Despite the majority of teams very rudely not finalizing their place in the postseason pecking order until the last day of the season — shout out to the Padres and Cubs for figuring things out beforehand — the initial ZiPS game-by-game playoff odds for the Wild Card round are now live on the site. None of these projections are set in stone; things will shift around as we approach game time and get a better idea of roster configurations and starting pitcher plans.

Just to remind everyone, the ZiPS playoff model is rather different than the normal projections you see on the site during the regular season. From April through September, ZiPS needs to see the forest for the trees, but in a short sprint, we can focus more on the individual trees themselves. We can make educated guesses as to who is starting each game, what the lineups will look like, who is healthy and who isn’t, and so on. The ZiPS game matchup tool has a built-in lineup estimator that projects the line of every pitcher and hitter against every opposing hitter and pitcher, so there is no need to look at a team’s generalized offensive strength. The postseason also comes with the benefit of being able to run the full, more robust model of ZiPS rather than the simpler model used during the regular season, a compromise necessitated by the fact that projecting the entire league takes more than a day.

Is the model perfect? Of course not. All models are wrong, but some are useful. The approach I take has benefits in some very specific situations where a team’s seasonal record isn’t a good predictor of performance. For instance, in 2019 ZiPS saw the Nationals as being a far more dangerous opponent for the Dodgers than the conventional wisdom did by virtue of Washington’s ability to concentrate a very large percentage of the team’s innings in a few excellent pitchers.

If a particular game’s starters haven’t been officially confirmed, the pitcher listed is my most educated guess. Projections for the Division Series will populate after the Wild Card round has concluded, with the Championship Series projections coming after the Division Series wraps up, and so on. For the moment, you’ll see those tabs grayed out. In addition to game-by-game projections, you’ll also find series odds, which will update as each series progresses.

Since FanGraphs offers a few different projection tools, here’s a quick summary of the features of the three models — the FanGraphs Game Odds, the FanGraphs Playoff Odds, and the ZiPS Game-by-Game Odds — that are most relevant for the postseason:

Now come the actual games, which are played on the field and are way more fun to watch than projections! Just remember that, as always, when the projections end up looking bad, it’s actually due to the inherent flaws in this particular iteration of the multiverse!