If the 2015 MLB season ended today, some really good baseball clubs would be out of a shot at the playoffs. Guess what? That’s going to happen a month from now, regardless. The bottom and the top are what they are for a reason, but sometimes really solid teams just catch fire too late and they end up stuck in the middle. They’re in the land of the forgotten, and when we look ahead to the playoffs, it’s impossible to predict which of them could make one of those historic runs.
The Boston Red Sox? Unlikely. The Seattle Mariners? Doubtful. There are some hot teams and there are slumping teams, but all we can really do is take everything for what it’s worth. That’s brought us to taking a look at the standings and predicting how the 2015 MLB playoffs could go down if we had to enter the teams as they stand today:
AL Division winners: Toronto Blue Jays, Kansas City Royals, Houston Astros
Toronto is just barely above New York and with two more huge series against the Yanks this year, things could still change. They’re still headed for the playoffs either way, while the Royals are for sure in and the Astros should have their division locked down before long.
AL wild card matchup: New York Yankees vs. Texas Rangers
The Yanks take on the Rangers as we probably see a duel between Cole Hamels and Masahiro Tanaka. New York definitely has the offensive edge and might even be the better defensive squad. It’d be a good one, but we like the Yanks to move on to round two.
NL Division winners: New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, L.A. Dodgers
This is very likely how it will end, as the Cards and Dodgers have solid leads and the Mets should be able to grind out a division win over the Nats. All three of these teams can provide timely offense, but really hang their hat on defense with some elite arms.
NL wild card matchup: Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Chicago Cubs
If it ends like this, the NL Central will produce the supposed best team in baseball, plus two more teams that will duke it out for the right to advance to the next round. The Cubs have some deadly offense and Jon Lester could be trouble for Pittsburgh’s touch and go offense, but the Pirates are the more well rounded team and should get out of this clash alive.
AL Divisional Series: Royals vs. Yankees, Jays vs. Astros
This is where things could get dicey, as the Yanks have superior bats than Kansas City, but the Royals should have the overall upper hand in the pitching department. Kansas City has been one of the best teams all year long and they have unfinished business stemming from last year, so as long as their offense shows up they should be able to sneak past New York.
Toronto is a tough team to gauge, as they have probably the most explosive offense in all of baseball but can run cold in the worst moments. Doing so at anytime when facing the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Colin McHugh could be catastrophic. As good as they are and could be, I see them running out of gas in this series.
NL Divisional Series: Cardinals vs. Pirates, Mets vs. Dodgers
The two bitter NL Central rivals go at it with their seasons on the line, as fans get what they wanted when Pittsburgh and St. Louis clash. These teams are very similar in that they have solid offenses but rarely explode and aren’t really known for dominating opponents with scoring. Team defense and safe pitching has been their best path to success, as two of MLB’s top defenses go at it in this series. St. Louis appears to have the slide edge in the defense department, although this series just might be a toss-up. Even so, the Cards have the best record in the majors for a reason, so we’ll take them to at least get to the League Championship Series.
The Mets and Dodgers are tough to figure out, since they only played each other seven times this year. New York held a slight edge, taking the season series 4-3. They really brought the offense in those seven games, too, dropping 33 runs on the Dodgers and only giving up 19. New York seems like a team of destiny after swinging some big trades, while they have the arms in Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard to combat the Dodgers. Even more, Clayton Kershaw has thus far come up lame in crunch time, so it’s tough to buy him suddenly destroying when the season is on the line again.
League Championship Series: Royals vs. Astros, Cardinals vs. Mets
The team of destiny theme lives on here, as the Royals, Astros and Mets all have weird feels to them where you just know they’re going to pull it off. Kansas City runs into Houston a series away from returning to the World Series, though, and they can’t match their pitching. The only way the Royals advance is if they go nuts offensively, and I see the bats coming up lame in this matchup.
St. Louis is really good at overachieving and they’re doing it in a lot of ways this year. New York is doing the same thing in a lot of respects, but they’ve improved their offense so much that they’ve slowly become quite arguably the most balanced team in baseball. We thought that was the Cardinals, but after losing to the Mets here, we know that’s just not the case.
World Series: Astros vs. Mets
We could have had a matchup between the two teams with the best records in baseball (Royals and Cubs) and we could have even potentially had another Subway Series (Mets and Yankees). We’ll go halfway, as both the Mets and Astros certainly can pack an offensive punch, but both used elite defense to get here. Going back to the “destiny” aspect, it just seems like nothing can stop the Mets. The whole Matt Harvey debacle about innings limits is going to look really funny once New York rides him and the rest of their defense to a world title.
Think we got it all wrong? Let us know how you think the MLB playoffs will play out in the comments below!
