Weekly Wroundtable: The Best Series of the Season

Opening Day is now behind us, but we’ve still got quite a bit of season to go—161 games, to be exact. And while what may be biggest game of the season is behind us, there are plenty of exciting matchups to look forward to throughout the 2012 season.

In this edition of the Weekly Wroundtable, we asked: What series are you most looking forward to? We gave our guest panelists a break after last week’s big season preview, but most of the usual suspects from Wahoo’s on First still wrote in. Here’s what we all had to say:

Lewie Pollis: I’m tempted to go with a series against an easy opponent—one of the series against the Orioles, or maybe the Tribe’s June trip to Houston—but the one I’m really looking forward to most is when the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim come to town, April 27-29.

As others have noted, the Indians have a relatively easy early season schedule: of the 21 games they’ll play this month, the three with the Halos are the only ones they have against a team that played better than .500 ball in 2011. It’s unwise to put too much stock into any three-game series, but if the Indians play well over the first few weeks, the media will play up the Angels’ visit as a real test of the Tribe’s ability to contend.

As a baseball fan I’m looking forward to seeing Albert Pujols and (maybe) Mike Trout and Jered Weaver in action, but obviously I’d prefer if they wouldn’t play very well that series.

Geordy Boveroux: I’m gonna have to go with the obvious answer and say that any series with the Detroit Tigers is the series I most want to see. The Tigers are the class of the AL Central, if not the AL in it’s entirety. Their lineup is stacked and have one of the scariest one-two punches in the middle in Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder. Justin Verlander is still the best pitcher in baseball and the rest of the rotation is also sound. Seeing how Cleveland can stack up against them will show how far they can go in 2012.

Katie Hendershot: It’s entirely possible the Detroit will have run away with the division and the rest of the Central will be fighting to stay afloat heading into the final month of the season, but if not, the last few weeks should be interesting. Almost all of September consists of intra-divisional match-ups against other AL Central teams. There could be great storylines heading into that last month if the division hasn’t already settled itself.

Above all else, I look forward to the final home series against the Tigers, September 14-16. The Indians and Tigers had some fun match-ups last season, and if it comes down to a late-season push for the playoffs, there’s a chance that we could see some more in September this season. There’s no guarantee that the Indians will even have a fighting chance that late into the season, but if they do, it’ll be interesting to see.

Brian Heise: The series I’m most looking forward to is the same series I look forward to each and every year. Actually, to be totally honest, it’s two series and for one simple reason: My deep dark hidden secret that pains me to the depths of my soul is that my fiancee is a fan of the New York Yankees.

At this point I’m not entirely sure how it happened. All I remember is me complaining about the Yankees so much one day that she adopted them as “her team” to spite me. It didn’t stop there. She turned into a full-fledged, stat-spewing, pink jersey-hating, “I’d rather die than be caught wearing anything Boston,” New York Yankees fan. In fact, her only regret in life is never seeing a game in the old Yankee Stadium before they tore it down. This is the life I choose to lead, and it is not an easy one.

Anyways, the point is that the two series the Indians play each and every season against the Yankees have become something of a bragging rights competition between myself and the “Yankee Loving Fiancee” full of name calling, hurt feelings, and lots of swearing. But you know what, I love it. We both look forward to it and before moving to New Orleans we attended every game at Progressive Field every year. Now, instead we’ll be glued to the TV screaming at the top of our lungs and then not talking for a week…Because I’m a sore loser like that.

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