Junk Food Nation, it’s time for playoff baseball!  (This is going to be a very sports geeky post, so if you want to skip ahead to the review, I won’t be offended. Too much.)  While I love football, there is NOTHING like post-season baseball drama.  I mean, just look at Wednesday evening: four games, eight teams, competing with two wild card slots on the line, three of the games being decided in the 9th inning or later. Amazing.  During the postseason, I get TOTALLY geeked out – with anywhere from two to four games going on most days for the next month, it’s just as euphoric as March Madness!  So, without further ado, my round one analysis:

1) Phillies vs St. Louis. Vegas has the Phillies favored in this five game series, and for good reason. The Phillies pitching had the best team ERA in the league with 3.02.  Although the Cards had a great story, coming back from over eight games down to win the NL Wild Card from the Braves, let’s face facts – pitching wins championship, and STL has gone their entire season without ace Adam Wainwright. Their offense is better than the Phils, but Kyle Lohse, Edwin Jackson, and Chris Carpenter vs. Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and potentially Cole Hamels?  Um, game over.  Maybe the Cards can eek out one, but I’m predicting a Philly sweep.  Phils in 3.

More after the jump. Today’s junk food: Herr’s Kansas City Prime Steak Flavor Potato Chips!

The Money Shot

Ok, Herr’s, I wasn’t a huge fan of your previous meat-flavored chips.  But I’m willing to give you another shot, specifically because I can’t remember if I’d ever had BEEF flavored chips before.

Is Kansas City known for steaks, or something?  I had no idea – but to feature that city so prominently on this bag you’d figure there was some backstory.  Like, Philly cheesesteaks, Chicago deep dish pizza, and Carolina BBQ… Kansas City prime steak?  Does anyone say this?  Need a consensus here.  Because otherwise, its a weird choice.  Like if Herr’s all of a sudden named some chips “Seattle Seafood Stew Chips” or “Indianapolis Empanada Chips.” I dunno, seems weird.

I LOVE STEAK

All kidding aside, can I tell you how much I love steak?  Seriously though – I have to give Herr’s credit, because the picture of this steak looks AMAZING.  Tender, perfect sear marks, rendered fact and juices dripping off – ok, I need to stop because I’m drooling on my keyboard.

Speckled with brown

The chips, however, are nothing spectacular, if this bag representation is correct.  Just looks like some plain old wavy chips with a little brown speckled onto them… Let’s not get too zany, ok, Herr’s?  Settle down over there.

Missing: any mention of steak

It’s bothersome to me that when i read the ingredients there is nothing meat refenced at all.  I see plenty of garlic powder, onion powder, spices, etc…but where’s the beef?  I mean, “natural flavor?”  Yikes… and why is it so low on the ingredient scale?  This is a bad sign.

Add the flavor of a big juicy steak? hoookay

Potatoes, cooked to a crispy crunch, and then topped with the flavor of a thick juicy steak, huh?  I’ll tell you the flavor I want: when you cut into a steak, and all that redness runs out onto your plate, and then you dip a piece of bread into that beef juice? THAT’S what I want these chips to taste like.

Potatoes soaked in meat drippings?

The chips themselves LOOK good – the bag had a healthy amount, and each chip looked seasoned.  Kinda greasy looking, though, no?  Like, a little TOO greasy.  This bag of chips kind of looks like what the fries at the bottom of your fast food fry cup look like.

Powdered brown

The powdering on these chips is decent.  Every single crevice of these chips was doused with a generous coat of the light brown substance.  Looks salty.  Time for a bite!

Encrusted with flavor!

WOW SALTY.  Holy moly.  I like salt, but wooo. Sparing no expense, huh, Herr’s?

Backing up – besides the sodium that dried up my tongue, these chips tasted sort of beefy, but not enough to remind me of a steak.  The seasoning, as it stacked up, was more like a rounded out beef bouillon seasoning, or what you might make soup stock out of.  The best way I can describe it – as if you took the beef powder stock from a ramen noodle packet, and sprinkled that over a bunch of potato chips.  Not the most nom nom.

The base potato chips themselves were fine, but they were indeed as greasy as they looked, leaving an unpleasant feeling on my tongue.  All in all, I was not reminded of a thick juicy steak.  Sorry, Herr’s – fail #2 on meat chips.

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2) Texas vs. Tampa Bay. Oh Johnny Damon, you are ALWAYS in the postseason!  Tampa Bay’s ride journey to the wild card made for one of the best finishes I can remember ever watching. Vegas, however, still favors the Rangers. Why? Well, for one, Texas has the best team batting AVG in the entire league at .283.  Yeah, shut up, I know I said above pitching wins championships.  I just can’t ignore the facts though – Tampa’s offense has really floundered despite their amazing September, holding a .236 AVG in the last month.

Tampa may have better pitching, but not by much – CJ Wilson, Derek Holland, and Colby Lewis can be just as good as Matt Moore, James Shields, and David Price. Questions linger: Will Tampa Bay step up for this rematch of last year’s round one matchup? And can the Texas rotation, this year without Cliff Lee, hold the games enough for its torrid offense to take over?

Prediction: Texas over Tampa Bay, 3-2.

3) Milwaukee vs. Arizona. At the beginning of the season, I told anyone who would listen that Milwaukee would be this year’s 2010 Reds – a young team with amazing bats (Fielder, Braun) that just added two arms (Greinke, Marcum).  I believed it to be enough to push them to the top of the NL Central, and was correct. But now they face off against another upstart team, the Arizona Diamondbacks.  The DBacks star bat, Justin Upton, is just 24 years old, incidentally.

Zack Greinke left Kansas City to join a playoff contender, and now he has it.  Which Greinke will show up – the ace Cy Young-like Greinke, or the Greinke that, early in his career, had to go therapy because of the pressure of being in the big leagues.  This is his first big stage – it’ll be interesting to see how he responds.

Milwaukee was in the top ten in the league in both batting and pitching, Arizona was not.  I predict Milwaukee over Arizona, in four games, 3-1.

4) New York vs. Detroit.  I admitted, Junk food Nation, to being a Yankees fan early on in my blogging career.  And I must further admit – I’m scared of this series. Two words: Justin Verlander.  The best pitcher in the league right now.  And Detroit’s offense, led by Miguel Cabrera, is no joke.  Yes, I know the Yankees scored the 2nd most runs in the league, but Detroit was friggin’ fourth! Oh, and by the way, after CC, the Yankees have the building maintenance man and one of those big arrow sign twirling guys pitching.

I’m not scared of Doug Fister or Max Scherzer (only a little), but Verlander taking the mound twice guarantees two wins (in my mind).  Best case scenario – Yanks jump on Verlander for one of his two starts, and put this one away in four.  Otherwise, it’s going to be an all out battle, starting TONIGHT at 8:30pm.  I’ll be conservative and say Yanks in five.  But I am preparing to scream at the television a lot.

Yeah, that was geeky 🙂 Back to my snarky ways, tomorrow.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy