Latest 2022 MLB Playoff Predictions and World Series Pick With 1 Month to Go
Only 30 days remain until the 2022 MLB postseason bracket is set in stone, but we just cannot wait that long to decide whether the Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, New York Yankees or some other team is going to win the World Series.
Before we dive in, a mandatory disclaimer that there is a lot of season left to be played.
At this point in 2021, it was the Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres neck-and-neck for the NL's second wild-card spot before the Cardinals (4.0 GB on Sept. 7) caught fire, leapfrogged three teams and took it by a seven-game margin. And in 2019, both Tampa Bay (1.5 GB) and Milwaukee (4.0 GB) were on the outside looking in with 30 days remaining, only to go a combined 40-16 the rest of the way to snag wild-card spots with plenty of room to spare.
So, you know, chins up in Baltimore, Milwaukee and Minnesota. They wouldn't be in the postseason if it started today, but those modest gaps can absolutely be made up down the stretch.
Also, there are a couple of spots where our projected bracket doesn't quite line up with what it would look like if the postseason had started Sunday morning.
We have Seattle and Tampa Bay as the AL's No. 4 and No. 5 seeds, respectively, even though the 74-57 Rays currently hold the tiebreaker over the 75-58 Mariners for that No. 4 seed. We also have Philadelphia at No. 5 and San Diego at No. 6 in the NL even though the Padres are a half-game ahead of the Phillies. But because of the respective remaining schedules—Tampa Bay and San Diego have much more difficult slates than Seattle and Philadelphia—we made those minor seeding adjustments.
With that out of the way, here is our round-by-round projection of how the MLB postseason will play out.
American League Wild-Card Round
1 of 7
No. 4 Seattle Mariners over No. 5 Tampa Bay Rays
These two teams are neck-and-neck right now, virtually tied for the AL's No. 4 seed. But based on the difficulty of their respective remaining schedules, Seattle should finish comfortably ahead of Tampa Bay to secure home field for the entirety of this best-of-three series.
And that's a huge deal for this particular series for two reasons.
The first is that Tampa Bay has been substantially worse on the road (30-34) than it has been at home (44-23). The second is that Seattle crowd will be electric for its first postseason action in 21 years. And sending a team that already struggles on the road into that raucous environment sounds like a recipe for a swift postseason exit for the Rays.
No. 6 Toronto Blue Jays over No. 3 Cleveland Guardians
Cleveland has quietly had arguably the best pitching in the majors over the past five weeks. Shane Bieber has been on fire. Triston McKenzie and Cal Quantrill are logging quality starts more often than not. And Emmanuel Clase is clearly the best closer in the AL this season, if not the best in the majors.
Taking two out of three against this team at home is going to be mighty tough.
But it's hard not to like Toronto's chances, even though Cleveland took five out of seven from the Blue Jays during the regular season and Toronto's primary trade-deadline acquisitions (Whit Merrifield and Mitch White) have amounted to a whole lot of nothing.
Because for as good as Bieber, McKenzie and Quantrill have been, Alek Manoah, Kevin Gausman and Ross Stripling have been better. The Blue Jays also have a mighty-fine closer in Jordan Romano. And the Blue Jays simply have more/better hitters liable to take over a series.
National League Wild-Card Round
2 of 7
No. 4 Atlanta Braves over No. 5 Philadelphia Phillies
As far as this season's head-to-head results are concerned, Atlanta-Philadelphia is a total coin flip. The series is deadlocked at 6-6 (3-3 in Atlanta; 3-3 in Philadelphia) with the Phillies holding a razor-thin 58-57 margin in the runs scored department. (There are seven games still to come later this month to perhaps create some separation.)
But as far as the standings are concerned, this should be the most lopsided of the four wild-card round series. Atlanta is 9.5 games ahead of the Phillies and has been especially difficult to beat at home, boasting a 46-25 record on the year and a 36-13 record dating back to May 25.
Philadelphia's offense has been potent of late, but Atlanta's pitching staff should take care of business at home.
No. 3 St. Louis Cardinals over No. 6 San Diego Padres
Strength of schedule has a lot to do with it, but no team has been more successful than St. Louis since the beginning of August. The Cardinals boast a 24-7 record in their last 31 games, averaging just north of six runs per contest.
And like Atlanta, the Cardinals have been especially good at home, going 17-2 in their last 19 games in St. Louis. The Cardinals also swept the Padres in their only meeting of the season three months ago.
Anything could happen, of course, and St. Louis doesn't exactly have a dominant starting rotation. But betting against this team in a best-of-three series at home seems like a terrible idea these days.
American League Division Series
3 of 7
No. 1 Houston Astros over No. 4 Seattle Mariners
AL Cy Young front-runner Justin Verlander is on the IL with a calf injury, but early returns suggest it should be a brief stint and that he'll be good to go for the postseason.
That's bad news for Seattle, which has seen way more than its fair share of Verlander this season.
In six starts against the Mariners, Verlander has gone 5-1 with a 2.34 ERA while averaging just over one strikeout per inning. The M's did rough him up for four home runs and six earned runs in one of those starts on May 27, but he pitched at least into the seventh inning in each of the other five starts, which Houston won by a combined score of 29-5.
With Houston getting to rest and set up its rotation for this best-of-five series while Seattle plays in the wild-card round, one's got to assume the Astros will have Verlander lined up for Game 1 on Tuesday, Oct. 11, and that he would start Game 5 the following Monday, if necessary.
Maybe Seattle takes two of the three games in between, but Verlander propels Houston to a sixth consecutive ALCS.
No. 6 Toronto Blue Jays over No. 2 New York Yankees
Plain and simple, I've given up hope on the "first half of the season New York Yankees" walking back through that proverbial door.
Less than two months ago, the Yankees were 61-23, 5.5 games better than any other team in the majors. Since then, they're 18-31, worse than all AL teams except for the Detroit Tigers. And they have been particularly bad against projected playoff teams, going 6-18 against the Astros, Mets, Mariners, Cardinals, Rays and Blue Jays since the All-Star Break.
The offense has been mostly OK, but the pitching staff is a far cry from what it was in the first half of the year, which is not a recipe for success against a Blue Jays lineup in which eight guys have an OPS north of .735 (compared to just five for New York).
Worth pointing out: In 16 games against Toronto, Aaron Judge has slugged .444 with just three home runs in 71 plate appearances. If that trend continues along with the poor pitching, New York's World Series drought will extend to a 13th year.
National League Division Series
4 of 7
No. 1 Los Angeles Dodgers over No. 4 Atlanta Braves
Even though it's a maximum of five games, this may well be the best series of the entire postseason: the magma-hot reigning champions against what has been the favorite to win it all for pretty much the whole season.
Atlanta was able to topple the 106-win Dodgers in last year's NLCS, but can it do the same this year? Without home-field advantage? Without Freddie Freeman? With the Dodgers even better than they were last year? And with Atlanta likely needing to use Max Fried and Kyle Wright (and maybe even Charlie Morton) in the wild-card round?
It largely hinges on how healthy the Dodgers are at that point. We know they won't have Walker Buehler, but will Tony Gonsolin (currently on the IL) and Clayton Kershaw (often on the IL) be available? And what sort of impact will Blake Treinen and Brusdar Graterol make out of the bullpen after lengthy IL stints of their own?
Got to go with the Dodgers for now, but I reserve the right to flip-flop if Los Angeles' pitching staff is being held together by Band-Aids heading into the series.
No. 2 New York Mets over No. 3 St. Louis Cardinals
I'm going to recycle a statistic I noted a couple of weeks ago, but it bears repeating: In their careers against Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado have gone a combined 13-of-82 with three walks, one double, one RBI and 30 strikeouts.
And there's just no way St. Louis is winning this series unless that changes in a drastically.
Those two NL MVP candidates have been the heart and soul of this Cardinals offense, but the Mets figure to have deGrom and Scherzer lined up to start Games 1, 2 and 5 of this series—my guess would be deGrom in 1 and 5, and then Scherzer in 2 with the "break in case of emergency" possibility of using him for an inning or two of relief in Game 4, as well.
Meanwhile, St. Louis might need to use Adam Wainwright, Miles Mikolas and Jack Flaherty in the wild-card round (Friday-Sunday), in which case it might need to roll with Jordan Montgomery and Jose Quintana in the first two games in New York (Tuesday-Wednesday). And, well, that would be rough, given the competition.
American League Championship Series
5 of 7
No. 1 Houston Astros over No. 6 Toronto Blue Jays
Toronto did go 4-2 against Houston during the regular season, only losing the two games Yusei Kikuchi started—which won't be a problem for the Blue Jays in this series now that he has been relegated to mop-up relief work.
But here's a fun fact about MLB postseason expansions: It takes at least three years for the new addition to reach the World Series.
When MLB added the LCS in 1969, expanding the postseason from two teams to four, it wasn't until 1972 that a runner-up first defeated the pennant winner to play for a World Series. Similarly, when MLB went from four playoff teams to eight in 1995, it wasn't until 1997 that a No. 3 or No. 4 seed made the World Series. And after it expanded from eight to 10 for 2012, the first No. 5 seed to make the Fall Classic was in 2014.
So, maybe pencil in a No. 6 seed to pull it off in 2024, but not this year—even though this particular No. 6 seed was one of the top preseason candidates to win the AL and is a team capable of catching fire at the plate.
Both of these teams are loaded with talented sluggers, but I simply have more faith in Houston's pitching staff—the respective middle-relief situations, in particular—than I do in Toronto's. It feels almost like a foregone conclusion that Houston is going to outscore Toronto by something like a 13-4 margin in the seventh and eighth innings of this best-of-seven series, and that will prove to be the difference in an otherwise competitive showdown.
National League Championship Series
6 of 7
No. 2 New York Mets over No. 1 Los Angeles Dodgers
It's hard to pick against the Dodgers, who entered play Sunday 6.5 games ahead of the next-closest team (Houston) and with a plus-289 run differential.
Since World War II, the only teams to finish a season with a run differential of plus-285 or better were the 1998 New York Yankees (309) and the 2001 Seattle Mariners (300). And with a month left to further inflate that scoring margin, there's a good chance we're looking at the most dominant regular season of the past eight decades.
Against the Mets, though, the mighty Dodgers have looked mortal.
Both Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom were on the IL for the four-game series in Los Angeles in early June, but New York still managed to work a 2-2 split. And in the three-game set in Queens last week, the Mets took two out of three, spoiled Clayton Kershaw's return to the mound and did so despite hitting that series at a spot in the rotation where they missed Scherzer. (They did have deGrom this time, though, and he was masterful for seven innings of that Mets victory.)
To sum it up, New York only had one of its two aces on the mound for one of its seven games against Los Angeles, yet won the season series by a 4-3 margin. Having deGrom and Scherzer toe the rubber for possibly four starts in this series should swing it even further in New York's favor.
The idea of betting on the non-Edwin Diaz portion of New York's bullpen against this potent Dodgers lineup is a little terrifying. But New York's not-even-a-little-difficult remaining schedule could be the perfect recipe for giving Joely Rodriguez, Seth Lugo and Co. the confidence they need to topple this giant.
World Series
7 of 7
NL No. 2 New York Mets over AL No. 1 Houston Astros
I've spent way more time than I care to admit going back and forth on this hypothetical/projected World Series matchup.
Houston swept New York 4-0 in the regular-season series in late June, which—small sample size or not—is not an easy data point to ignore. And, like, it wasn't even close. Houston had more home runs (10) than the Mets had total runs (six) in those four contests.
But if you'll forgive my broken record in regard to Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, neither of New York's aces pitched in any of those games.
That's quite the $79.3 million asterisk on what happened during the regular season.
Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez each went eight scoreless innings in back-to-back starts in New York, and deGrom and Scherzer could return that favor in Houston. Heck, they could even return it twice if Houston ends up with home-field advantage and New York is able to line up its aces for Games 1, 2, 6 and 7.
It would be a fantastic matchup, though.
There is potential for two Scherzer-Verlander duels, as well as a pair of deGrom-Valdez showdowns. And it's not like the other games are going to feature poor pitching. New York's Chris Bassitt, Taijuan Walker and Carlos Carrasco each have a sub-4.00 ERA, and Houston can keep pace with Lance McCullers Jr., Jose Urquidy and Luis Garcia. Each team also has a solid sixth starter/long reliever in David Peterson and Cristian Javier.
Pete Alonso vs. Yordan Alvarez for the series lead in home runs could be a deciding factor, as could the battle between slugging middle infielders Jose Altuve and Francisco Lindor.
In the end, though, give me Edwin Diaz and Timmy Trumpet leading the Mets to victory.
It has been two decades since the Los Angeles Angels rode the Rally Monkey to a title and three years since the Washington Nationals "Baby Shark"ed their way to a crown. Sometimes, being the team that goes viral for something fun is the way to win it all.
Statistics and records current through the start of play on Sunday, Sept. 4.
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