MLB Playoffs 2016: Round-by-Round Picks and Predictions
Cubs win?
Seriously?
Yeah, seriously. The Chicago Cubs will win...at least one game...which would be better than what they did the last time they entered the postseason with the best record in the National League. That would be in 2008, when they made history by having all four infielders commit errors in the same game.
This year's 103-win Cubs will do better than that, I promise. But will they win it all?
Sorry, but you'll have to wait for that prediction. There's a process, you know, and it starts with the American League Wild Card Game on Tuesday night in Toronto. We won't know the World Series champion until at least Oct. 29 (Game 4) or maybe Nov. 2 (Game 7) or even later, given the possibility of bad weather in Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, New York—and Los Angeles.
With that said, I still have to get all my predictions in right now before the postseason starts, and I've got a problem. It's not that it's any harder to pick a winner this year. It's always hard, and anyone who claims to know or wants credit later for a correct guess is only trying to fool you.
I don't know, which is why my predictions normally follow two important principles:
- Don't pick the favorites.
- Pick the best storyline.
So here's my problem: The Cubs and Boston Red Sox are the favorites in the two leagues. A Cubs-Red Sox World Series is by far the best storyline baseball could ask for.
What do I do?
Follow along with these round-by-round picks to find out!
Wild Card Games: Mets over Giants; Blue Jays over Orioles
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I love these Wild Card Games, but they present two real problems when you're making predictions.
First, you can be wrong before anyone has had time to forget who you picked. Second, while it's hardly unheard of for wild-card teams to make the World Series—the wild-card San Francisco Giants beat the wild-card Kansas City Royals just two years ago—picking a wild-card team to get there risks that team getting eliminated before some people even read the pick.
So go ahead and tab the Giants if you want, because it's an even year and they always win in even years and Madison Bumgarner never loses in the postseason.
Go ahead, except it says here Noah Syndergaard will send Bumgarner's Giants home on Wednesday night. Injuries cost the New York Mets most of the power rotation that carried them to the World Series in 2015, but Syndergaard remains, and he's ready to pitch at Citi Field.
The Mets had the best record in baseball from Aug. 20 to the end of the season, a stretch that started with Bartolo Colon beating the Giants 9-5 and Syndergaard beating them 2-0 on back-to-back days at AT&T Park. Thor will beat them again in the National League Wild Card Game.
The Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays, who meet in the American League Wild Card Game on Tuesday at Toronto's Rogers Centre, don't have a Bumgarner or Syndergaard. They do have high-powered offenses that combined for 474 home runs, and six players on each team hit 20 or more this season. Their head-to-head meetings averaged more than nine runs a game, and the Blue Jays' slim 10-9 advantage in the season series is the only reason they get to host this game.
The Orioles were below .500 on the road this year, including 4-6 in Toronto, so even though they won two of three at Rogers Centre just last week, I'll go with the Jays to win and advance.
ALDS: Red Sox over Indians; Blue Jays over Rangers
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I already told you I try to go with the best stories, and what division-series story could be better than a Blue Jays-Rangers rematch? Bat flip, anyone?
The Texas Rangers haven't received enough credit for their 95-win season, and, yes, all logic tells you they should be a significant favorite over Toronto this time around. But when you see the inconsistent Jays at their best, the lineup looks every bit as dangerous as it was in last year's five-game American League Division Series win over the Rangers.
The Blue Jays don't have David Price this time around, but considering his 7.20 ERA in two appearances against the Rangers last October, is that such a big loss? Get ready for plenty of Jose Bautista and Rougned Odor, and get ready for more Texas angst.
If the Cleveland Indians had won the Wild Card Game in 2013, manager Terry Francona would have already had his October return to Fenway Park. But they lost that game to Joe Maddon's Tampa Bay Rays, who lost to a Red Sox team headed for its latest World Series crown.
The Indians won the American League Central this season and finished with a slightly better record than the Red Sox, so they'll host the first two games before the series moves to Boston.
Cleveland was at one point as popular a pick as this year's Mets, the team that could ride young power pitching to October success. That was before injuries to Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar left its postseason rotation plans in flux. When Carrasco was lost for the season on Sept. 17 with a broken bone in his right hand, veteran Indians beat writer Paul Hoynes wrote this on Cleveland.com: "The Indians were eliminated from serious postseason advancement before they even got there."
Harsh, but possibly true, and it says here the Red Sox will advance.
NLDS: Cubs over Mets; Dodgers over Nationals
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Wrigley Field will bring back fond memories for the Mets, who celebrated their four-game National League Championship Series sweep there last October. But too many of those memories are of Daniel Murphy's four home runs and of Jacob deGrom and Matt Harvey wins.
The success of the Mets' power pitching helped shape the Cubs' offseason plans, but the Mets team they would face this time around doesn't have deGrom or Harvey—or even Murphy, for that matter. New York won't even be able to use Syndergaard until Game 3, since it needs him in the Wild Card Game against the Giants.
The Cubs lost as favorites last year, but they'll be bigger favorites this time around, and with good reason.
A friend of mine regularly asks which National League team has the best chance of stopping the Cubs, with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Washington Nationals as the only two possible answers. Just one of the two will get the chance to try. It was tough to pick a winner, but while the Nationals lost pitcher Stephen Strasburg and catcher Wilson Ramos to injuries, the Dodgers got Clayton Kershaw back from the disabled list.
Los Angeles is vulnerable to left-handed pitching, but Gio Gonzalez is Washington's only left-handed starter, and he has been tough to count on. The Dodgers went 5-1 in the teams' regular-season series, but it's mostly the Nats' health concerns that have me saying L.A. will advance here.
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ALCS: Red Sox over Blue Jays
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The Blue Jays celebrated on the Fenway field Sunday when back-to-back one-run wins gave them a wild-card spot. But even though the Red Sox were still playing for home-field advantage in the first round, it's easy to believe their focus wasn't as sharp as it would be in a postseason matchup.
They'll be counting on David Price to do for them what he couldn't do for the Blue Jays last October, and they might need someone to emerge as a credible third starter behind Price and Rick Porcello (Eduardo Rodriguez? Clay Buchholz?). But the lineup is relentless, and the bullpen problems that were such a concern in August seem to have largely worked themselves out.
The Blue Jays' two wins over the weekend meant they won the teams' season series 10-9. A Red Sox-Jays American League Championship Series would figure to be close, too, with the Red Sox edging by, perhaps because of a big hit by David Ortiz.
And then they can put it right on the Fenway scoreboard again: "Thanks, Big Papi."
NLCS: Cubs over Dodgers
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Among Dodgers fans, the franchise's nearly three-decade absence from the World Series is completely unacceptable. Those replays of the Kirk Gibson home run are nice, but they are getting a little old.
Old, like the stories of how Clayton Kershaw doesn't win big games in October. He put that storyline to rest by allowing just one run on three hits in seven innings in Game 4 of the National League Division Series against the Mets last year, though the Dodgers lost the series in Game 5.
The problem won't be Kershaw, who can match the Cubs' Jon Lester if they meet in Game 1. The problem is that while Chicago follows Lester with Jake Arrieta, John Lackey and Kyle Hendricks (in some order), the Dodgers will rely on the blister-prone Rich Hill, the unproven Kenta Maeda and perhaps the 20-year-old Julio Urias, who was supposed to be in the bullpen but could be in the rotation because Los Angeles just can't find anyone else.
The Dodgers have a chance, and it helps that the Cubs have just one left-handed starter (Lester). But the World Series drought that ends this year is the one that belongs to Chicago, which last played in one in 1945—long before anyone had heard of Gibson.
World Series: Red Sox over Cubs
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Way back in March, I came up with some bold predictions for 2016.
Some of them came close to being accurate but missed (Mariners make playoffs, Justin Verlander wins Cy Young). Some of them basically hit the mark except maybe for the wording (Alex Rodriguez announces retirement). Some turned out right or likely will (Robin Ventura leaves as White Sox manager, Kris Bryant wins National League MVP). Some were completely wrong (Marcus Stroman wins more games than David Price, Arizona Diamondbacks win National League West).
And then there were the two big ones: David Ortiz has one last huge postseason moment. Chicago Cubs win the World Series.
I suppose both of those could still happen, but I'm saying now that one will end up canceling out the other. Ortiz will get his moment, but it will come at the expense of the Cubs.
No matter what, a Cubs-Red Sox World Series would be something to watch.
Theo Epstein, who helped engineer the curse-breaking 2004 World Series win in Boston, returns to Fenway to try to break an even longer drought with the Cubs, with Jon Lester and other ex-Sox attempting to make it happen. Ortiz, after a season of goodbyes, gets to say farewell on the big October stage he has so often claimed as his own.
Fenway Park. Wrigley Field.
Who doesn't want that, except for fans of all the other teams in the postseason?
The Cubs have been the story of the baseball world all year. The Red Sox, with championships in 2004, 2007 and 2013, would go in as the team that has long enjoyed postseason success.
It's a World Series that would be talked about forever, and the guy they'll be talking about is Ortiz.
That means the Red Sox are going to win—no matter what I wrote in March.
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