when you play 18 times and every game is a playoff atmosphere. When they play only 3-9 games during the regular season, it’s a little harder to determine if one team is better than the other in the posteseason, especially when the matchups between the teams occured early to mid-season or one team had some sort of personnel disadvantage. When it comes to performance, players back in May are not the same players in September or October. The Angels didn’t have anything to play for for the last weeks of the season before the playoffs other than trying to maintain homefield advantage, and this was a big topic of discussion regarding the team. Could they just flip the switch and get the competitive juices flowing for the ALDS? I don’t have a calendar in front of me, but I recall that the Rockies swept the NLCS last year and had to sit for a week or more before playing the first WS game. The Sox had to go 7 games in the ALCS and were in game-playing mode when the WS started. That was all of the talk during the end of the postseason, how the long layoff would hurt the Rockies. As for this year, with Boston and TB, they just played a month ago, and the Rays took both the home and away series. One important thing to note regarding the last meeting was that I believe Jason Bay was out on personal leave for 2-3 of the games. His bat was missed. Carl Crawford was out for the Rays. He was missed as well . The Rays now know they can win in Boston. They know they can win at the Trop. They can beat Papelbum. They know they can stand toe-to-toe in a tough battle and come out on top. No, the regular season outcomes guarantee nothing in the playoffs, but they do have psychological impacts on the players.