The National League Championship Series began last night, with the No. 6 Phillies beating the fifth-seeded Padres in San Diego. The American League Division Series starts tonight in Houston, with the top-seeded Astros hosting the No. 2 Yankees. The contrast between the two championship series matchups is one of the great joys of the baseball playoffs. That these four teams are the last remaining is an indication that anything and everything can happen when the calendar turns to October, and that the 162 games played in the regular season truly aren’t enough to determine a winner.
The other day, I wrote about the unpredictability that has always been part of the MLB postseason and that it’s too soon to say whether the latest expansion, to 12 teams, provides an unfair disadvantage to the best regular-season teams. Naturally, the Yankees followed that up with two wins over the Guardians to secure their third ALCS matchup with the mighty Astros in the last six playoffs. This doesn’t mean that what happened in the senior circuit with San Diego and Philadelphia is a fluke, or that the new format has done anything to preserve the sanctity of the 162-game regular season, either.
That said, the juxtaposition of the two matchups is notable, even if we cannot draw any grand conclusions about the 12-team postseason in its first year. The two AL teams represent the old guard, the two teams we can reliably expect to field competitive rosters each year (at least since 2015, in Houston’s case). The NL clubs are the new arrivals, organizations that went through long spells of losing to get to this point, taking a similar approach—though with more stops and restarts—to the teardown-and-rebuild model of development that the Astros revolutionized. My guess, though I’ll qualify it is speculative based on a one-year sample, is that we could see a similar distribution of newcomers and returners become the norm for the postseason moving forward. More teams in the postseason gives more franchises a chance to make it and, if they get hot at the right time—as has been the case this year for the Phillies and Padres—they can advance through the early rounds. And on the other hand, there is always a place in October for the premier organizations.
We’ll have plenty of time this winter to dig into what it takes to survive in the new postseason, even though our answers will be more preliminary than definitive. In the meantime, there are still at least two weeks of baseball left for us to enjoy, beginning with a couple of exciting games today.
Have any questions or comments for our team? Send a note to mlb@si.com.
1. THE OPENER
Orlando Ramirez/USA TODAY Sports
“Here it is. Try to hit it.
“Has baseball ever been distilled to anything more basic than that? Such bravado is disappearing in the game. Spin is in. Deception dominates. For the first time in recorded history, major league pitchers threw fastballs with less than half their pitches, 48.6%. Just six years ago it was 56.3%. More than 68,000 fastballs went poof! in the name of advanced metrics, pitching labs and incredibly detailed scouting reports on hitters.
“The Phillies don’t play that postmodern, passive-aggressive game. They are dialing up the heat and turning back the clock. The Padres learned that very hard lesson Tuesday night in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series.”
That’s Tom Verducci, writing in his column after the Phillies shut out the Padres in Game 1 of the NLCS last night. Zack Wheeler went seven innings with eight strikeouts and allowed just two batters to reach base (one hit, one walk). This is how Philadelphia has made it this far.
Phillies Look to the Past for Their Winning Pitching Strategy by Tom Verducci
Philadelphia is turning back the clock with its old-school approach to pitching in the postseason. Can the Padres catch up before it’s too late?
2. ICYMI
We’ve got another series starting tonight, so that means it’s once again time for predictions!
Yankees or Astros? Our Picks for the ALCS by SI MLB Staff
Houston and New York return to face off in the postseason for the third time in six years.
Also, here’s another predictions standings update now that the final Division Series has concluded:
Playoff Predictions Standings
Matt Martell: 6–2
Will Laws: 4–4
Nick Selbe: 4–4
Emma Baccellieri: 3–5
Stephanie Apstein: 3–5
Tom Verducci: 3–5
Claire Kuwana: 2–6
Tiebreaker goes to the person with more correct picks for both series winner and series length.
Now, let’s get you caught up on some of our other great stories from earlier this week:
Yankees Moving on to Houston After a Muted Celebration by Stephanie Apstein
They wore more alcohol than they drank after beating the Guardians. Next up, the Astros.
The NLCS Comes Down to Bryce Harper and Manny Machado by Tom Verducci
In the 13 years they’ve known each other, the two superstars have been on parallel tracks. Now, they face off in the NLCS, with a World Series appearance on the line.
3. WORTH NOTING from Matt Martell
Troy Taormina/USA Today Sports
Tonight, the Astros are playing just their fourth game over the last 14 days, their most recent game coming Saturday. That should provide Houston with the advantage of a well-rested pitching staff, but how will all that time off impact its hitters? The Astros didn’t bludgeon their way through the Mariners. Houston scored 13 runs across the three games, though that’s a bit misleading, considering the Astros scored just one run during the final contest, which lasted 18 innings, or the equivalent of two regular-length games. That doesn’t mean we should doubt the Houston hitters against the Yankees, who have a depleted bullpen and are about to play their fourth game in five days. It’s just something to keep an eye on during the first two games of the series.
4. W2W4 from Will Laws
We get our first double dose of championship series matchups today, with the Phillies trying to steal another win in San Diego in Game 2 of the NLCS at 4:35 p.m. ET before the Astros and Yankees open the ALCS in Houston at 7:37 p.m. ET.
The matinee’s starting pitching matchup favors Philadelphia in a number of ways. Aaron Nola has yet to be charged with an earned run in 12⅔ postseason innings, and he struck out 10 Padres while allowing just one run in seven innings during his lone outing against San Diego this season (though this did come before the Padres’ trade deadline makeover). Blake Snell, meanwhile, has averaged nearly a walk per inning in his two postseason outings—despite a solid showing against the Dodgers. Snell started against the Phillies twice this season; he didn’t make it out of the fourth inning in his first outing, in May after allowing three earned runs in 3⅔. He lasted a bit longer in his second outing, in June, giving up four earned runs in 5⅔ innings. Also, while Philadelphia ranked as the sixth-best hitting team against lefties in the regular season by wRC+ (115), the Padres ranked 14th against righties (101 wRC+), the second-worst mark among playoff teams.
Also, Aaron and Austin Nola will become just the sixth pair of brothers to play against each other in a postseason series, according to MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, so that’ll be fun—especially if the latter comes up to the plate against the former in a key part of the game.
5. THE CLOSER from Emma Baccellieri
How best to describe Kyle Schwarber’s 488-foot home run Tuesday? Here’s a sampling from his teammates. “The ball got so small so fast,” said Rhys Hoskins. “Poetry in motion,” said Nick Castellanos. And finally, putting it very simply, but perhaps most accurately: “Just very impressive. Just wow,” said Bryce Harper.
