Game 1 Is Huge for the D'Backs

There's been a lot of rightly deserved criticism of Major League Baseball and TBS for stretching out the earlier rounds of the playoffs to accommodate a later start to the World Series. The most interesting aspect, however, is how it affects a team like the Diamondbacks. That's because the D'Backs are built mostly on Brandon Webb being awesome and everyone else on the team being juuuust good enough for that to matter. More days off means Webb pitches more and that means the D'Backs have more of a chance to win.

The D'Backs entire playoff life will likely hinge on whether or not they can win Webb's starts. If they win the games he pitches, they only have to win somewhere between three and five of the games he doesn't pitch. The problem the Diamondbacks face is that with the extra rest, Webb will almost always be up against the opponent's ace. That's the situation the D'Backs find themselves in tonight, up against Carlos Zambrano in Chase Field for Game 1. The Cubs don't feature a rotation of Hall of Famers by any measure, but they do go three decent starters deep with Ted Lilly and Rich Hill following up the Big Z and not leaving fans with the questions that Doug Davis and Livian Hernandez do.

Game 1 is always big in a short series because a win means you only have to go .500 the rest of the way to advance. I think it's even bigger for a team that relies on their ace the way the D'Backs do. The Cubs are looking tonight to deliver a dagger in front of a crowd of transplanted Cub fans in Phoenix with their own ace on the mound, while the D'Backs need to prove to all the naysayers (like me) that they really deserve to be here. If any Division Series hangs on the first game, it's this one.