What to Watch For as the 2024 MLB Playoffs Get Underway
Some thoughts ahead of Tuesday's wild card action.
Though we already got a taste of playoff-like action on Monday — what a game between the Mets and Braves on the front end of that doubleheader — the postseason proper begins today, with Game 1 of each wild card series.
In anticipation, I recently added a ✨Playoff Predictor✨ module to the 2024 MLB forecast landing page, which blends implied probabilities from the Vegas odds with an average of computer simulations of the postseason1 to give a holistic view of how forecasters think the playoffs will play out. Here are the pre-playoff odds of advancing through the postseason for each team:
There will be time to dig into the particulars of how each series is playing out this week, but today I thought I’d scribble down a few top-line thoughts on the playoff picture, with a focus on the wild card round in particular:
Despite the history, the Dodgers are favorites. That weird, compressed 2020 season aside, it seems like you can count on three things in life — death, taxes and the Dodgers flaming out early in the playoffs. And yet, here they are as favorites yet again heading into the postseason. This isn’t a case of those stat-wonks undervaluing clutchness and playoff history, either; the Vegas odds are actually higher on L.A. than the composite of the statistical simulations:
Perhaps the belief in Shohei Ohtani’s ability to rise to the moment is strong enough to overcome the Dodgers’ pattern of missing expectations (as well as a patchwork starting rotation), but it’s funny to see them slotted in as the most likely champion for yet another October.
There’s a Big Three in the odds — and it doesn’t include Cleveland. Despite the fact that first-round bye teams have struggled under the new expanded postseason format, it is still theoretically a big advantage to have a little time to rest and reset your rotation while playing one fewer opponent than the competition. So it makes sense that the only teams with double-digit World Series probabilities — the Dodgers, Phillies and Yankees — would also be seeded to avoid the wild card round. Those three are far ahead of the rest; together, they actually make up a majority of championship probability (50.2 percent). But there’s a team missing from that group if we are simply looking at the top seeds in each league, and it’s the Cleveland Guardians. Cleveland only ranks sixth in WS%, checking in below 8 percent, and I think that speaks volumes about the disconnect between their record and the underlying indicators about their true talent level.
The Astros and Padres are threats. Along with the Orioles — who are 58 percent to beat the Royals in Round 1 — Houston and San Diego have the best chances to win their wild card matchups (against the Tigers and Braves, respectively). That plays into the Astros and Padres’ comparatively high World Series odds for wild card teams, but these are also dangerous ballclubs in general. Conditional on getting out of the first round, San Diego (14.7 percent) and Houston (14.6 percent) have championship odds that are not too far behind those of the Big Three from above, each of whom are already stamped into the second round. Maybe that shouldn’t exactly be surprising — Houston has either made the World Series or come within a game of it in six of the past seven seasons, while the Padres have a lot of talent and went to the NLCS as recently as 2022. But it will be a factor to watch, especially if both teams can escape the wild card round.
Brewers-Mets is your best wild card matchup. Most MLB playoff series are variations on a coin flip theme anyway, particularly when they are less than best-of-seven like the wild card and divisional rounds are. But the coin-flippiest matchup of the first round is Milwaukee versus New York, at 54-46. We just saw these teams play, with the Brewers taking 2 of 3 to set the stage for the Mets and Braves’ wild doubleheader Monday. And the Crew are the better team on paper, with nearly double the run differential that New York had during the regular season. But as always with this Mets squad, just when you think they’re out, they pull you back in.
Astros-Tigers is your most lopsided wild card matchup. At the other end of the spectrum, Houston is a 61-39 favorite over Detroit, who used a bit of good luck to beat the odds and make an unlikely run to the postseason. The Tigers’ odds were so remote three weeks ago that I didn’t even dive into their liabilities when I did a rundown of playoff contender weaknesses, but they ranked 19th in runs per game and 22nd in batting WAR, so scoring may be an issue — particularly against an Astros team that ranked No. 6 in starting rotation WAR and No. 9 in pitching WAR overall. However, as far as underdogs go in the broader realm of sports, 39 percent is a very healthy win probability; Detroit could easily pull this upset, especially if Tarik Skubal keeps pitching the lights out.
It’s sad to lose an upstart team right away, between Baltimore and Kansas City. The 4-versus-5 seed draw in the AL was kind of a bummer, because the Royals and Orioles are both teams I want to see win. Baltimore had its big breakout last year, but was humbled in the division series with a sweep by the eventual champion Rangers. Though they regressed by 10 wins in 2024, this Orioles team is young, deep and has a lot of really cool players to cheer on. Meanwhile, though K.C. is not exactly youthful top-to-bottom — some of their top players were 34-year-olds Seth Lugo and Salvador Perez, and 32-year-old Michael Wacha — who can resist the allure of 24-year-old MVP candidate SS Bobby Witt, Jr.? In a perfect world, both teams could move on and maybe face later in the postseason; instead, one will have to say goodbye almost immediately.
Yankees-Dodgers or Yankees-Phillies are your most likely Fall Classic matchups. Here’s a fun exercise I always do before the postseason, and it is always proven to look very silly in retrospect — ranking the most likely World Series matchups based on each team’s odds of winning their league’s pennant:
This year, there is a 19 percent chance we’ll see the Bronx Bombers up against either the Dodgers or the Phillies, with no other matchup combination checking in any higher than 6.5 percent (Dodgers-Guardians). But again, this is usually a fool’s errand. Just looking at last year’s FanGraphs odds, there was a 0.7 percent chance of getting a Texas Rangers-Arizona Diamondbacks World Series showdown… and yet, it did happen. That means we can’t even rule out the six Royals-Tigers/Brewers-Braves-Mets permutations that check in under 1 percent in the chart above, much less the 28 other combos that aren’t L.A.-N.Y. or N.Y.-Philly. It’s another reminder that anything can happen in October baseball — and that’s a big part of why we’ll be watching over the next month.
Filed under: Baseball, Elo ratings
Specifically, these included 1,000 simulations each of the playoffs using Elo ratings and the Simple Rating System (SRS), plus that old standby, the FanGraphs playoff odds model.