Beckett and Halladay, NL West Showdown

Hello, and welcome to Tuesday. Did you have an enjoyable Labor Day weekend? I hope you were able to keep cool. It’s been very hot here (by our standards) this past week. But nobody wants to hear some yahoo in San Diego complain about the weather, right? Let’s get to the games:

American League

• Blue Jays at Red Sox, 4:05 p.m. PT — Blue and red, birds and items of clothing, two really good pitchers. This game has it all. Roy Halladay’s been kicking butt for several years now, ever since he reinvented himself in 2001, but what’s gotten into Josh Beckett? I know he’s always had the stuff; now, gulp, he’s actually using it. Walks down, strikeouts up, keeping the ball in the yard, entering his prime. That’s a little frightening, no?
• Mariners at Yankees, 4:05 p.m. PT — I don’t like watching pitchers who can’t throw the ball past guys, but this one’s got playoff implications. I’ll set the over/under on total number of strikeouts in this game at 11, mainly because I expect Seattle’s bullpen to get a lot of work in support of Horacio Ramirez. Also, Ichiro Suzuki, probably this generation’s best example of how it is possible to be both great and overrated, has now recorded at least 200 hits in each of his first seven big-league seasons.

National League

• Dodgers at Cubs, 5:05 p.m. PT — One of these two teams likely will reach the playoffs. Thanks to divisional alignments, it probably won’t be the better team. Steve Trachsel — he of the historically bad K/BB ratio — gets the start for Chicago, which is almost reason enough not to watch this game.
• Padres at Diamondbacks, 6:40 p.m. PT — Yeah, I’m calling this one again. It’s the tightest race in baseball right now. Was a time when Chris Young was automatic, but he’s 0-2 with a 5.48 ERA over his past four starts after opening the season at 9-3, 1.82. Control has been a problem since he missed a couple starts due to oblique and back injuries. Young is averaging 6.33 walks per 9 innings over those last four starts. Doug “The Most Average Pitcher in Baseball” Davis (74-74 career record, 104 ERA+) goes for Arizona, which seeks to reclaim a share of first place in the NL West.

One game? Toronto at Boston features the best pitching matchup, while San Diego at Arizona has the biggest playoff implications. Hey, why limit yourself to one game — watch ‘em both!