After a shortened season, a temporary, expanded playoff format and a bubble, the MLB playoffs return to something resembling normal this October. And The Athletic’s baseball writers will once again try to predict the unpredictable.
On the eve of the wild card games, there’s no dominant favorite among our staff, though more of our writers picked the Rays to win it all than any other team. The Astros were a close second, and the White Sox also received several votes. Only one writer picked an NL team to win the World Series — the Brewers, with apologies to the 107-win Giants. And there’s a wide variety of expectations for the 106-win Dodgers, ranging from a wild-card exit to a Series appearance.
Before the postseason kicks off with the AL and NL wild-card games Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, catch up on the rest of our postseason content, including our staff’s postseason power rankings, Jayson Stark’s takeaways from
