2023 Postseason Begins Tuesday

The 2023 postseason begins tomorrow, with four Wild Card games on both Tuesday and Wednesday, with any third games on Thursday. The ALDS and NLDS will begin on Saturday. (Day-by-day schedule.)

Mlb.com's Anthony Castrovince ranks each postseason team's offense and pitching staff, a task he says is "usually senseless" and "bound to blow up in our faces", but "it's fun". (I added the rankings out of curiosity.)

              OFF   PIT     O+P
Atlanta         1     8       9
Phillies        6     4      10
Blue Jays       8     2      10
Rays            5     6      11
Astros          4     7      11
Dodgers         3     9      12
Brewers        11     1      12
Orioles         7     5      12
Twins           9     3      12
Texas           2    11      13
Diamondbacks   10    12      22
Marlins        12    10      22

ESPN's Jeff Passan points out: that the team with the best regular season record "rarely" wins the World Series. "Over the 54 seasons since MLB went to divisions, only 14 times has the team with the top record won the World Series." That's only 26%. I hope it's true for this year. Passan predicts Atlanta over the Rays:

Atlanta is "the best team in baseball, and it's not particularly close. The offense scored 947 runs, the most by an NL team since the 2000 Colorado Rockies — and the most by an NL team not in absurdly thin air since the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers. . . . Atlanta's starting pitching is plenty. While the bullpen is nobody's idea of dominant, [Atlanta] relievers are striking out the most batters in the NL . . . They can win the World Series because they are better than the other 29 teams in baseball, on paper, and the gap is not insignificant.

The Twins have not won a postseason game since October 5, 2004; that was ALDS Game 1. They have lost 18 consecutive postseason games (13 (!) of them to the Yankees).

2004 - Lost ALDS 1-3 to Yankees   (2-0, 6-7 (12), 4-8, 5-6 (11))
2006 - Lost ALDS 0-3 to Athletics (2-3, 2-5, 3-8)
2009 - Lost ALDS 0-3 to Yankees   (2-7, 3-4 (11), 1-4)
2010 - Lost ALDS 0-3 to Yankees   (4-6, 2-5, 1-6)
2017 - Lost ALWC 0-1 to Yankees   (4-8)
2019 - Lost ALDS 0-3 to Yankees   (4-10, 2-8, 1-5)
2020 - Lost ALWC 0-2 to Astros    (1-4, 1-3)

Will Leitch ranks the top 50 players in the postseason, based on "a mix of 2023 form, track record and health". Here's the Top 10: Mookie Betts, Ronald Acuña, Corey Seager, Freddie Freeman, Matt Olson, Bryce Harper, Justin Verlander, Corbin Carroll, Clayton Kershaw, and Luis Arraez.

Freeman finished this season with 59 doubles, coming up one "Baltimore dong" short of being the first player in 87 years to hit 60. Five of the six times an AL/NL player hit 60+ doubles in a season occurred within a span of only five seasons.

67  -  Earl Webb, Red Sox (1931)
64  -  Joe Medwick, Cardinals (1936)
64  -  George Burns, Cleveland (1926)
63  -  Hank Greenberg, Tigers (1934)
62  -  Paul Waner, Pirates (1932)
60  -  Charlie Gehringer, Tigers (1936)

The Sporting News "has produced a model that simulates the entire MLB postseason 10,000 times. The model then tallies the winners of each series, then seeing how often the teams win each series to calculate the win probabilities. The model results are based on production during the season by each team."

American League Pennant

              Odds

Astros       26.2%
Orioles      23.4%
Rays         14.4%
Twins        13.1%
Texas        12.7%
Blue Jays    10.1%

National League Pennant

              Odds

Atlanta      32.7%
Dodgers      29.1%
Phillies     12.4%
Brewers       9.3%
Diamondbacks  8.7%
Marlins       7.8%

World Series

              Odds

Atlanta      22.1%
Dodgers      17.1%
Astros       12.3%
Orioles       8.9%
Rays          7.3%
Texas         6.9%
Phillies      6.2%
Twins         6.0%
Blue Jays     4.2%
Diamondbacks  3.3%
Brewers       3.0%
Marlins       2.8%