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The MLB playoff pitch is almost set – keyword: almost. Which means it’s time to start thinking about who will come out of the October tournament as the Ultimate Champion and if you can see the winner coming.
The playoffs make us zoom to the point where we squint often. Every match is a referendum, every winning strategy a trend and every loss a colossal mistake. But the truth is much more nebulous – and in some ways less satisfying: Baseball is a game where greatness is slowly revealed. Racking up the 11 or 12 wins needed to win the World Series is ultimately going to owe a lot more to chance and chance than racking up the 90+ wins it took to make the pitch.
Yet there are real abilities and trends that move the needle, and they can point us towards more likely champions. But not all familiar or common sense tips are good. Focusing on the most reasonable suitors – and the best values - means filtering out those good, bad, and utterly disproved contenders until the best options emerge.
First up, here are the World Series odds for the teams that we can be sure will even make the playoffs ahead of Friday’s games, via BetMGM:
The Boston Red Sox (+2500), Seattle Mariners (+5000) and Toronto Blue Jays (+4000) are also fighting for a spot, and the Yankees could still theoretically be supplanted.
But for now, we’re going to focus on the teams most likely to reach the starting grid.
Don’t: get caught up in streaks of victories at the end of the season
Sorry, St. Louis, but the concept of momentum has collapsed time and time again in the baseball playoffs. The 2017 Cleveland team, which won 22 straight wins, were beaten in the ALDS by a Yankees team to 91 wins. The Moneyball A, famous winners of 20 consecutive games, also lost in the ALDS.
Even end-of-season rallies that have had some success in the playoffs have generally not resulted in real World Series titles. The 2007 Colorado Rockies turned a furious flurry of wins in September into an NL pennant, but still wouldn’t have paid off as a World Series bet.
As Jay Jaffe points out in debunking this myth at FanGraphs, there really is no evidence to support the idea that the Cardinals’ 17-game winning streak or any other team’s hot September affects success. of the playoffs.
The reverse is just as often true: the 2000 Yankees were 3-15 in their last 18 games, then stepped up a gear and won it all. Discard the September recordings completely in small sample.
Do: find teams with elite pitchers
Traditional wisdom has long held that the starting pitcher is king in October. Then the 2014 and 2015 Royals knocked everyone over and tried to build an elite enclosure. But the reality – as the 2018 Red Sox and the 2019 Washington Nationals demonstrated in particular – is that elite pitchers of all races simply have more opportunities to work in October.
Really, you don’t have to worry about naming a team’s top pitchers. Just try to find a club with several elite arms that can be generously deployed with the robust schedule of playoff days off.
Clearly, the Los Angeles Dodgers are betting favorites in part because of their absurd weapon collection – having to face Max Scherzer and Walker Buehler borders on injustice. But the Milwaukee Brewers can at least match them with Brandon Woodruff, Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta. Plus, with the Dodgers still working desperately to avoid wild play, Craig Counsell’s Brewers will be better prepared to take advantage of their elite starters. However, they lost world-beaten reliever Devin Williams to an extremely stupid punch-in-a-wall-type injury.
On the American League side, the Chicago White Sox could be the ticket if they deploy Liam Hendriks in big spots and effectively manage Carlos Rodon’s health.
Don’ts: Clear away teams that rely on circuits to score
The smallball story isn’t true, and never was. This is particularly wrong at a time when the score depends more than ever on the circuits.
Being good at hitting home runs is mostly about being good at scoring now, which is kind of the point of the game. The 2020 Rays were extremely dependent on the circuits and they ended up in the World Series.
Do: Take a look at which teams are making the most connections
Another more nuanced thing that you might look at, however, is how often a team puts the ball into play. Limiting strikeouts potentially means more now, as putting the ball into play has become more difficult than ever.
The actual effect is difficult to determine, but there are signs that being a better contact hitting team is at least a bit of a playoff advantage. I took every team from the playoffs from 1995 to 2020 and ranked them year by year based on their roster strikeout rates, lower being better. The average World Series champion has ranked higher in this category than in overall winning percentage, and this trend has been especially true since 2015 – with no eventual champion ranking outside of the top half of playoff teams.
It’s a very vague form of analysis, deep in the towel, but it at least casts a little doubt on the odds of the Rays, Yankees and Brewers prone to breathe. The best 2021 contenders in this area? The Astros, whose much-vaunted offense has long been the best at avoiding strikeout – including when they won the 2017 title (spoiled sign steal). If the Blue Jays were on the pitch, they have the second best score of the game.
Don’ts: go big with generic teams that have worked harder to progress
There is a notion that the MLB diluted the pitch or inserted more randomness favoring the underdogs by adding the second wildcard in 2012. And while that does feel compelling when the Giants at 80 beat the Royals at 80 in 2014, that really didn’t turn out to be true at all.
The favorites were the benefactors of this change. A total of three wild-card teams have competed in the World Series since the addition of the one-game playoffs in 2012, and only the 2019 Nationals have made it since 2015.
As if it needed more callbacks, the NL West race between the Giants and Dodgers has huge stakes.
Do: focus on teams with the best records
Here’s a seemingly obvious idea that could still generate some serious value in 2021. Since 2012, the chaotic MLB playoffs have produced a roster of World Series champions that is anything but chaotic.
The middleweight champion since the introduction of wild card play has had… the best record in MLB. Five of the last nine World Series winners entered the playoffs as a seed, and another seed made the World Series (the 2019 Astros) before finishing second.
Seeding the seeds would usually be a boring plan, but the behemoth run in the western NL has led Vegas to keep the second-place Dodgers among the favorites right now. The Giants are tied for third at +700 odds, and the top Rays (also +700) aren’t the top pick in their league either.
There’s good reason to take a hit on one of the top contenders, but recent history suggests these regular season wins mean more than Vegas gives them the credit for.
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