MLB Game Picks - Sunday: October 12, 2014

How about those Kansas City Royals? They have blindsided the Orioles, the prognosticators and whatever it is you call what I do. It really is an amazing story and speaks of what can happen when a team gets hot at the right time. Frankly, I did not see this coming and my picks have been based on that. I did not think any team was going to beat the Orioles, but the Royals have beaten the O's in every facet of the game.

I did, however, pick the NLCS game correctly with a great Madison Bumgarner game against the Cardinals. The big lefty showed why he is one of the best pitchers in the game and completely shut down the suspect Cardinal offense. This might be one interesting series for one that most fans outside of those two cities did not want to see happen.

Only the NLCS is in action today. The ALCS is in a travel day to Kansas City.

The pick:

• The Cardinals over the Giants: Both of these teams have far too much experience in the post season to let one win or one loss rattle them too badly. Now that we have the aces out of the way for each team, the key will be how the rest of the rotations stack up against each other. We have an interesting dynamic going with Lance Lynn today. He has struggled in a small sample size against the Giants in his career and is 0-3 against them. But there is also the fact that Lance Lynn is a much better pitcher at home than he is on the road. In his career, Lynn has almost a .700 winning percentage in St. Louis. So which trend will emerge the stronger today? And then there is Jake Peavy. Peavy's turnaround once he joined the Giants has been a great story. And it has been good to see the old Cy Young Award winner back to having some success. He finished the season strong and then was good against the Nationals in the NLDS. But that "good" was somewhat fortunate as he only struck out three and walked three in 5.2 innings. His overall body of work in the post season is not pretty. I think the Cardinals get to him and we have a 6-4 score or somewhere in that vicinity.

Yesterday: 1-1, Post Season: 7-12, Season: 1372-1102