Playoff Baseball in the International League

In my opinion, we have three factors that drive success in the playoffs.

1. The manager/coach crew. This time of year the team rosters are chaotic. Leadership and the skill of the manager and coaching staff are crucial. 
2. Depth of the parent club's minor league system—although that can work against the Bulls. For example, the Ray's AA team, the Montgomery Biscuits, are in the Southern League championship playoffs. And they start today, too. Two of the pitchers on Monday came all the way up from A ball.
3. Luck. That may sound a bit silly, but I will point out that the Bulls won their first National Triple-A title on a passed ball.

How do we assess these games coming up? We can't. There's simply too much turmoil and we are left at the mercy of Brady Williams and his crew's competence.

Meanwhile, take a look at the box score of yesterday's tie-breaker game. The RailRiders beat the Mets 14 to 13. They used 7 pitchers who gave up 10 earned runs, but I'm too lazy to drill down into how young or experienced the players are. We can point out, as they did, that they were down 1–7 going into the 7th inning, and had had just one hit in the game up to that point.

For real reportage, check out the Burlington Times-News. N&O and H-S continue to ignore the Bulls.