If you wanted to place a bet in early September that the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks would be the contestants in World Series, you could have gotten fantastic odds. On 8 September, Arizona’s chance to reach the postseason – not even the World Series, just the playoffs – was 46.2%, according to FanGraphs. Texas’s chance was a lowly 38.6%. The D-Backs had cooled considerably after a hot start and looked to be circling the drain in the National League wildcard race. The Rangers, in a matter of days, would lose prized trade deadline acquisition Max Scherzer to the injured list with a strained shoulder, and he would not return until October. Both clubs were Fall Classic afterthoughts, expected to miss the postseason or exit early.
How drastically things have changed. The Rangers and Diamondbacks will indeed play for baseball’s ultimate prize after their parallel tracks took wild turns for the better in October. Both teams swept their wildcard series two games to none, then beat 100-win juggernauts in a three-game division series sweeps. Both went down three games to two in their respective league championship series, and both won their final two games on the road, to punch their World Series tickets. The Rangers dispatched their in-state rival Houston Astros; the Diamondbacks shocked the Philadelphia Phillies. And so when the World Series begins on Friday night in Arlington, Texas, the teams with a chance to win it will be a pair of underdogs who won 84 and 90 regular-season games, respectively.
In mounting their turnarounds, the Rangers and Diamondbacks got plenty of the old-fashioned baseball luck that every team needs to make and thrive in the postseason. But both of them had rosters built to give them a chance, and their pennant runs were also triumphs of precision.
The Rangers made their charge with a mix of old and young. They had one of the most productive lineups in the majors all season. Their adjusted on-base plus slugging percentage was 113, corresponding to 13% better than the MLB average and giving them the fourth-most productive offense in the game. But the lineup got an enormous boost when outfield prospect Evan Carter arrived in the big leagues on 8 September. Carter caught instant fire and posted a 1.059 OPS in 75 plate appearances to close the season.
Carter was worth 1.6 wins above replacement, according to baseball-reference.com, and the Rangers made the postseason two games clear of the Seattle Mariners. Carter, on the margins, was a crucial difference. Meanwhile, the Rangers got terrific work all season from their middle infield duo of second baseman Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, while catcher Jonah Heim and outfield Adolis García were dynamos in their own right. The Rangers lacked a front-line pitching staff, but they got enough offense that they didn’t need one. The franchise spent years developing offensive talent and signing more of it in free agency, particularly the high-priced additions of Seager and Semien, and then put together complementary pieces. Scherzer’s return from injury, even in a reduced state, has been a useful boost.
The Diamondbacks are a different proposition. They had a relatively weak lineup, especially for a World Series team. (Their adjusted OPS of 99 was a tick worse than the league average.) But they have four cornerstone position players: outfielder Corbin Carroll, second baseman Ketel Marte, first baseman Christian Walker and catcher Gabriel Moreno. Carroll and Walker sputtered in the NLCS against Philadelphia, but Marte hit .387 and two of the team’s lighter hitters, center fielder Alek Thomas and shortstop Geraldo Perdomo, found uncharacteristic home run power.
Arizona’s strength was in its two stalwart starting pitchers: staff ace Zac Gallen, who provided a 3.47 earned run average in 210 innings, and 35-year-old journeyman Merrill Kelly, who played in South Korea until 2019 and has found his place as a reliable Arizona starter over six seasons. Both struggled in the NLCS, but the Diamondbacks’ bullpen has rounded into form to help them at the perfect time. In 49 postseason innings, Arizona relievers have posted a 2.94 ERA and protected many a tight lead in pivotal spots. Ryan Thompson, Kevin Ginkel and Paul Sewald have let up three runs in 27 and two-thirds of those innings, striking out 32 batters and walking six. In October, the relief corps has been the differentiator between an OK ballclub and a legitimate championship aspirant.
This has been the second year of MLB’s expanded postseason format, which welcomes six of the 15 clubs in each league. As it did when the Phillies made a Cinderella run to the World Series a year ago, much discussion has flared up as a result of the wildcard teams’ success over whether MLB has devalued its regular season and should shake up the playoffs again. After all, the sport’s three 100-win teams all flamed out of the tournament early. Neither Arizona nor Texas can make a credible claim to being the most complete team in baseball or the best from April through October.
And if baseball were English soccer, proponents of roping off the postseason to a more exclusive set of teams (or no teams at all) would have a point. But the playoffs-versus-regular season ship left port from America long ago. In a relentless pursuit of television and ticketing dollars, MLB and its US compatriots have opted for big, splashy postseason tournaments that anoint the game’s champions.
The promise is about drama, not rigor, and the American public seems to like it that way. Even until 1968, when the World Series was the only postseason series, the possibility existed for a lesser regular-season club to beat a superior one. And thereafter, as the postseason grew, the chance of incongruity grew with it. The 2006 St Louis Cardinals won the World Series after posting just 83 regular-season wins, five more than their losses. Those playoffs included just eight teams, a lower percentage of the league than any of the other major American sports, and an interloper still created chaos. With our TV remotes and eyeballs, we’ve spent decades voting as a sports-watching public for exactly that sort of possibility.
