In honor of the 2022 Major League Baseball season, which starts April 7 — and is actually a thing! — FiveThirtyEight will be focusing our attention on the most intriguing team in each division. Today, we take a look at the American League East, a top-heavy group of talented teams that could be due for […]
The general point of the MLB playoffs is to showcase the best teams in baseball with the World Series on the line. (No duh.) But that hasn’t always been the case in practice, even after baseball expanded its postseason over the past few decades to include an ever-increasing array of would-be contenders. Every so often, […]
Relative to preseason expectations, the two most impressive teams in baseball so far this season have probably been the San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox — a pair of clubs few thought would be headlining baseball’s two toughest divisions. But while both teams missed the playoffs last year and appeared to be in periods […]
Last year, the Miami Marlins were the biggest surprise in baseball, overcoming modest preseason expectations — and an early season COVID-19 outbreak — to not only make the playoffs, but also win a postseason series. Along the way, they needed breakout performances from pitchers (like Pablo López and Sixto Sánchez) and hitters (like Miguel Rojas […]
Chad Henne was the unlikeliest of NFL playoff heroes last week. The Kansas City Chiefs’ backup quarterback had run for just 19 net yards since 2014. Yet on a critical late-game third-down against the Cleveland Browns, Henne somehow scrambled for 13 of the 14 yards he needed to convert. Then, in the middle of color […]