Only a few hours until the first pitch and I don't really have time to construct my own comprehensive matchup analysis of the Indians and Yankees. Fortunately for you, there are plenty of enlightened baseball writers out there who have done my job for me. If you're looking for a plethora of information about the division series, here are what I've found to be the best previews, from around the web, and their conclusions about the series itself.

• ALDS Preview: Yankees and Indians by Cliff Corcoran:

  So what have we learned? The Yankees run roughshod over the Tribe on offense, but fall short on the mound. Can the Indians superior pitching stop the Yankees superior hitting? Things have gone that way for the Yanks in recent postseasons, but there's something that tells me that the Bombers just might squeak this one out.

• Why the Yankees will beat the Indians by Larry Mahnken

  Do I think the Yankees are going to be the Indians? I really haven’t made up my mind yet. I know they can, and I hope they will, but they have a hard road ahead.
  
  If the Indians get spectacular starting pitching in this series, they’ll probably win.

• Why the Indians will beat the Yankees by Ryan Richards

  To win against the Yankees, you need to play from out in front; the New York offense and back end relief is much too difficult to attempt to play catch up. To that end, the Indians are well equipped to combat these strengths. Their starting pitching is a decided advantage, and they have a bullpen that can keep a lead, at least until the ninth inning. Add in home field advantage and the "short" ALDS schedule, and you can begin to understand why the Indians should win this divisional series.

• Playoff Prospectus: Yankees versus Indians by Jay Jaffe

  The Yankees have a threatening offense, but they appear to have committed to a much less than ideal rotation alignment, and they're at a clear disadvantage when it comes to late-inning matchups. The one-two punch of Sabathia and Carmona could easily push their team to the brink of victory before they even hit the Bronx, where the Yankees will need some good fortune simply to get quality starts. Indians in five.

• And make sure to read Ye Traditional Head To Head Playoff Preview and ALDS: Inside the numbers, both by Steven Goldman. He kind of refuses to write a traditional conclusion, thus ruining my nice little format here. Nevertheless, check 'em out.

Most of the authors quoted hedge their bets well in making their predictions. Sure, you can find plenty of idiots ready and willing to throw all their support behind one team. But, as Corey pointed out, the Indians chances of winning are pretty damn close to 50%. Really, the only evidence I know of to suggest the Indians chances aren't exactly one-in-two is that they have the home-field advantage, which bumps them to a 51% chance of winning. (Seriously, I did the math.)

Fortunately, Baseball Prospectus has once again given the world a wonderful gift, this time in the form of the Postseason Odds report. To explain, here's Clay Davenport:

A Monte Carlo simulation uses random numbers to simulate the playoff series. Each game of the series is given a seperate outcome probability, based on the home team, the team's performance during the regular season, and the expected starting pitcher matchup.

And this year they're factoring in performance against right-handed and left-handed pitchers, which gives the Indians a slight boost, since the Yankees aren't the same hitting juggernauts against lefties. So, in both editions to be published (October 3 and October 4), the Tribe has been given a 55.6% probability of taking the A.L.D.S. And, before any games were played yesterday, they had the third-highest probability of winning the World Series (to the Angels and Cubs) at 14.5%.

Distilling all this down—even accounting for all the advanced knowledge we have of baseball and the various advanced ways we can analyze it, that only amounts to approximately a 5% change in predicting the series winner based on pure luck. It's still a crapshoot. That's what makes the playoffs so exciting and it's also what makes writing a preview about them so frustrating for me. There's no holy grail statistic that will tell us who's going to win three-quarters of the time. And there's no "key matchup" that will decide the series 100% of the time.

That being said, teams do win for a reason, so when the Tribe prevails (or falters) we'll have praise (or blame) to spread around. I know Corey and I are going to follow the playoffs as rabidly as any of you, so keep your eyes peeled for more Indians-related complaining than usual in these parts. I'm now counting the minutes—I can't wait!