ALCS and NLCS Week!

Welcome to the Championship Series week, CPL!
Since I am doing nothing but laying down fighting off covid (and watching Anchorman for the first time in my life) I figured I would do a CPL write up, since I haven’t had a chance to do one all year. Thought it might be fun to peek at the ALCS and NLCS matchups.

The ALCS sees a matchup of #2 seed Tom Cat’s taking on #1 seed Your Mom. Tom Cat’s won their ALDS matchup against Banocolates on a tiebreaker in what was an excitingly close game. Neither team put up exceptional offensive stats, but Tom Cat’s showed their playoff experience and were able to do just enough to squeak by. In the other ALDS game, Your Mom beat #4 seed Fajita Eaters 11-4-1 in a game that was much closer than the score indicated. Your Mom was anchored by their pitching staff that did not give up a run until Friday and finished with an ERA and WHIP both under 1.00.

So the ALCS sees two teams who have been there before. Tom Cat’s goes back to the ALCS for the fourth year in a row, and fifth time total. Your Mom goes to their 10th ALCS. If Your Mom is the New York Yankees of the CPL, maybe it’s only fair to crown Tom Cat’s the Boston Red Sox. And these two teams have a long playoff history that makes that comparison on point.

Going back to 2012, Your Mom beat Tom Cat’s in the ALCS. In 2019 Tom Cat’s beat Your Mom in the ALSCS. In 2020 Tom Cat’s beat Your Mom in the ALDS. Then last year Your Mom beat Tom Cat’s in the ALCS.

And for the fourth year in a row, the American League pennant will be won either by Tom Cat’s or Your Mom.


It is a completely different story over in the National League, where the NLCS sees #4 seed Pro Bowlers facing off against #3 seed The Big Hurts. Pro Bowlers came out swinging and shocked the world by not just beating #1 seed Kelly’s Heroes in the NLDS, but by absolutely annihilating them. Offensively and pitching, Pro Bowlers made a bold statement winning 11-5 while putting up unreal numbers. In the other NLDS game, The Big Hurts had their own shocking victory, as they took out last year’s NL Champ Danimals 9-7 in a game that came down to the wire. Hurts had decent numbers and made some shrewd managerial decisions to earn that victory.

As opposed to the AL, which sees the powerhouse teams fighting for the Pennant, the NL has two teams fighting for the Pennant who have never been to the World Series before.

Neither The Big Hurts nor Pro Bowlers has a ton of playoff experience, and they’ve never played each other in the postseason, which will make this a matchup to watch as two very hungry teams battle each other.
This is not the first time that Pro Bowlers or The Big Hurts have made it to the NLCS. This is actually the fourth time that Pro Bowlers is in the NLCS, and the first time since 2014. They had a 3-year run from 2012 to 2014 where they made it to the NLCS, but could not advance. As for The Big Hurts, they were in the NLCS just in 2019 but could not finish the deal and lost to Danimals.

Hard to find a MLB comparison for either of these teams. Back in 2019 I wrote something up equating each CPL team with an MLB team, and then I updated it again in 2017. For Pro Bowlers their comps were Toronto and Baltimore. Actually Toronto may continue to be a solid comp, since they don’t have the best record in their division, but have the tools to massacre in any given week.

The Big Hurts I had originally comped as San Diego and then later I comped them as Philadelphia . Here again I’m going to go back to my original comp. Just like the Padres, The Big Hurts seems to have a great team on the regular, but routinely falls short. But they have the talent to go all the way.

The ALCS and NLCS seem to be complete opposites. The ALCS has two teams with a lot of experience, a long postseason history and strong rivalry each trying to win the pennant one more time. While the NLCS has two teams with limited postseason experience each fighting for their first trip to the World Series.

So for what it’s worth, I think this is building to an exciting World Series. Yankees versus Red Sox and Blue Jays versus the Padres.

Oh, and Anchorman was funnier than I had anticipated it would be.