Can a swing be both unprecedented and unsurprising? Last Thursday afternoon in Houston, one of the two best hitters in the world answered in the affirmative. By the bottom of the sixth inning in the second game of the American League Division Series, Seattle Mariners ace Luis Castillo had been staked a 2-1 lead against […]
Remember all those big favorites going into the MLB postseason? The record-tying four 100-plus win teams from the regular season? The 20-win gaps between best and worst seeds in each league? The theoretical advantage of a first-round bye for top teams under MLB’s new playoff system? Turns out only one league got the memo about […]
After an MLB wild card weekend that scrambled the lower tier of the World Series odds, the division series offers four solid favorites — on paper, at least. According to our MLB forecast model, the top-seeded Houston Astros, L.A. Dodgers, New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves each have at least a 2-in-3 chance at moving […]
Baseball’s postseason is finally upon us, and that means it’s playoff prediction time for our MLB forecast model. Before first pitch in today’s wild card quadruple-header, let’s run through how our Elo-based projections see the October (and November) action playing out. Who’s favored in the wild card round? Elo ratings and series win probabilities for […]
A common gripe, as Major League Baseball’s postseason ballooned in recent years, has been that the lowered standard of admission would devalue and de-intensify the regular season. Gotta-have-it games, tough managerial decisions, final-out bursts of euphoria or despair — for the best teams, the teams that really matter, these sorts of things would be consigned […]