The World Series is set to begin on Wednesday night in Boston after the Red Sox beat the Tigers last night. They will, of course, face the St. Louis Cardinals. Ideally, the Mets would be in the World Series and render this discussion moot, but we'll have to wait until at least next year for that to happen. So which team would you prefer to see win?
It's hard to call the Red Sox underdogs given their payroll and success this year, but the team was written off by many before the season began. After dumping the mega-contracts of Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez last year, a strong core of position players—Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, and Jacoby Ellsbury—and a surprisingly good pitching staff led the team as several new additions filled complementary roles very well. Unfortunately, one of those complementary players is Shane Victorino.
The Cardinals, however, are the stuff nightmares are made of. The 2006 NLCS will always be a pretty good reason to root against them, and they recently borrowed a few pages from the Braves' book of anti-celebratory rage. On the upside, they're a very homegrown team, they play in the National League, and they currently employ Carlos Beltran.