Here’s Who’s Going to (Maybe) Win the 2021 World Series
We may have been robbed of tiebreaker madness, but this season’s playoffs still promise to deliver great matchups, with division rivalries, electric starters, potent bats, and a bit of devil magic thrown in for good measure. And though the field boasts a number of dominant teams that seem poised for deep runs, a lot can happen in a short series. That makes it difficult to predict how October will unfold, but 28 of our writers from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs answered the call.
Below are our predictions by league and round, as well as each writer’s complete forecast. Happy playoffs!
American League
Wild Card and Division Series
American League Wild Card
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| New York Yankees | 17 |
| Boston Red Sox | 11 |
Astros vs. White Sox Division Series
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Chicago White Sox | 18 |
| Houston Astros | 10 |
Rays vs. Wild Card Winner Division Series
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Tampa Bay Rays | 20 |
| Boston Red Sox | 4 |
| New York Yankees | 4 |
Championship Series
You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.
In case you didn't read all that, here's the short version. Membership includes:
✓Ad-free browsing
✓Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles
✓Historical & platoon projections
✓Leaderboard & player-page stat heatmaps
✓One-click data exports
✓Customizable player-page dashboards
✓Dark & Classic site modes
✓Weekly Members-only mailbag
✓FanGraphs Walk-Off, your year in review
✓Optional homepage photo removal
✓Gift articles to non-Members
✓Full postseason coverage
AL Championship Series Matchups
| Matchup | Votes |
|---|---|
| Chicago White Sox vs. Tampa Bay Rays | 14 |
| Houston Astros vs. Tampa Bay Rays | 6 |
| Houston Astros vs. Boston Red Sox | 3 |
| Chicago White Sox vs. New York Yankees | 3 |
| Houston Astros vs. New York Yankees | 1 |
| Chicago White Sox vs. Boston Red Sox | 1 |
AL Championship Series
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Chicago White Sox | 13 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 7 |
| Houston Astros | 7 |
| New York Yankees | 1 |
National League
Wild Card and Division Series
National League Wild Card
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 23 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 5 |
Brewers vs. Braves Division Series
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Milwaukee Brewers | 26 |
| Atlanta Braves | 2 |
Giants vs. Wild Card Winner Division Series
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| San Francisco Giants | 14 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 12 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 2 |
Championship Series
NL Championship Series Matchups
| Matchup | Votes |
|---|---|
| Milwaukee Brewers vs. San Francisco Giants | 13 |
| Milwaukee Brewers vs. Los Angeles Dodgers | 11 |
| Milwaukee Brewers vs. St. Louis Cardinals | 2 |
| Atlanta Braves vs. Los Angeles Dodgers | 1 |
| Atlanta Braves vs. San Francisco Giants | 1 |
NL Championship Series
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Milwaukee Brewers | 10 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 9 |
| San Francisco Giants | 9 |
World Series
World Series Matchup
| Matchup | Votes |
|---|---|
| Chicago White Sox vs. Los Angeles Dodgers | 6 |
| Chicago White Sox vs. Milwaukee Brewers | 4 |
| Tampa Bay Rays vs. San Francisco Giants | 4 |
| Houston Astros vs. Milwaukee Brewers | 4 |
| Chicago White Sox vs. San Francisco Giants | 3 |
| Houston Astros vs. San Francisco Giants | 2 |
| Tampa Bay Rays vs. Milwaukee Brewers | 2 |
| Houston Astros vs. Los Angeles Dodgers | 1 |
| New York Yankees vs. Los Angeles Dodgers | 1 |
| Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers | 1 |
World Series Champion
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 6 |
| Chicago White Sox | 6 |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 4 |
| San Francisco Giants | 4 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 4 |
| Houston Astros | 4 |
Complete Writer Predictions
FanGraphs 2021 Staff Playoff Predictions
| Writer | AL WC | HOU/CHW DS | TBR/WC DS | NL WC | MIL/ATL DS | SF/WC DS | ALCS | NLCS | WS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Chamberlain | NYY | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | CHW | LAD | CHW |
| Alex Sonty | NYY | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | CHW | LAD | LAD |
| Ariel Cohen | NYY | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | SFG | CHW | MIL | CHW |
| Ben Clemens | BOS | HOU | TBR | LAD | MIL | SFG | HOU | LAD | LAD |
| Brendan Gawlowski | BOS | HOU | BOS | LAD | MIL | SFG | HOU | SFG | HOU |
| Carmen Ciardiello | NYY | HOU | NYY | LAD | MIL | LAD | HOU | MIL | MIL |
| Chet Gutwein | NYY | CHW | NYY | LAD | MIL | LAD | NYY | LAD | LAD |
| Dan Szymborski | NYY | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | CHW | LAD | LAD |
| David Laurila | BOS | HOU | BOS | STL | MIL | STL | HOU | MIL | HOU |
| Devan Fink | NYY | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | CHW | LAD | LAD |
| Dylan Higgins | BOS | CHW | TBR | STL | MIL | SFG | TBR | SFG | TBR |
| Eric Longenhagen | NYY | CHW | TBR | STL | MIL | STL | CHW | MIL | MIL |
| Jake Mailhot | BOS | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | SFG | CHW | SFG | SFG |
| Jason Martinez | NYY | CHW | NYY | STL | MIL | SFG | CHW | MIL | CHW |
| Jay Jaffe | BOS | HOU | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | TBR | MIL | TBR |
| Jeff Zimmerman | BOS | CHW | TBR | LAD | ATL | SFG | TBR | SFG | TBR |
| Jon Becker | BOS | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | CHW | LAD | CHW |
| Jon Tayler | NYY | HOU | TBR | LAD | MIL | SFG | TBR | SFG | SFG |
| Kevin Goldstein | NYY | HOU | TBR | LAD | MIL | SFG | TBR | SFG | SFG |
| Lucas Kelly | NYY | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | TBR | LAD | LAD |
| Luke Hooper | BOS | HOU | BOS | LAD | MIL | SFG | HOU | MIL | MIL |
| Meg Rowley | NYY | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | CHW | MIL | MIL |
| Mike Podhorzer | NYY | CHW | NYY | LAD | ATL | LAD | CHW | LAD | CHW |
| Nicklaus Gaut | BOS | CHW | TBR | LAD | MIL | LAD | TBR | MIL | TBR |
| Owen McGrattan | NYY | HOU | TBR | LAD | MIL | SFG | HOU | SFG | HOU |
| Paul Sporer | NYY | HOU | TBR | LAD | MIL | SFG | HOU | MIL | HOU |
| Sara Sanchez | BOS | CHW | BOS | LAD | MIL | SFG | CHW | SFG | SFG |
| Tess Taruskin | NYY | CHW | TBR | STL | MIL | SFG | CHW | SFG | CHW |
Meg is the editor-in-chief of FanGraphs and the co-host of Effectively Wild. Prior to joining FanGraphs, her work appeared at Baseball Prospectus, Lookout Landing, and Just A Bit Outside. You can follow her on Bluesky @megrowler.fangraphs.com.
Amazed at all the white sox love here. They up against a better team, and have demonstrated that they’re not really good against teams over .500 (.480 record). They got to the playoffs by playing by far the fewest games against winning teams (56 games) because they’re in the worst division in baseball.
Meanwhile, Houston has the best record in the league against teams over .500 (.580), have played way more games against winning teams (77), and have a way better run differential. A short series is a coin flip, but I just don’t see how the sox got such an edge.
Not only that, but as many writers have the White Sox winning the Series as have the Dodgers winning. Really?
Same with Milwaukee: they got as many writer votes as the Giants.
I mean, I like a good underdog story as much as the next guy, but sounds a bit like wishful writing, perhaps?
Even before talking about the World Series, the 25-2 edge in Milwaukee winning the Divisional Series versus the Braves seems incredibly extreme for two teams with similar run differentials that are both making their four straight postseason appearance (with each having two first round exits and one NLCS 7 game loss in that period.)
All it takes is a small but obvious, solid edge, such as a better 1-2-3 rotation, to get near unanimity among a group of voters familiar with the subject matter.
Fair enough, but I’m curious to see what the ZIPS predictions will say, since the traditional Fangraphs odds have it as a coin flip (currently 51% Brewers on the traditional odds, 56.8% Braves on the season-to-date stats.)
Eh, Milwaukee is uniquely positioned for the postseason given their top tier starting pitching in a short series. Then again, I’ve stopped trying to understand the Giants.
Brewers pitching is great but Braves pitching is low key really good too.
ATL is also pitching well as of late.
While MIL clearly didn’t put forth much effort in the LAD series, I do wonder if the loss of Williams is going to affect them more than it would another team, given how pitching-reliant they are
Brewers bullpen vs. playoff teams is straight up awful, though: 5.69 ERA, 5.24 FIP, and .334 wOBA allowed. That’s the worst bullpen in the playoffs, by quite a bit. And losing Devin Williams probably won’t help that very much.
The Brewers are going to need to minimize that bullpen usage in the playoffs.
The expectation seems to be that the Brewers will switch back to a shorter rotation with Lauer or Houser and maybe even Peralta making appearances in relief as needed (but yeah… Williams is a huge wrench in the plans).
Woodruff vs. ATL career: 3 G, 3 GS, 2.70 ERA, 20.0 IP, 18 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 4 HR, 3 BB, 19 SO, 1 HBP. 1 Win, 1 Loss.
Burnes vs. ATL career: 4 G, 1 GS, 18.90 ERA, 6.2 IP, 16 H, 14 R, 14 ER, 5 HR, 4 BB, 9 SO, 1 HBP. 1 Win, 0 Losses.
Peralta vs. ATL career: 4 G, 3 GS, 4.41 ERA, 16.1 IP, 13 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 0 HR, 12 BB, 19 SO. 2 Wins, 1 Loss.
Woodruff and Peralta both pitched well against Atlanta this year, though the bullpen gave up a lot of runs after they were out of the game.
Burnes allowed his highest earned run total of the season in his one appearance against Atlanta this year and went only 4 innings. For whatever reason, Atlanta seems to have his number.
This is a more even series than it looks at first glance.
The Shorter the Series, the more volatile the outcome. I can understand that the Brewers should be the favored team. But given how random the outcome of 5 game series can be, I was a little surprised that the voting was as lopsided as it was.
“Same with Milwaukee: they got as many writer votes as the Giants.”
I think there are a few reasons for this:
(1) The writers think that the Brewers have an easier path to the NLCS than the Giants, who may have to go through the best team on paper, the Dodgers, to get there. In fact, 18 of 28 writers think the winner of the Dodgers/Giants series will beat the Brewers; it’s just that they’re split between which team will win.
(2) The Brewers’ biggest strength – tremendous frontline pitching – is presumably amplified in a short series.
(3) Milwaukee’s 95 wins probably undersells them. At the start of September only 3 games separated them from the Giants and Dodgers, and their Pythag winning percentage was only 1% lower than San Francisco’s . Then, b/c of their huge divisional lead (10 games over the Reds), the Brewers basically treated the entire month like Spring Training (I saw many of their games down the stretch – trust me, they were mostly playing to avoid injuries), whereas the Dodgers and Giants had to go all-in. IOW, I’m not convinced that there’s much to separate the Brewers from the Giants, but the way the last month shook out makes it seem like there is.
yeah i don’t get it either, plus they are guaranteed to have TLR over-manage them out of at least one win at some point
No, La Russa is more likely to over-manage them to an extra win at some point. He’s a Hall of Fame manager for good reasons, you know.
Agreed, even as a White Sox fan. Feel like they’ve been sleepwalking through the season the second half. That said, their starting 9 seems to be healthy and clicking, but the injuries to Rodon and Lynn seemingly still out of sorts def makes me think Houston has the edge, let alone vs Rays and Dodgers. Guess we will see if they really can “turn it on” for the postseason.
its just a goofy little exercise and its every easy to like the white sox, and very easy to dislike the astros. definitely wishful thinking.
I mean, I guess you COULD just take the team that’s “supposed” to win every series. That would be quite an entertaining read…
See the good thing about the Playoffs this season is the Astros don’t have to play any teams that had more losses than wins
And their best pitcher won’t even be on the mound. It is a little curious.
I guess my question is: how bad is the AL Central really? The White Sox finished two games worse than the Astros overall but there was no 100 loss team in the Central to gain wins on. The Astros might have a better record versus >.500 teams but they only went 14-14 in their non-White Sox games against the ALC.
I’m not gonna sit here and argue the White Sox are favorites but, on paper, this should be a very competitive series. The White Sox have a better lineup and a better bullpen than most of the regular season matchups and the Astros (most likely) don’t get the benefit of getting to tee off on “Dallas Keuchel SP” at any point. I mean, hell, Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez never even played in any of the games this season. Who knows what impact, if any, that has?
Let’s put it this way. The Astros played 21 more games vs .500+ teams than the white sox. That’s 38% more games than the sox (77/56) because the sox schedule was so weak. And despite that chunk of playing better teams, the astros somehow have an extra 28% in their run differential (+205/+160). This is one of those things where the close Win/Loss records doesn’t do enough justice as to how much better the Astros are. The astros basically played in a different league than the white sox did this year.
The AL central has 1 team over 500 and is consistently one of the weakest divisions in baseball, either by quantity of sub .500 teams or extremely bad teams. The non-sox AL Central might as well belong in the NPB at this point. Meanwhile, the Astros had to play 38 games vs competitive 86 and 90 win teams in the A’s and Mariners. To do that, finish with a better record, and a massively better run differential is a pretty clear indicator of which team faced better competition.
That’s amazing that the Astros were able to do all that while Correa, Tucker, and Alvarez missed a combined 200+ games this year. Wait? They didn’t? You’re comparing apples and oranges when looking at season results? Well that can’t be right.
If you think eloy and Robert completely close that 45 run gap, that’s fine. Doesn’t make up for the huge difference in quality of competition.
What’s more, the Astros scored 48% of all their runs this year against .500-or-better teams. They had a +99 run differential in those games.
The White Sox scored just 30% of their runs in those same games, and had a -18 RD.
The White Sox did this while playing the least amount of innings against winning teams and in the only division without a second .500-or-better team. They had, objectively, the easiest schedule in baseball, and still managed to come up with only the second most wins of any division winner.
I can’t see how anyone would even think that the White Sox would take the Astros, or any playoff team, at this point in a series.
Going by the whole season is really not going to work for the White Sox. They’ve only had their top 6 hitters in the lineup at the same time in 10 games this year. Eloy, Robert, and Grandal all missed significant time. Anderson missed a good amount of time as well.
To a lesser extent, players like Engel were gone most of the year. Their starting 2B, Madrigal was out for the year. So, that was a hole for 2 months until they traded for Cesar (still kind of a hole though).
On top of that, they pretty much wrapped the division up way early and were just gliding to the title.
So, season long stats are going to be difficult to use to compare them against anyone.
I saw the Tim Anderson comment on The Athletic yesterday, and it didn’t seem to match what I saw, so I looked closer. There were just two times all season where Anderson went more than 10 calendar days without playing: From April 5th-April 14th (10 days, 8 games); and August 29th to September 14th (17 days, 13 games). And according to your argument, they were so far ahead by that last stretch of games missed that they were “coasting”, so Anderson wasn’t needed. The White Sox played 9 games against .500 teams during those stretches (they went 5-4). Tim Anderson’s injuries didn’t affect those numbers.
I think it’s fair to suggest that adding Robert, Jimenez, and Grandal back into the mix changes things, but we also ignore that the Astros were without key players at times, too, including Alex Bregman, who was out from June 17th through August 24th (68 days, 58 games).
So yes, the White Sox got stronger, but so did the Astros, as did other teams.
Man, you got me. The Astros scored 48% of their runs in 48% of their games while the White Sox scored 30% of their runs in 33% of their games? That’s crazy!
If you can’t acknowledge the fact that the White Sox are in the playoffs for multiple reasons, I don’t understand why anyone should take your opinion seriously.
“If you can’t acknowledge the fact that the White Sox are in the playoffs for multiple reasons, I don’t understand why anyone should take your opinion seriously.”
They played in the only division without two .500-or-better teams and they played the easiest schedule in baseball.
That’s two significant reasons why they are in the playoffs, and I acknowledged both of them. Sorry that your White Sox aren’t a very good team. Hope they can eke out a win against the Astros. I’m not holding my breath.
Agreed–HOU seems underrated, but I wonder if the CHW bullpen carries more water with folks than it does with me (and I get it, even if I think Houston’s offense is too good to matter in the series)
I mean, 4 of the White Sox main 6 were hurt for chunks of the season, 2 for a large majority, one of which has been on fire since coming back. It isn’t the same team that created that stat line LOL. Also I think they’ve only played like 7 games total this season with the main 6 in the lineup
White Sox have also only played 10 games with their top 6 hitters in the same lineup, and went 8-2 in those games.
I think it has to do with the White Sox having the superior bullpen, and slight edge in SP. The Houston offense is better, but not by as much as people think because of the fact that the White Sox dealt with significant injuries to their (arguably) best hitters all year (Grandal, Jimenez, Robert, Anderson, etc.). Keep in mind: when these teams last faced each other, the White Sox were fielding minor league call ups, DHs in the outfield, and batting Brian Goodwin in the middle of the order–which was the case for much of the year. This is a close series, no doubt, but at full strength, it’s also easy to see why baseball writers would pick the Sox.
Shouts to Jeff and Pod for giving the Braves a chance lol
Interesting to see that the wide variation from the expert picks and the Fangraphs Traditional Playoff Odds. The latter have the Astros at 51.0% and the Braves at 48.5%, but the experts take the White Sox 18-9 and the Brewers by a lopsided 25-2. (Each person only gets one pick and there’s no odds involved, so the Dodgers-Cardinals outcome being more lopsided than the odds is expected, but the coin flip games one might think would be closer.)
The prominence of the Rays among the experts argues that maybe people are using something closer to Season to Date stats (which like the Rays), but that would favor the Astros and Braves more.
That’s because the writer picks are coming from a really weird binomial distribution. If you asked writers instead to predict % and then averaged them out they’d look way more like the simulations.
No, that’s the explanation for why the Dodgers-Cardinals outcome is more lopsided than the percentage odds of winning, and is sensible. Even a 25-2 outcome on a series predicted by the odds as 2 to 1 wouldn’t be all that weird.
However, the binomial distribution (sum of Bernoulli random variables, with some difference in estimate probability among writers) *cannot* solely be the answer for why the Brewers-Braves prediction is 25-2 despite odds of 51.5%-48.5% (and odds in favor of the Braves for the Season to Date stats.) Even given the binomial distribution, 25-2 is highly unusual unless the writers’ have probability fairly different from that near coin flip.
So I stand by my states that the experts clearly have Bernoulli odds significantly different than the Fangraphs estimates.
I think it is common, even for experts, to overweigh starting pitching in the playoffs. It is very important, but it’s not everything. Past that, the Braves match up not too bad with their own starters 1-3 assuming Anderson is fully back and their homer-happy offense is conducive to the possible low-run environment.
Am-Fam Field, née Miller Park, boosts home runs for RHH by 17% and depresses home runs by LHH by 4%, according to Statcast. The Brewers home field favors the Braves. In the season, only the Dodgers had a higher OPS against the Brewers than the Braves did.
Not all that interesting, really. 100 people familiar with gambling would all take the house side of a French roulette wheel with one 0 and no 00, even though the house edge is a small 2.7%.
Still utterly inconsistent with more people picking the Cardinals than the Braves, and considerably more people picking the Yankees and Red Sox over the Braves.
But I take your point that the odd thing is why all the series aren’t almost unanimous, but surely you can appreciate that according to the Fangraphs odds the Braves-Brewers series is closer than any of the others (and that the Braves even have the edge on the Season to Date stats, the only method that favors the Rays over the Red Sox or Yankees.)
It’s not like roulette, where the odds are well known (outside cheating). Surely with Fangraphs odds that are near a coin flip (and that favor the Braves by one method) you would normally expect at least some experts to have personal probabilities towards the Braves. It’s interesting that they’re all shifted towards the Brewers – it probably is a “top of the rotation in a short series” bias, and maybe the ZIPS prediction will bear that out.
So no matter what, you’re agreeing that the overall result is inconsistent, just about what aspect is unusual.
This is a fun exercise because the presumed best team in MLB has a 50/50 shot of getting knocked out in the next couple of days. For that reason, I’m disinclined to pick the Dodgers. The logical option is the Giants, but I think both the Dodgers and Cardinals are much tougher outs than the Braves. So I think the chances of any one of those three teams making it through the divisional round are lower than the Brewers, who I think have to be favored over the Braves and their lineup filled with misfits. So I’m leaning towards the Brewers as the most likely to win the pennant, even though I’m pretty sure I’d pick both the Giants and Dodgers when / if they actually face them.
The band of misfits leads the NL in scoring after the break. I think Braves pitching is what gets them knocked out.
The bullpen isn’t lights out but it’s serviceable, and the rotation is fine. But with the exception of Freeman and Riley I’m not buying that lineup stands up against the Brewers pitching. Jorge Soler and Eddie Rosario are a nice story and they could continue to hit well, but it just doesn’t seem that likely.
The Dodgers are obviously a much tougher out than the Braves, not even close. But the Cardinals? Baseruns has them 3 wins worse and pythag much worse
Don’t sleep on the Cards. They had a period in the middle of the year where almost every pitcher was a disaster or hurt except for Wainwright. It’s a small miracle that it didn’t completely sink their season, but the team the Dodgers will face is not the same one that ran out John Gant and Carlos Martinez and Johan Oviedo as starter. They’re way more dangerous than their full-season record indicates. I’d think that they’d have an even shot against the Brewers in a 7-game series and while they’d be definite underdogs against the Giants it wouldn’t be prohibitively so.
By this logic, don’t sleep on the Braves. They had a lot of early injuries and they just werent the same team with Abraham Almonte, Kevan Smith, and Guillermo Heredia in the lineup as the are with the trade deadline acquisitions (even if they regress) and d’Arnaud in the lineup. They’re way more dangerous than their full-season record indicates.
I’m not saying the Braves are definitively better than the Cardinals (or obviously the Brewers). But excusing one team for injuries but not the other is disingenuous.
It’s not disingenuous because they still have a bunch of players that historically have not been that good, it’s just different players who have historically not been good. This is a case of whether you trust the results of the last few months or whether what they did for the last 3-4 years more.
If you want to use historical data to project teams going forward, Fangraphs suggests (assuming I’m doing this right) the Braves are a .563 team and the Cardinals are a .494 team.
Depth charts here have the Braves better at SP, RP, C, 1B, 2B, SS.
Cardinals better at: 3B, LF, CF.
Equal in RF.
Largest gap, by far, between the two is SP also.
Soler is hitting in line with his 2018 and 2019 seasons.
Duvall is hitting in line with his 2019 and 2020 numbers.
Pederson is hitting below his 2019 and 2020 numbers.
Rosario is the only one that is hitting better than he ever has historically for Atlanta, and partly that’s because they’re mostly using him against RHP.
The Cardinals also remade their bullpen via the waiver wire and recent returns from injury, replaced DeJong with Sosa at SS, and they have a fully healthy offense.
“This is a fun exercise because the presumed best team in MLB has a 50/50 shot of getting knocked out in the next couple of days.”
More like 30-35% (getting knocked out) than 50/50, likely
In the AL I think I have to pick the Astros. The offense is so consistent that even with the questions about the pitching they’re probably the best bet to perform in every single series. The White Sox are the other main contender. They have enough dominant pitchers that you kind of have to have them in your top 2, but the lineup isn’t as long and it’s very right-handed. I’m not sure what to make of the Rays, because so many of their guys have short track records or are Mike Zunino. There’s a huge range of outcomes there; on talent they’re probably on the same level as the Astros and White Sox but there are more questions. I do question Chet Gutwein picking the Yankees to make the World Series. You’ve got to make your way through the wild-card game and your playoff rotation is Gerrit Cole, Jordan Montgomery, and whatever is left of Kluber / Taillon. No thank you.
The Sox lineup really isn’t all that right handed. Moncada, Grandal, Garcia, and Hernandez are all switch hitters. Sheets is most likely going to DH and he’s left handed. Engel and Jimenez both have extreme reverse splits.
The Astros absolutely have the better offense in that ALDS series, but the White Sox lineup is nothing to sneer at. There aren’t a lot of easy outs there and the season numbers are depressed by not having Robert, Jimenez, and Grandal for half the season. Cesar Hernandez hasn’t done much since he was acquired, Vaughn looked like a guy who got tired after never playing that much baseball before and I’m not sure I believe in Engel’s offensive prowess over 2020-21, but those guys all have had good offensive stretches and you can’t just ignore them.
They also spent the last two months more interested in staying healthy than winning 97 games.
It’s hard to make an argument that one of those two teams is definitively better than the other. I’m just more confident that the Astros lineup is going to score than I am about anything else, even with the White Sox’s excellent pitching.
The Rays had the best pitching staff in the AL and the second best lineup. They match-up better than every team and they have the most depth (all of our “bench” pieces have 10+ HR’s). They play superb defense and run the bases better than almost everyone. Almost all of your comments have a hilarious anti-Rays bias ST. I would be shocked if the Rays lose to either the Yankees or Red Sox. I think the Astros will beat the White Sox (hugely overrated team) and the Astros-Rays ALCS will be close like last years.
World get ready to be amazed by Shane Baz.
Yall are thinking with your heart instead of your head in the Astros – White Sox series. Sure the White Sox are good and may very well beat them, but Astros are the objectively better team. Don’t let your biases cloud your judgment.
I appreciate the White Sox picks! It seems like they’re flying under the radar a bit, but their overall year stat totals/ranks understate how good their lineup is right now because they had no Eloy Jimenez or Luis Robert for huge portions of the season (not to mention missing Yasmani Grandal for over a month).
I do get nervous about the pitching, especially if Rodon has to go out there against the Astros throwing a 91 mph fastball. But hey, I guess this is why they play the games!
As a White Sox fan, I appreciate the picks but also don’t like the attention.
Meg! I’m missed your writing!
It’s all a coinflip so I won’t make any claims that people are guessing “wrong” either way, but I would be utterly SHOCKED if the Houston-CWS series isn’t decided by who of Dusty and TLR manages their bullpen worse. And I feel confident both will mismanage, but the real game-within-the-game to me is who does a worse job.
The Braves Brewers series seems more lopsided than I would have predicted. Even Fangraphs own odds have the series almost at 50 50. I think it will be a good series.
There are actual, solid reasons to pick the Braves over the Brewers, and 2/27 pick that. There are no good reasons to pick the Cardinals over the Dodgers, and 5/27 pick that. I understand it’s a one-game playoff, but there are no actual, good reasons to think the Cardinals are more likely to win. I’d wager that if they were to win $10,000 depending on who won the game, none of those five would have picked the Cardinals.
I don’t understand Ben’s prediction; if the Dodgers win the WC and the Giants win the NLDS, how do the Dodgers win the NLCS? Has Zaidi just been a sleeper agent this whole time and plans to execute a coup in mid-October?
I think the relatively heavy preference for the White Sox here is a reflection of 1) both their rotation and bullpen is clearly better than Houston’s, even with Rodon’s health a question mark, and 2) Chicago’s finally fully healthy lineup is not actually much worse than Houston’s— in fact it might be a touch *better*. I expect we’ll see a breakdown about that in the preview article for this excellent ALDS matchup.
25 of 27 picking the Brewers over Braves is consistent with FanGraphs’ view of the Braves over the last few years. Last year 16 of 20 predicted that they would lose in the first round to the Reds, who were 3rd in the NLC with a record 1 game over .500. I think the reasoning cited was that the Reds had better starting pitching. Also, the playoff odds model has said in each of the last four preseasons that another team or teams had a better chance to win the NLE than the Braves. The 25 may be right this time, or they may not.
I think staff predictions and the projection models should be viewed as totally separate things. You can complain about both if you want, but no reason to believe staff feel any extra compulsion to favor Fangraphs computers.
Wow, 18-10 White Sox over Astros was shocking!
It’s difficult to avoid concluding from these picks that Fangraphs writers in general are overvaluing starting pitching to an extent which is…reactionary, for want of a better word. It’s particularly strange because Fangraphs had for some time been in the avant-garde in terms of the value of relief pitching, the advantage of pulling starters after two times through the lineup, etc., and it’s difficult to imagine that it’s escaped their attention that the average number of innings pitched by starters is going inexorably down, even more so in the postseason than the regular season. It appears as though these predictions are being made using old mathematical models whose coefficients are based on the assumption that the starters on teams which make the postseason are going to go deep into games and pitch the lion’s share of innings even though this obviously isn’t true any more, and for some reason the modelers haven’t updated the coefficients to take into consideration the new reality. I’m sorry to say this but the best explanation I can think for this is that Fangraphs has just lost too many of its great writers to better-paying jobs and it hasn’t been able to replace them with people of the same calibre. All too often these days the discussion of an article has more insights than the article itself. That used to be very rare.
1) there’s not too much at stake for fangraphs staff in this poll. 2) Expertise, with a few exceptions, is not in predicting winners, 3) these are all pretty close to random outcomes with lots of post outcome determinism. 4) there is a broad range of goals by these pickers and getting all the picks right is probably not highest on the list. Looking like your picks are smart, being unconventional, picking a personal favorite, etc. For ex, Ben’s (one of my favorite writer’s) picks don’t even add up, but they are hilarious.
Braves won… Awesome job on that guess there guys…