The Tampa Bay Rays had an incredible season, but the Texas Rangers were more than ready for them. Adrian Beltre smacked three solo home runs to power the Rangers to a 4-3 victory.

Beltre has been a terrific — if imperfect — player over the course of his career. But many fans have viewed him as disappointment, especially in Seattle, after the Mariners signed him to a big free-agent contract following his monster 2004 season with the Dodgers and he was never able to replicate that .334, 48-homer season. But with the Mariners, I liked that he always played hard, played great defense (recognized with Gold Glove awards in 2007 and 2008) and hit for power in a tough park for right-handed pull hitters.

After a year in Boston where he compiled his best numbers since 2004, the Rangers signed him to play third base. The signing was controversial, not because of Beltre’s abilities, but because it left Michael Young without a position. In the end, it all worked out. Young filled in at DH and around the infield while contending for the AL batting crown and Beltre loved hitting in The Ballpark in Arlington — he hit a .326/.372/.706 at home with 23 of his 32 home runs, compared to .271/.297/.440 on the road.

Let’s see if the Tigers can wrap thing up against the Yankees tonight.

My 2011 MLB season predictions were a little off this year.

I said the A’s would win the AL West and they actually finished 22 games out of first.

I said the White Sox would win the AL Central and they just traded their manager to another team, which sums up how well they did this year.

I said the Giants would repeat as National League champions and in doing so I cursed Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval, Freddy Sanchez and the 900 other players they placed on the DL this season.

I had the Braves winning the NL Wild Card and we all know how that turned out. Yiiiiiikes.

While I did have the Phillies winning the NL East and the Yankees making the postseason as the AL Wild Card, those were gimmies. My only claim to fame was predicting the Brewers to win the NL Central, although when you have the Red Sox winning the World Series and they don’t even make the postseason you have no right to brag about anything.

So if you’re offended by my postseason predictions below, don’t be. Chances are I’ll be wrong anyway.

ALDS: Yankees over Tigers.
I don’t trust the Yankees’ pitching but I trust it more than I trust Doug Fister. Justin Verlander was the best pitcher in the American League this season but he’s had a knack for coming up short on the road throughout the years. Knowing the Yankees they’ll be down in every game of this series and figure out some way to advance. Derek Jeter will be 16-for-18 with 11 doubles and one game-winning home run or something ridiculous.

NLDS: Phillies over Cardinals.
The Phillies did the Cardinals a favor by beating Atlanta but if I were them, I would have wanted the downtrodden Braves to advance. That team would have just been happy to reach the postseason after a miserable September. Nevertheless, the Phillies’ pitching will dominate the hot-and-cold St. Louis lineup and the Cardinals’ pitching will fail them in Philadelphia. They’ve got Edwin Jackson slated to start Game 2 in that bandbox the Phillies’ call a stadium, which should work out well considering he’s a fly ball pitcher. (Read: sarcasm.)

ALDS: Rangers over Rays
I love the Rays and I would rather see a small market team like them reach the postseason in dramatic fashion than an underachieving Boston club. But Texas’ starting rotation is deep and was the first AL team since 1977 to have five pitchers with 13 or more victories. That’s an amazing stat when you consider Cliff Lee is no longer a part of the rotation. On the other side, the Rays will throw two rookies (Jeremy Hellickson and Michael Moore) and a guy in David Price who always seems to come up short in big games. I don’t like this matchup for the feel-good Rays, although Joe Maddon deserves to be the AL Manager of the Year with the work he did in Tampa this season. The guy has done great things despite being handcuffed by a cheap front office.

NLDS: Diamondbacks over Brewers
I get the impression that everyone believes the D-Backs are just happy to be here. But let me tell you something: This team does all the little things right. They pitch well, they steal bases, they play good defense and they get just enough offense to win ballgames. The Brewers have more overall talent but I like the NL West to reach the NLCS again this year.

ALCS: Rangers over Yankees
Again, I just don’t trust New York’s rotation. The Yankees relied on Sabathia and a three-man rotation en route to their last World Series title in 2009 but CC is running out of gas this time around. I know Ivan Nova and Freddy Garcia have good numbers but toss in A.J. Burnett and this rotation seems awfully combustible to me. Without Lee, I thought Texas wouldn’t even make the playoffs. But I’ve seen the error of my ways and like the Rangers to repeat in the American League.

NLCS: Phillies over Diamondbacks
While I do like Arizona’s chances of advancing past the first round I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of last season when Philadelphia’s bats fall silent in the NLCS. The Diamondbacks’ pitching is good but the Giants’ arms were special last October. Plus, I don’t see how the Phils don’t make the World Series with the rotation they have. It’s just too good. Bonus for Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee: No Cody Ross this year.

World Series: Phillies over Rangers
Yeah, I’m picking the favorite: what of it? Pitching, pitching, pitching…both of these teams have the starting rotation s to reach the Fall Classic and in the end, I see Texas coming up short again. I really like what the Phillies did at the trade deadline in acquiring Hunter Pence. To think Giants’ GM Brian Sabean gave away one of the best pitching prospects in baseball for a 34-year-old rental in Carlos Beltran when he maybe could have had a 28-year-old Pence for much less is just absurd. (Not to mention a 28-year-old Pence who is under team control.) Phils in six.

Last night will go down as one of the most riveting nights in the history of Major League Baseball’s regular season. Two wild card races came down to the last game, with the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves trying to avoid disaster.

For a while, things were looking pretty good for the Red Sox. The Rays were down 7-0 to the Yankees, and the Sox were clinging to a one-run lead in the 7th against the Orioles. And then the rains came. We’re always prone to look for meaning in random events, but when a team is staring down the worst September collapse in baseball history, a dreary rain delay seemed like a really bad sign.

By the time the night was over, Red Sox relief pitcher Jonathan Papelbon had given up the lead, and the Rays completed an incredible comeback to beat the Yankees in extra innings.

They’ll be talking about this one for a while. Here’s Scott Lauber from The Boston Herald:

It has been a slow, month-long march to baseball’s version of death — elimination from playoff contention — for the Red Sox.

Last night, it became pure torture.

One out from guaranteeing the Red Sox no less than a play-in game today against the Tampa Bay Rays, closer Jonathan Papelbon melted down. He allowed three consecutive hits, including a game-tying double by Nolan Reimold and a game-winning single by Robert Andino in a 4-3 loss.

Then, a few minutes after Papelbon and the Red Sox trudged off the field at Camden Yards, Evan Longoria belted a solo homer in the 12th inning at Tropicana Field. After trailing the New York Yankees 7-0 in the eighth, the Rays won 8-7.

And, with that, the Best Team Ever suffered the Worst Collapse Ever.

Lauber points out that no team has ever missed the playoffs with a lead as large as 9 games in September. The Braves managed to come close to the Boston choke job by blowing an 8 and 1/2 game lead in the National League.

Papelbon has always been a loudmouth, so watching him blow it was pretty entertaining. His post-game news conference is equally satisfying.

Rays win, and the Red Sox lose. They’re all tied up with two games left, and Boston fan’s worst nightmare is being realized. The Sox still have a chance to salvage the season, but this epic collapse seems hard to reverse with the Rays playing a Yankees team that has nothing to play for in these last two games.

The 2011 MLB season isn’t even two weeks old and already we’ve had our first players-only meeting called.

According to Tampa Bay.com, Rays’ outfielder Johnny Damon, being the veteran he is, decided to call a brief players-only meeting after the club extended its season-opening losing streak to 0-6.

“We just talked amongst ourselves to make sure we stay together,” Damon said. “This is not what we envisioned where we were going to be at this point. We can either sulk about it or embrace it and say, we have to get better. We have to forget about all this that happened. 0-6, it stinks, we hate to be in this position, but it’s not the end of the world. We know we have to go out and start winning games and we feel like once we do and once we get that and try not to put so much pressure on ourselves we can start to roll. And we keep saying hopefully sooner than later. …

“We’re in this together. There’s not going to be any separation of why aren’t the hitters hitting. No, we’re together in this. We’re 0-6 together. And now it’s time for us to win some games together.”

Damon is a good pro and he’s been around the game a long time. But there’s no magic recipe to keeping guys happy and united as a team: You have to freaking win. Damon is barely hitting the weight of a newborn baby (1-for-19, .053) and his defensive play has been comical at times. I respect what he’s trying to do but the bottom line is that the Rays just need to play better on a whole. They need to pick up that first win, and then get the second, and then the third, etc. Winning cures all.

That said, I think the bigger problem here is that the Rays just aren’t that good. They lost Carl Crawford, Rafael Soriano, Carlos Pena, Matt Garza, Joaquin Benoit, Grant Balfour and Dioner Navarro and replaced them with Johnny Damon, Manny Ramirez, Kyle Farnsworth and Felipe Lopez. I’m sorry, but the way they’ve started off the year isn’t surprising. I didn’t expect them to go a combined 0-6 in their first two series, but there are many people who believe that this club will struggle all year and I’m among them.

…oh, stop it. You don’t count, Yankee Fans.

The Red Sox, a preseason favorite of many pundits, have started off the year losers of six in a row. Their team ERA is 7.13, Kevin Youkilis, Jacoby Ellsbury, Marco Scutaro, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and big money free agent Carl Crawford are all hitting below .200, and Indians starter Mitch Talbot just struck out 13 Boston batters on Wednesday night. (That’s 13, and that’s Mitch Talbot.)

The Rays have also started off 0-6, but they haven’t even held a lead this year. They’ve scored one run in five of their first six games and fans are already booing Manny Ramirez. Ironically, White Sox starter Edwin Jackson also struck out 13 Tampa Bay batters in a 5-1 win on Thursday.

What does this all mean? Maybe something, maybe nothing. Pundits figured that the Rays could struggle with the amount of talent they lost in the offseason, but nobody saw an 0-6 start for Boston. Not after they shelled out big money for Crawford and traded for slugger Adrian Gonzalez. But the reality is that they’ve done nothing right so far.

Of course, we haven’t even reached the middle of April yet. If Boston sweeps two three-game series, they’ll be back to .500 (I took math in college) and this 0-6 start will fade a bit from memory. Besides, you can’t look too deep into what a team does in April – nevertheless the first week in April. Does anyone think the Pirates will continue to play well? No, they’ll eventually fall off. They’re playing well now because everyone expects them to finish dead last in the NL Central and therefore, the pressure is off.

That said, teams like the Red Sox that are expected to make a World Series run have a tendency to press when things aren’t going their way. Boston shouldn’t worry too much about being 0-6 but they obviously can’t wait too long to start winning either.

It has not been a great start to 2011 for the Tampa Bay Rays, who were just swept by the Orioles in their first series of the season. Adding injury to insult, the club also had to place star Evan Longoria on the 15-day disabled list with a strained left oblique.

The early diagnosis on Longoria is that he’ll be out at least three weeks so best-case, he won’t be back before late April. Sean Rodriguez will replace him in the lineup, while Ben Zobrist will play second base and Matt Joyce will start in right. Felipe Lopez was also called up from Triple-A and will likely see some at bats over these next three weeks as well.

Rodriguez replaced Longoria at third base on Saturday before the start of the sixth inning. He was then evaluated on Sunday and it was determined that he would have to be placed on the DL. While he doesn’t believe that he’ll be out for the full three weeks, players are generally overoptimistic when it comes to injuries.

The Rays scored a total of just three runs at home against the Orioles, dropping 4-1, 3-1 and 5-1 decisions from Friday through Sunday. Longoria has started off the year 0-for-5 at the dish with one walk and one strikeout.