Trying to forecast a 12-team Major League Baseball postseason is difficult because, well, baseball’s never really had a March Madness-styled tournament before. There was the 16-team 2020 tournament following the 60-game season, but it’s hard to place any stock in such a weird one-off format.
But this new March Madness-type format — agreed upon as part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement that was agreed upon following the owner’s lockout — is here to stay, for better or for worse. I’ll ride forever with the 1969 through 1993 format of four division winners advancing to the playoffs, but that horse is out of the barn and is a great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfilly by now.
That said, we do at least have a generation’s worth of expanded playoffs to assess, though. And if MLB is going to try and give us March Madness, well, let’s approach it like it was the NCAA Tournament by comparing it to the NCAA Tournament! Here’s my evaluation of some historical trends. At the end, I’ll look at the odds for some potential World Series matchups before doing my best to pick the tournament.
1.) Should we invest in the top seeds?
In the 37 men’s basketball tournaments since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, the Final Four has consisted entirely of no. 1 seeds just once — in 2008, when Kansas outlasted fellow top seeds Memphis, North Carolina and UCLA.
The track record for top seeds is a little better in MLB, but not by a whole lot. The teams with the best records in the AL and have made the World Series three times in the 26 full seasons of the wild card era, though the top-seeded Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays emerged from the 2020 field to play in the World Series. The Braves and Cleveland reached the World Series in year one of the wild card in 1995, followed by the Braves and New York Yankees in 1998 and the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals in 2013.
So while they have a bye into the Division Series, the road to the World Series will still be a long one for the Los Angeles Dodgers (111-51) and Houston Astros (105-57). However, at least one top seed has reached the World Series more often than not, with 11 of the 26 Fall Classics featuring at least one no. 1 seed. Somewhat along these lines…
2.) How often does the best regular season team win it all?
The no. 1 team in the final pre-NCAA Tournament Associated Press poll has won it all just four times since 1985 — most recently in 2001, when Duke earned the national championship. Again, the equivalent happens a little more in baseball, but not a lot. The team with the best regular season record has won it all just six times since 1995 (plus the Dodgers in 2020), and two of those times were in 2007 and 2013, when the Boston Red Sox finished tied for the best mark. The 1998 and 2009 New York Yankees, the 2016 Chicago Cubs and 2018 Red Sox all won the World Series following 100-win seasons that made them the overwhelming favorite.
While the Dodgers (+340 at DraftKings) are the clear favorite to win their first full-season title since 1988, there’s four other teams who won 99 or more games all with odds shorter than +1000 in this top-loaded field.
3.) How does the team with the better regular season record fare in head-to-head playoff matchups?
This allows us to reference the 8/9 first-round games, which are always the biggest of coin flips. The no. 9 seed is 76-72 against the no. 8 seed since 1985 — a .514 winning percentage. Conveniently for our purposes, the team with the better regular season record has a .516 winning percentage (98-92) in 190 playoff matchups in the wild card era (excepting 2020). This figure doesn’t include the 10 series in which the teams had the same record. tl;dr, using regular season records as a determinate is like flipping a coin.
4.) What kind of momentum does a team generate after reaching the playoffs via a play-in game or as a wild card team?
There are no more play-in games — which stinks for those of us on Team Entropy, the term coined by FanGraphs’ Jay Jaffe to describe those who want maximum chaos to generate ties requiring a game no. 163 to determine a playoff team — but it’s going to be awfully interesting to find out if the wild card series winners enjoy a surge of momentum similar to those who emerge from the First Four.
Since 2011, the first year in which the NCAA Tournament expanded to 68 teams and required an opening round to whittle the tournament to 64, five teams have gone from the First Four to the Sweet 16 — most famously VCU in 2011, which made it all the way to the Final Four. (Fun fact: My alma mater, Hofstra, finished ahead of VCU in the CAA that season, five years after Hofstra should have made the NCAA Tournament ahead of eventual Final Four “Cinderella” story George Mason, whom my Flying Dutchmen beat twice in CAA play — this is for a very niche audience and I thank you for the indulgence)
Aaaanyway, a team that reached the playoffs via a play-in game and/or as a wild card team has won at least one round 23 times in 26 full seasons since 1995 — every year except 1998, 2001 and 2009. Thirteen wild card teams have made the World Series and seven won the championship. The momentum was especially strong from 2012 through 2021, a span in which nine wild card game winners advanced at least as far as the League Championship Series and two (the 2014 San Francisco Giants and 2019 Washington Nationals) won the World Series. So the odds are really good that at least one wild card series winner will enjoy a lengthy run the remainder of this month — and perhaps into early November.
5.) How important is it to be playing well heading into the tournament?
There’s evidence on both sides of the argument in the men’s basketball tournament, with UNLV (1990) and Kentucky (2015) carrying unbeaten seasons all the way to the Final Four and Gonzaga (2021) remaining perfect until the title game. Conversely, the most famous Cinderella of all, Villanova, won the 1985 title after losing six of its final 11 games heading into the NCAA Tournament. Twenty-six years later, another Big East school, UConn, was seeded ninth in the conference tournament before running off 11 straight victories to win the national championship.
In baseball, the signs are much clearer: Don’t be the hottest team to end the regular season. In 26 full seasons since 1995, only one champion — the 2012 San Francisco Giants — entered the playoffs with even a share of the best record since Sept. 1. Seven other champions had at least a share of the second- or third-best record since Sept. 1, most recently the 2017 Astros, who went 21-8 down the stretch and hoisted the hunk of metal while Cleveland sat at home having been eliminated in the ALDS after going an insane 26-4 after Sept. 1.
The best thing to do is to simply play pretty well over the final month or so. The eventual champion had a winning record after Sept. 1 in 22 of the previous 26 full seasons. (The four sub-.500 champs: The 1997 Florida Marlins, the 2000 Yankees, the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals and the 2015 Kansas City Royals) Its average record post-Sept. 1 was eighth-best in the majors. The team with the eighth-best record since Sept. 1? Your 2022 World Series champion New York Mets! Maybe.
SOME WORLD SERIES ODDS
Here are 10 potential World Series, with all 12 teams repped at least once, ranked from shortest to longest odds at DraftKings as of Friday morning.
Astros-Dodgers (+642, $10 wager would net $64.20): A matchup of top seeds would also be the sequel to the 2017 World Series, perhaps the most controversial Fall Classic of all-time.
Yankees-Dodgers (+723, $10 wager would net $72.30): There’d be thousands of nostalgic words written about this clash between the one-time Big Apple rivals, who have met 11 times in the World Series — but not at all since 1981.
Astros-Braves (+793, $10 wager would net $79.30): There hasn’t been an immediate World Series rematch since…the Yankees beat the Dodgers in 1977 and 1978.
Yankees-Braves (+891, $10 wager would net $89.10): Would generate memories of how the Yankees’ most recent dynasty started — and memories of what could have been for the Braves.
Yankees-Mets (+1730, $10 wager would net $173.00): Some of us may have a vested interest in this happening! *Wayne Campbell drinking a can of Pepsi and turning towards the camera*
Blue Jays-Phillies (+7700, $10 wager would net $770.00): A rematch of the wild 1993 World Series, which ended with Joe Carter’s iconic walk-off homer in Game 6.
Rays-Phillies (+12500, $10 wager would net $1,250.00): A rematch of the 2008 World Series, hopefully without buckets of rain in Game 5 and Rob Manfred dangling a dog-eared rule book.
Guardians-Cardinals (+13550, $10 wager would net $1,355.00): A sentimental choice, with Albert Pujols riding off into the sunset and Hall of Fame-bound Guardians manager Terry Francona, who is managing year-to-year at this point, chasing the most elite of company by trying to win a championship with a second team.
Padres-Mariners (+15500, $10 wager would net $1,550.00): What could be cooler than the two teams who have never won it all since debuting in 1969 and 1977, respectively, battling for that elusive first championship?
Guardians-Padres (+16800, $10 = $1,680.00): How about the longest shot of all, pitting the Guardians — who haven’t won it all since 1948 — against the Padres?
THE PICKS
OK, after all that number-crunching, here we go. I already picked the Guardians, Mariners, Mets and Cardinals in the wild card round.
AL DIVISION SERIES 1: Astros over Mariners in 4. Seattle’s had a remarkably fun season, but it ends here.
AL DIVISION SERIES 2: Guardians over Yankees in 5. Cleveland’s revenge for the Yankees ending the former’s 2017 season in the ALDS.
NL DIVISION SERIES 1: Dodgers over Mets in 4. There’s been dozens of moments this season in which it looked like the Mets were having a charmed championship campaign, but their hopes rest on Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer pulling a Randy Johnson-Curt Schilling and they may be out of steam.
NL DIVISION SERIES 2: Cardinals over Braves in 5. Atlanta becomes the Cleveland of 2017, the red-hot team whose season crashes into a brick wall in the first round.
AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: Astros over Guardians in 6. Cleveland’s lack of firepower finally becomes evident against the turbocharged Astros.
NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: Dodgers over Cardinals in 7. An instant classic but the Dodgers win it on, oh, let’s say a walk-off homer by Trea Turner. Go crazy, folks, go crazy.
WORLD SERIES: Astros over Dodgers in 6. In this first season of a new playoff format, let’s go with history repeating itself and the two top seeds clashing in the World Series just as in 1995— and the no. 2 team winning it all again. Dusty Baker cements his Hall of Fame case, the Astros get to nyah-nyah the haters with a no-questions-asked title and the Dodgers, once again, fall victim to the cruel nature of October and early November.
