. Sure, you do have to score points to beat your opponent, but most often it is the team which can put the clamps on its opponent that ends up victorious.\nThis year's Major League Baseball playoffs are displaying a very similar relationship with a team's pitching staff. Despite the offensive explosion baseball has witnessed in the last six to eight years, pitchers constantly come up big in the playoffs to shut down some of the most prolific offenses, and this year has been no different. It does not even take a whole pitching staff to stop an opponent; two outstanding pitchers can carry a team far in the playoffs -- just ask Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling of the 2001 World Series Champion Arizona Diamondbacks.\nTake for instance the Braves and Cubs National League Division Series which the Cubs won in five games. Cubs' ace hurlers Mark Prior and Kerry Wood pitched three of the five games. The Cubs won all three of those games as Prior and Wood brought their 'A' games and halted the Braves offensive powerhouse.\nAtlanta had by far the best offense in the National League in the regular season as it led the NL in runs scored, home runs and batting average. But Prior and Wood carried the Cubs on their backs as they gave up just four runs combined in a total of 24 1/3 innings pitched. After a loss in game one of the NL Championship Series, the Cubs will look to Prior to continue his mastership on the mound and shut down the explosive and quick offense of the Florida Marlins.\nThe Cubs pitching staff is not the only staff which has put its team in good position for postseason success. In the 18 games of the four Division Series, nine of those games had the losing team scoring one run or less. Any team's chances of winning are highly increased when its pitching staff can hold the opponent to a run or less.\nDuring the regular season it is not uncommon to see scores of 10-9 or 9-7, where offenses tend to control the game. It is actually fairly rare during the regular season to see a game where a team would score four or five runs and win a game. Once again though, in the 18 games at the Division Series level, only twice did a team actually score five runs and come out on the short end.\nWhile the Cubs and Marlins Game 1 was a 9-8 finish, it will still be the starting pitching which decides this series. The Cubs will be able to pitch Prior and Wood four games if the series goes the maximum seven games. Therefore, the Marlins will have to come up with a big victory over one of the Cubs' aces to even have a chance to win the series.\nMuch of a team's pitching staff success in the postseason relies on being able to set up its pitching rotation as it would like for a series. For the American League Championship Series, the Yankees have been off since clinching the ALDS against Minnesota Saturday, while the Red Sox played on through Monday before downing the A's. Boston also had to pitch ace Pedro Martinez in Game 5 of the ALDS and now Martinez will not be able to pitch against the Yankees until Game 3.\nSome of the other Red Sox pitchers will have to step up for Boston to have a shot at defeating the Yankees and overcoming the curse of The Babe. But in the end, the Yankees pitching staff will prove too much for the Red Sox outstanding offense and the Yankees will be hosting the Cubs in the World Series after Prior and Wood once again carry the Cubs to another postseason series victory.