Major League Baseball’s Opening Day taking place just before or during the men’s basketball Final Four usually provides a neat little bit of symmetry — a spring, summer and fall sport beginning its season just as a winter sport concludes.
But this year, one of the most unexpected Final Fours in history symbolizes what we last saw on a baseball diamond, and what we are likely to see when college basketball teams are ramping up as baseball winds down in October and early November.
Opening Day takes place Thursday as Connecticut, Miami (FL), San Diego State and Florida Atlantic descend upon Houston in a Final Four that sounds more like a Mad Libs exercise. (Sorry again if you followed my advice and picked Iona to upset Connecticut in the first round, but I *did* say going against the Huskies, who entered the tournament as a top-10 efficiency team on both ends of the floor, could bust a bracket)
In a tournament that has put the madness into March, the Final Four lacks a team seeded first, second or third in its region for the first time since the NCAA Tournament began seeding participants in 1979.
That was 16 years before the first wild cards qualified for Major League Baseball’s playoffs. The tournament expanded again in 2012, when a second wild card was added. And after a one-year experiment with a 16-team tournament during the pandemic season of 2020, baseball permanently expanded the playoffs to 12 teams last season.
The result? Madness.
While the Houston Astros, the AL’s top seed, reached the World Series by sweeping the AL Division Series and AL Championship Series, none of the three teams in the NL — the Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves and New York Mets — to finish with 100 wins got out of the Division Series round.
Instead, the bottom two seeds — the 89-win San Diego Padres and the 87-win Philadelphia Phillies — got to the NLCS. The Phillies completed a gentleman’s sweep and held a pair of brief series leads in the World Series before falling to the Astros in six games.
All of which is to say we might get a lot of March in October and that the best teams over baseball’s marathon regular season may not be the ones to emerge in the World Series. But it sure is fun to try and predict the playoff field and Fall Classic matchup anyway!
Here’s our look at each division and our picks for the playoffs, with each team’s playoff odds in parentheses, followed by a dart board toss at guessing the World Series teams and outcome. Just remember the caveats. All odds from DraftKings as of March 29.
AL EAST
While the Yankees (-475) are a clear favorite after winning the division by seven games last season and then re-signing Aaron Judge (after a lengthy flirtation with the San Francisco Giants, who are visiting Yankee Stadium tomorrow), the rest of the division is a Mad Libs-ian jumble in which anyone could finish second, third, fourth or fifth.
The Blue Jays (-240) return their top nine players in terms of WAR at Baseball Reference — including seven who are 30 or younger — and bolstered their outfield and rotation by acquiring Daulton Varsho and signing Chris Bassitt. The Rays (-155) return 11 of their top 12 players per WAR and should get a lot more than 148 games out of the double play combination of Brandon Lowe and Wander Franco.
Your guess is as good as ours what the Red Sox (+270) will do after they responded to a last-place finish by not trying to retain Hall of Fame-track shortstop Xander Bogaerts and signing polarizing Japanese outfielder Masataka Yoshida. A similarly wide range of outcomes seems likely for the Orioles (+370), who barely added to their young core after a surprising 84-win season. Are the Baby Birds going to take the next step this year or next?
PLAYOFF PICKS: Yankees, Blue Jays
AL CENTRAL
Nobody handles October better than Terry Francona, and he’ll have six months to prep for the sprint with the Guardians (-135) the clear class of the Central. The Guardians upgraded their offense by signing Josh Bell and have pitching depth for days, which means they should be able to withstand the loss of Triston McKenzie for the first two months. The Twins (+115) staved off a retool/rebuild when Carlos Correa circled back after failing physicals with the Giants and Mets, but a rotation filled with five-inning pitchers and a lineup otherwise anchored by the balky knees of Bryon Buxton and Jorge Polanco limits their ceiling.
The White Sox (+140) were one of the most disappointing teams in baseball last season but offer plenty of intrigue this year, especially if Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert Jr. can all play 140 games apiece and Lucas Giolito regains his 2019-21 form. We’ve all been thinking the Royals (+1100) and Tigers (+1200) are in the right division to rapidly rebuild, but they’re a combined 331 games under .500 since 2017 and return a combined six players who posted a WAR north of 2.0 in their uniforms last season.
PLAYOFF PICKS: Guardians
AL WEST
Repeating is really hard and the Astros (-600) lost Justin Verlander to the Mets and Jose Altuve to the IL for two months with a broken wrist, but they won’t have any trouble getting to October thanks to a robust player development system which last year replaced Correa with Jeremy Pena, who went on to win the ALCS and World Series MVPs.
The Mariners (-150) could push the Astros for the division crown after they retained 11 of their top 12 players, per WAR, and upgraded at second base (Kolten Wong) and right field (Teoscar Hernandez). Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout finally got to experience life on the big stage at the WBC, but with Ohtani headed for free agency and a half a billion dollar payday, this is probably their last chance to end an epic playoff drought for the Angels (+155). But they might not be able to hold off the Rangers (+180), who continued their expensive overhaul by signing Jacob deGrom and added a difference-maker to the dugout in Hall of Fame-bound Bruce Bochy. No one is going to write books or make movies about these Athletics (+2500), but it’ll be fun to see if Esteury Ruiz can make a run at 50 or more stolen bases.
PLAYOFF PICKS: Astros, Mariners, Rangers
NL EAST
At least two teams here are going to have a terrific regular season rendered irrelevant by the October sprint. Ronald Acuna Jr. is back to 100 percent for the Braves (-550), who will get a full season out of 2022 phenoms Michael Harris Jr. and Spencer Strider and have another cornerstone in Sean Murphy, who became the latest Atlanta player to sign long-term upon being acquired from the Athletics. In their first two seasons with Steve Cohen as owner, the Mets (-380) have spent 290 days in first place and won one playoff game. Re-signing Brandon Nimmo and signing Verlander to reunite with frenemy Max Scherzer atop the rotation should improve the Mets’ chances of a deeper playoff run.
The Phillies (-170) lost Rhys Hoskins (torn ACL) for the year last week, will be without Bryce Harper (Tommy John surgery) until at least late May and have just one returning pitcher who qualified for the ERA title last year, but the addition of Trea Turner covers up a lot of flaws and nobody knows better how the tenor of a season can change in the playoffs like baseball’s poster boys for October madness. The Marlins (+320) return 10 of their top 12 players from last season, per WAR, which feels like some kind of record, but it’s hard to see a path to the playoffs in a stacked division. The projected Opening Day lineup for the Nationals (+2500) will feature seven players older than Juan Soto. At least the 2019 flag will fly forever.
PLAYOFF PICKS: Braves, Mets, Phillies
NL CENTRAL
One of life’s few certainties is the Cardinals (-235) retooling on the fly and remaining one of baseball’s consistent contenders. Albert Pujols exits and here comes 20-year-old rookie Jordan Walker joining the Hall of Fame-bound likes of Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado and Adam Wainwright on another team bound for the playoffs.
The Brewers (-110) have actually been the best team in the Central over the last five full seasons, but the unpopular trade of Josh Hader last summer and Corbin Burnes’ contentious arbitration hearing marked the beginning of the end of this iteration of a mid-market powerhouse. The Cubs (+360) look like the second-best team in the division after upgrading their lineup with the acquisitions of Dansby Swanson, Cody Bellinger, Trey Mancini and Eric Hosmer. The bottom of the division features everlasting rebuilding projects, but every Oneil Cruz at-bat will be a can’t-miss affair for the Pirates (+1200) and maybe soon we can say the same about Elly De La Cruz with the Reds (+1800).
PLAYOFF PICKS: Cardinals
NL WEST
The Dodgers (-600), possibly tired of their regular season greatness evaporating in a best-of-seven series, mostly stood pat this winter. Of course, that means they still return their top two position players, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, and rotation stalwarts Julio Urias and Clayton Kershaw. They’ll be fine, even if the Padres (-400) closed the gap by continuing to construct a superteam with the additions of Bogaerts and extensions for Manny Machado and Yu Darvish. Oh and Soto plays the entire season in San Diego this year.
The Giants (+180) needed to sign Judge and/or Correa and came agonizingly close to doing one or both. Alas, both returned to their previous clubs, leaving the Giants in the same purgatory-like spot as last year. With a couple ace-caliber pitchers in Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen and a budding superstar in Corbin Carroll, the Diamondbacks (+550) could really benefit from impromptu realignment. Such a trick wouldn’t do much to help the Rockies (+2500), who are the only NL team to never win nor lose 100 games since their debut in 1993. They might break that pattern this year!
PLAYOFF PICKS: Dodgers, Padres
WORLD SERIES PREDICTION
Again, all caveats apply about how hard it is to extrapolate regular season success into October. But let’s go with an all-time drought-busting Fall Classic with the Guardians (+1100 AL pennant), who haven’t won it all since 1948, going against the Padres (+475 NL pennant), who have never won a championship. Terry Francona further cements his Hall of Fame case by steering the Guardians (+2200 World Series) to the long-awaited championship in seven games.
