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Is there a lesson to be learned in any of this yet? If there is, it might be this: that the long standing adage in baseball that good pitching beats good hitting holds true.
All four remaining teams have strong, deep starting rotations. In the case of the 1970 Orioles the regular season found them with three 20-game winners in Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, and Dave McNally. The 1999 Atlanta Braves starting rotation simply features three future Hall-of-Famers in Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, along with a young Kevin Millwood in what would prove to be the best season of his career. The 1948 Indians had future Hall-of-Famers Bob Feller and Bob Lemon along with Gene Bearden in the one excellent season he had in his relatively short and pedestrian career. And the 1919 Reds, while not quite having the top of the rotation fire-power of the other three, have a deep rotation enough with Hod Eller, Dutch Ruether, Jimmy Ring, and Dolf Luque that they have one of their better regular season starters, veteran Slim Sallee, coming out of the pen to great effect.
Now that these four teams remain it will be interesting to see if pitching dominates round three or if it will be the teams who manage just enough offense to set themselves apart who advance.
Any predictions?
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