Professional sports are about money and finding out who’s the best. Often, it’s easier to make the money. From college football, in which a bizarre computer system determines the no. 1 one team, to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, whose heavyweight champion resigned from the company yesterday after a big fight fell through, identifying the best and then getting them matched up is the most difficult feat in sports promoting. Even in the best circumstances, it takes luck.

This is why this year’s American League Championship Series between the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians is special. These two teams finished the year tied for the best record in baseball, winning 96 games each, and in the first round of the playoffs they decisively beat the Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels, who tied for the next-best record. A Red Sox-Indians set, rather than any of the potential World Series matchups, will be the best baseball has to offer this year.

Despite their even ranks in the standings, these teams were not really equals over the season. Boston scored 56 more runs and allowed 47 less while playing a tougher schedule; their offense was the second-best in baseball after the Yankees’, and their pitching staff was the best overall. The Indians are a very good team that probably played a bit above its head to reach 96 wins. The Red Sox are a dominant team and deserve to be favorites in the series.

Everyone knows Boston’s strengths, which start with David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, who are utterly terrifying, exhibits A and B in the case for there being such a thing as clutch hitting. They’re the heart of a brutal lineup that meticulously balances left-handed hitters like J.D Drew with right-handed ones like Mike Lowell and powerful hitters like Jason Varitek with fast ones like Coco Crisp. Their rotation is fronted by Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling, former World Series MVPs coming off utterly dominant performances against the Angels, and their bullpen features Jonahan Papelbon, arguably the game’s best closer, and a broad, deep setup corps.

If you were given unlimited resources and told to design a baseball team from scratch, it would probably look pretty much like the Red Sox. They have youth and experience, power and speed, and they’re as suited to win behind a complete game shutout as behind a barrage of line drives and walks. Their best players don’t just have clutch reputations, but long histories of coming through with their best performances in the biggest spots. They’ve been the best team in baseball this year.

All of this makes the Red Sox sound 10-feet tall, but the Indians are more than a little imposing as well. Travis Hafner isn’t nearly as celebrated a hitter as Ortiz, but he’s been basically the same player for several years now. The Tribe doesn’t have its own Ramirez, or quite the depth of hitting the Red Sox do, but Grady Sizemore and Victor Martinez are at least as good as the Sox’s Lowell/Drew tier of hitters. Ramirez makes the difference here, and it’s a real one, but these offenses are close in quality.

The biggest difference between the two teams may actually be in the rotation. Justly celebrated as Beckett and Schilling are — Beckett was the majors’ only 20-game winner this year, and Schilling is in a class with Koufax, Gibson, and Rivera among the best October pitchers of the last 50 years — Cleveland’s C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona would make a worthy top two finishers for the Cy Young award. Carmona was especially intimidating as he mowed down the Yankees’ lineup, the best in the majors, with a vicious, heavy fastball, allowing only five baserunners in nine innings. The tops of these rotations are probably a push.

Just behind them is where the series will likely be decided. Boston’s Tim Wakefield missed the first round with an injury, and Daisuke Matsuzaka, used to the more forgiving schedule of Japan, is clearly exhausted at this point in the season. The question marks here could make Boston’s one weakness, the lack of a shutdown long reliever, a huge one. Cleveland’s third and fourth men, Jake Westbrook and Paul Byrd, are each equally liable to be hammered. Byrd may have finished the Yankees’ season with five innings of two-run ball, but he allowed 10 baserunners in those five innings and never looked more than a few bad pitches away from being knocked out of the game. Westbrook is the kind of sinker/slider pitcher who’s as capable of throwing a seven-inning gem as he is of turning the basepaths into a carousel depending on how his pitches are moving.

Because these are both strong lineups with gamebreaking players in the middle, whichever team sees one or two of their iffy starters come up strong is going to have a real edge. I like the Red Sox’s chances here. Wakefield is a tough, experienced pitcher, and the knuckleball is a mysterious thing. Matsuzaka is a gassed pitcher, but a brilliant one who’s been pitching big games all his life. Westbrook and Byrd just don’t have their talent. Still, nothing is surprising when it comes to pitching—Byrd may have looked on the verge of being shelled against the Yankees, but he never was. He’s capable of doing that again.

For both of these teams, the question of the bullpen is inextricable from the question of the manager. Cleveland’s Eric Wedge beat the Yankees three out of four, but he made some really questionable decisions along the way, from using ace lefty Rafael Perez in three different two-inning stints to starting Byrd in Yankee Stadium to giving the ball to closer Joe Borowski, proud owner of a 5.07 ERA, with a game on the line. In Perez, Rafael Betancourt, and Jensen Lewis, Wedge has three relievers who can shut down any game. If he burns them out, or lets Borowski decide the team’s fate, he’ll regret it.

Boston’s Terry Francona isn’t as obviously likely to make a terrible decision as Wedge is, but the possibility exists. I mentioned this in previewing the playoffs’ first round, but by insisting on using Eric Gagne, who lost a lot to arm surgery two years ago, as his main 8th inning man, Francona is courting disaster. He also has a more limited crew to work with: Papelbon is the best reliever on either team, and Francona is refreshingly willing to use him outside of the 9th inning and in tie situations, but the Sox’s relievers tend more towards being situational specialists than Cleveland’s do. The search for the perfect late-inning matchup has won many a game, but it’s also lost many a game.

Anything could happen in this series, but Boston won five of seven this season, and they have the edges that count. The Red Sox have homefield advantage, some of the best and most proven big game players in the sport, and more talent. I think it will be too much for Cleveland to overcome. As befits teams run by perhaps the two best front offices in baseball, these are very similar teams, but Boston is just a bit better in most every area. Cleveland will be back next year, but this year it will be Boston in six.

tmarchman@nysun.com