The Marlins needed to win game one knowing that they will face Mark Prior tonight in Chicago. With the wind blowing out, the game tonight is a tough one to figure. Usually pitchers like Prior and Brad Penny can be counted on to hold the opposition down, but you saw what happened last night as the teams continuously blasted the ball over the short fences in Wrigley.

Carlos Zambrano again struggled. At some point he has to learn how to sink the ball and change speeds. Major league hitters can turn around a jet plane if they know it is coming. The key to pitching is changing speeds, throwing something with a wrinkle in it, and keeping hitters off balance.

Prior does that even though he relies on a 96 MPH hard fastball. Kerry Wood is a Nolan Ryan clone, and his curve buckles hitters too.

Jason Schmidt blew the ball past the Marlins with little other than his fastball, perhaps at this time of the year the bats have slowed down a tad allowing a dominant power pitcher to survive with the heater. We’ll see tonight. The script for the Cubs is simple: Wood plus Prior, four starts, four wins.

I’m not so sure it will be that easy.

Click below for more on the AL!The Red Sox will think they are in another happier world when they face the Yankees aging pitching staff after seeing the Oakland A’s. Rick Peterson crafted a pitching plan that his pitchers followed carefully enough to hold the Sox down to a .220 average for the series.

You can’t blame Barry Zito (he went as far as he could), Tim Hudson, or Ted Lilly for the loss. Keith Foulke was banged up (back) and still got the outs until Sunday, the Sox never touched Chad Bradford in the series when it mattered.

The Sox will hit the Yankees, that’s for sure.

The difference again, anytime Boston takes the field, will be in the bullpen. Mariano Rivera, two words the Sox don’t want to hear, will be the key to the series in my opinion. If the Yankees can get the ball to Rivera, which is no guarantee with Gabe White and Jeff Nelson handling the set up chores, then the Yanks get the advantage.

Going through such a tense division series will help the Red Sox bullpen. They grew up. I still don’t understand why Mike Timlin isn’t their guy? Scott Williamson will be severely tested in Yankee Stadium after the A’s crowd clearly effected him on Monday night.

The scouts have told me this season Jason Giambi is having trouble hitting the high cheese. Is there anyone on the Boston staff who can throw the ball past Giambi other than Pedro?

The Yanks can hit, Boston can hit, I see this series as an offensive one as opposed to what we just saw in the five games with the A’s.

I’d like to see the Sox come out hitting in game one and not have to rely on sweeping the Yanks in Fenway, it’s unlikely that they will do that to NY in Boston, no matter what the crowd does.

The Yankee defense has been suspect all season. The Red sox will miss Johnny Damon in center, who knows when he will be back, if at all in this series? The ball will find Todd Walker, you can count on that.

Tim Wakefield, John Burkett, Derek Lowe, and Pedro, do you see four wins here?

The only way is to get to the Yankees starters, get them out of the game and beat the bullpen before Rivera gets into the game.

The Sox need to hit, I already said that, and hope that somehow Timlin and Williamson and Alan Embree are lights out. If they aren’t, then I’m afraid the dream ends for the Bosox in NY.

The Yankees pitchers are there for the picking, getting one of the first two in NY in convincing fashion will help immensely.

More on the A’s:

Part of the formula for success for this franchise over the past five years is locking up the young players to multi year deals. It gives the team cost predictibility and keeps the stars away from arbitration. Without those deals, this team would have been broken up last season in toto. The down side is sometimes you make a millionaire out of a player who doesn’t live up to that promise. Then the player has an inflated value of who he is because he has a big paycheck coming twice per month. Terrence Long falls into this category. If he was year to year on a contract would he be making 3 mil next season? I don’t think so. He doesn’t have much market value although I think he can help someone with a fresh start, after he eats some humble pie and retools his game (shorter swing). Long won’t work with Ken Macha next season you can count on it because Long cannot objectively assess his game in Oakland. The formula didn’t work in Long’s case, but it has kept the team competitive in virtually every other (Zito, Hudson, Tejada, etc.) long (no pun) term contract.

On the open market the A’s are a team with a 90 million dollar payroll, next year if they would bring in a few veterans who have been there before, it would help them keep focused as grown ups instead of the emotional crybabies or the detached cool guys they seemed to be after they lost game five.

Cubs need this one tonight behind their big guy Mark Prior.

Two great series, with lots of offense expected.