In the words of my man Jim Anchower, “Hola amigos, it’s been awhile since I rapped at ya.” When I last checked in, Saturday’s Yankee-Red Sox game was just moments away. Today the first round of the playoffs is underway. In between we’ve heroes and heartbreak on the way to a climactic end of a great regular season. I spent much of the past 48 hours tying it all up in an epic-length valedictory edition of the Prospectus Hit List. More on that in a moment.

First, to Saturday’s game. My pal Nick and I got to whoop up in the first inning, thanks in part to a two-run Gary Sheffield jack over the Green Monster off of Tim Wakefield. The old knuckleballer tried to cross him up with a fastball, and if there’s one thing Gary Sheffield can do, it’s cream a mediocre fastball. It was a cathartic shot, and the two of us were shouting such obscene things at the Red Sox that I swear a small bird died outside my window, and even Andra had to try hard to endure our boys-being-boys rowdiness. By the time the smoke had cleared, the Yanks led 3-0.

But the Sox came back quickly. Randy Johnson was shaky, pouting and glaring at the ump for squeezing the strike zone on him and yielding a loooong two-run homer to Manny Ramirez. The Yanks added two more runs in the second, and Johnson nearly gave them right back, loading the bases before striking out Edgar Renteria. Side note: Renteria’s four-year, $40 million contract looks quite absurd given his .276/.335/.385 line on the year. Baseball Prospectus‘ numbers also put him an astounding 22 runs below average in the field and worth just 2.6 Wins Above Replacement on the year. Blech.

With the three-run lead restored, Johnson settled down, while the Yankee offense pulled away slowly. Still, despite a lead that was as wide as five runs, the game carried plenty of tension. With that Red Sox lineup in that ballpark, no lead is safe, as the Sox have proven time and time again. The afternoon sun made things even more precarious, particularly for the not-so-nimble Yankee outfield. Sheffield made two crucial diving catches, one in the rightfield corner and one in right-center that in all likelihood should have been Bernie Williams’ ball.

The key point in the game came with the score 8-3 in the bottom of the eighth. With David Ortiz set to lead off the inning, Joe Torre stayed with Johnson, who’d thrown something like 119 pitches, rather than open the Pandora’s box that holds the Yankees’ lefty specialists (Leiter Fluid, Smolderin’ Embree, and Wayne the Bane). Johnson had handled Ortiz reasonably well in three prior at bats, striking him out swinging, allowing a leadoff double that went uncapitalized, and then getting him to ground out. Johnson quickly put Ortiz in a hole with two called strikes before Big Papi grounded meekly to Tino Martinez. Yesssss.

That was crucial because Tom Gordon came in and immediately yielded a solo homer to Ramirez, his second shot of the game. No one who saw last year’s ALCS will forget the two homers Ortiz launched off of Gordon, least of all Flash, who pitched that series like a man in fear. It’s not tough to imagine him issuing a leadoff walk or worse to Ortiz under those circumstances, opening up a bigger inning. Clearing Manny with the score 8-4 instead of 8-5 made a big difference, and the Sox never got any closer. Mariano Rivera retired the side in the ninth, giving the Yanks their 10th victory of the 19-game series against the Sox, meaning that they held the tiebreaker in the event the two teams ended up with the same record. With the slumping Indians having lost 4-3 to the White Sox, the final out meant that the Yanks had officially clinched the AL East. Torre was all but blubbering as he hugged his players; division titles don’t come much more difficult than that.

With the Yankees having clinched, Torre altered his Sunday plans, sending Jaret Wright to the hill instead of Mike Mussina. The Sox still had to win to assure themselves of the Wild Card; a loss and an Indians win meant a one-game playoff. As dramatic as that might have been, it never came close to happening. The Yanks missed a couple of early opportunities to put some runs on the board against Curt Schilling, and though Wright kep the game close through three innings, the Sox broke through for five runs in the fourth, and the game turned into a parade of crappy Yankee relievers auditioning for their October roster spots while the lead widened to 10-1.

That made Cleveland’s result a moot point; they lost for the sixth time in seven games, including three to the White Sox B-squad, sending their bandwagon to a crashing halt. Awkwardly enough, the Indians still finished the season ranked #1 on the Hit List, with the Cardinals second and the Yanks third. I’m sure I’ll hear plenty about that from my readers. It’s the run differential, people. The Indians outscored opponents by 148 runs, 33 more than any AL team. But they went 22-36 in one-run games, losing five of them in the final week. It’s a sad way to go — the greedy fan in me wanted both the Indians and the Yanks in the playoffs at Boston’s expense — but that doesn’t diminish the great leap forward they took this year. They’ll be back.

Anyway, this edition of the Hit List marks the 23rd I’ve written on the season (four of them were handled by understudies while I traveled or concentrated on other deadlines). I’m amazed I made it through the year, quite frankly; better BP writers have tried a similar weekly rundown and failed to carry it through; it’s an immensely time-consuming task. The upside is that I feel thoroughly conversant on every team; each capsule this week practically contains the starting point for a BP 2006 essay. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Joe Sheehan for suggesting that I create the Hit List and then letting me figure out exactly how I wanted to handle it, John Erhardt for catching every Simpsons reference, Ben Murphy for creating a script that automated some of the formatting and for keeping the column warm while I got married and went on my honeymoon, Dave Metz for pinch-hitting late in the season when I needed it the most, Clay Davenport for being responsive to my nitpicking of the Adjusted Standings which form the List’s basis, James Click for handling the bulk of the data queries, and everyone else at BP for pitching in to answer my questions and back the piece with the organization’s support. Thanks, guys.

I’d also like to thank David Pinto at Baseball Musings for creating the Day By Day Database, a fantastic tool that allows the user to calculate all kinds of splits and intervals; that thing literally saved me hours of counting on my fingers and crunching numbers with my pocket calculator. Of course, it could be argued that the database actually cost me hours by opening up such a world of possibilities for the Hit List, but since it’s all in the service of a better product, I can live with that.

The Hit List will be back in some to-be-determined format after the playoffs end, but after this one, I need a break. On to my playoff predictions, which I’ll run virtually without comment except to say “it’s the pitching”:

• AL Division Series: Angels over Yankees in 5 — it pains me to say it, but I simply don’t see the Yanks as having the pitching depth to get through this round. If either Mike Mussina, who didn’t get out of the second inning in his last start, or Shawn Chacon turn into a pumpkin, the Yanks don’t have the bullpen to get through the way the pitching-rich Angels do.

• AL Division Series: White Sox over Red Sox in 4
• NL Division Series: Cardinals over Padres in 4
• NL Division Series: Astros over Braves in 5

• AL Championship Series: White Sox over Angels in 6
• NL Championship Series: Cardinals over Astros in 6

• World Series: Cardinals over White Sox in 5