Major League Baseball wanted to turn its playoffs into a March Madness-styled tournament. It probably didn’t have real madness — in the form of the New York Yankees-Cleveland Guardians AL Division Series still going on hours before and maybe even finishing as the NL Championship Series begins — in mind, but that’s what happens when Mother Nature converges with some terrible planning by MLB.
So while we wait to see who advances to face the Houston Astros in the AL Championship Series, let’s offer a preview of the NLCS pitting a pair of underdogs, the San Diego Padres and Philadelphia Phillies.
We’ll add the ALCS preview tomorrow. All odds for the NLCS from DraftKings as of Tuesday afternoon.
No. 5 San Diego Padres (89-73) vs. No. 6 Philadelphia Phillies (87-75)
Regular season series: Phillies 4-3
Series/pennant odds: Padres -120, Phillies +105
World Series odds: Padres +300, Phillies +360
This battle of bottom-seeded teams is the type of thing most often seen in the NCAA Tournament. Of course, unlike in March — when 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s and its seven-figure athletic budget fell in the Elite Eight to blue-blooded eighth-seed North Carolina — there really aren’t any Cinderellas in the NLCS. The Padres and Phillies had the second- and third-highest payrolls in the game this year and have a Hall of Fame-bound 30-year-old on a $300 million contract — Bryce Harper and Manny Machado — anchoring their respective lineups.
Still, there’s no denying the teams have taken Cinderella-esque routes to baseball’s final four. The Phillies’ odds of just making the playoffs were at +235 following a 22-29 start that resulted in the firing of Joe Girardi. Philadelphia is the first team to advance to the LCS after an in-season managerial change since the Houston Astros reached the NLCS under Phil Garner in 2004.
The challenges continued even after Thomson’s promotion. Harper was limited to 99 games by an elbow injury and a broken left thumb — the latter of which he suffered when the Padres’ Blake Snell plunked him June 25 — and ace Zack Wheeler was limited to 26 starts due to shoulder and elbow woes. Eleven pitchers recorded a save for the Phillies, led by Corey Knebel, who had 12 saves before losing his job and later suffering a season-ending shoulder injury. Philadelphia was the last team to clinch a playoff berth and finished 14 games behind the NL East’s co-leaders, the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets.
The Padres’ odds of winning the World Series were at +2000 at the end of July, before they acquired Juan Soto and Josh Hader in separate blockbusters but well after it became clear they’d finish far behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West. Soto hit just .236 with six homers and 16 RBIs following his acquisition — fellow deadline pickup Brandon Drury hit .238 with eight homers and 28 RBIs — and Hader briefly lost his job while posting a 7.31 ERA down the stretch.
In addition, San Diego thought it’d be able to pair a returning Fernando Tatis Jr. with Soto and Machado, but Tatis — sidelined since undergoing surgery to repair a wrist injury likely suffered in an off-season motorcycle accident — was suspended for 80 games in August after he failed a PED test. The Padres finished 22 games behind the Dodgers — tied with the 1998 Boston Red Sox for the furthest a playoff team has finished out of first place.
But both teams took advantage of the expanded playoffs to build momentum in the wild card series. The Phillies scored six runs in the ninth inning of their opener against the St. Louis Cardinals, to advance to the NLDS against the Braves, whom they went 8-11 against in the regular season. But Philadelphia outscored Atlanta 24-13 win knocking out the defending champs in four games.
The Padres eliminated the 101-win Mets in a three-game wild card series, when Joe Musgrove and whatever he did or didn’t have on his ear limited New York to one hit in the game three clincher. San Diego entered the NLDS with a 16-35 record (counting the 2020 playoffs) over the last three seasons against the Dodgers but vanquished its demons by knocking off the 114-win Dodgers in four games, including wins in games three and four at raucous and playoff-starved Petco Park.
All of which is to say we have no earthly idea what to expect here. The Padres have the deeper pitching on paper and home field advantage, but the higher seed is just 2-5 in the playoffs pending today’s Yankees-Guardians outcome.
This site is full of my misguided statements about the Phillies, whom I declared wouldn’t make the playoffs in June, long before I predicted they’d get swept by the Cardinals and before I amended it to say they’d get eliminated by the Braves. It’s March Madness in October, so ride the Cinderella. I now believe in the Phillies and the possibility of seeing “The World Series Defense 2: Electric Boogaloo” in season 16 of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.”
PREDICTION: Phillies in 6
ONE FUN PROP BET: Rhys Hoskins, most homers in the NLCS (+650)
