The Super Specific Matchups That Could Determine Each Division Series
In basketball, the biggest offensive threat is usually guarded by the other team’s best defender. A football team’s most dynamic wide receiver has to worry about lining up across from an All-Pro cornerback. But in this sick and twisted sport, sometimes good-on-good instead becomes good-on-whoever-we-have-available. For the 2026 crop of Division Series, there is no shortage of micro matchups — both because the soft underbelly of every roster typically gets exposed in the postseason, and because every organization’s horde of spreadsheet nerds will be combing through information looking for advantages — that may or may not seal a team’s fate.
San Diego Padres vs. Milwaukee Brewers: Run Game vs. Run Game
The Padres and Brewers series will feature a lot of things: two cities that love beer, a blinding amount of yellow arm sleeves and rally towels, and a bunch of basepath thievery.
Both of these teams finished top five in total stolen bases this year, each employing a crew of bandits that will surely look to continue their heist. The Padres were one of just five major league teams to have multiple players swipe at least 25 bags, as Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill took 38 and 27, respectively. Xander Bogaerts, who was not much of a basestealer until arriving in San Diego in 2023, has also joined the party. His 22 steals in 2026 — during his age-33 season, impressively — marked a new single-season best, topping the previous career high of 20 he set in 2025. And while neither received enough playing time to put up those kinds of numbers, speedy outfielders Samad Taylor and Jase Bowen both have elite sprint speed and solid base-stealing acumen.
Matthew is a Brooklyn-based writer who previously worked for GQ Magazine (where he profiled Andrew McCutchen and Francisco Lindor) and the New York Daily News (where he covered the Mets, Yankees, and other national baseball stories). Before that, he was writing and hosting the podcast at Lookout Landing, and was also a contributor at Baseball Prospectus and yes, FanGraphs. He goes by the full Matthew, and it's pronounced RAW-berson.
Sean Burke has a 72nd percentile K%, Trevor Richards is a rubber-armed mop-up guy who wasn’t on the WC roster and likely won’t be on the ALDS roster either, and I’m not sure how you wrote about the White Sox bullpen without mentioning Hagen Smith, and his (not-qualified) 99th percentile whiff% and K%.
It’s also going to be extremely funny when Didier Fuentes is elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot 25 years from now because of this article.
Oops! You’re right, I misread Burke’s strikeout rate. With Richards, he just pitched so much for them in the regular season that I assume he’d be on the roster, especially because he has better numbers than Sandlin across the board. Smith I kind of expect to be used in that long opener role again, no?
No worries, most of the baseball-watching world is just starting to get acquainted with the White Sox, lol.
But yeah, Smith is starting Game 1 and will also likely start Game 3 or 4, but it’s also sort of misleading to use standard starter/reliever distinctions for the White Sox, since they basically have Burke and an entire staff of MIRPs, other than Jordan Hicks, arguably (though Venable will throw him up to 2 innings, at times).
Sandlin is sorta weird, since he tended to be really good up until a point when he became really bad in many of his appearances, but he’s got way better stuff than Richards and I think Venable has just decided to use him in shorter stints for now. Richards was pretty decent this year, all things considered, but his stuff is not good, he faltered down the stretch, and like I alluded to, the reason he was used so often is because he has a cartoon character arm and White Sox starters threw the fewest innings in MLB this year, so whenever they were winning or losing by a significant margin, or if everyone else in the bullpen was taxed, he got the ball.
Sandlin was really good in his last 4 AAA starts and 2 out of 3 of his last MLB starts and they pitched him in relief in the wild card round. I think they have some level of confidence in him right now. Earlier he was falling apart every time runners were on base or he was behind in the count.
The pitchers that dragged down the White Sox K% will probably pitch a lot less in a 5 game series with multiple days off.
Extremely minor quibble with grouping Sean Burke with the non-strikeout pitchers. He’s right above Yamomoto and Messick in strikeout rate, 18th out of 46 qualified pitchers.
There were only 46 qualified pitchers this year? Shame.
How much stock do we really put into 1×1 match up numbers? I see them a lot on TV, but always assumed the analytical types would mostly write them off as small sample variation
Didier just put up 2 WAR in 73 innings as a 20 year old. It seems like his hall of fame chances are greater than 0.
Cool article, love the concept.
Am I the only one who thinks Ohtani is still pretty injured and kind of just won’t be good this October? It might not matter much which Atlanta reliever pitches to him.