The 2019 regular season has come to a close, and with it, comes the long race toward October, meaning MLB playoff time is around the corner.
The juggernauts are just who you’d expect for this year’s playoffs. The Red Sox, Indians, and Astros have all won their divisions, and the Yankees are at the top.
Who has the best chance to make it to the very end? To get these odds, I took a close look at the FanGraphs’ playoff odds.
It was debatable whether the Yankees could truly beat the Astros after a long regular season. Are the Astros unbeatable? Yes, it’s possible.
If you said four months ago that the Yankees were projected to win the playoffs, I would have told you the Astros would persevere.
But as the Yankees and Astros go head-to-head in the playoffs, it might come down just to the pitching staff to see who is victorious.
“To get the odds, FanGraphs simulates the MLB season 10,000 times. If a team makes the playoffs in 9,000 of the 10,000 simulations,” writes David Adler in MLB News. “For example, it will have 90 percent playoff odds.”
Here’s the first look into the 2019 playoffs with the top contenders: Yankees (96.9%), Astros (94.9%), Indians (94.5%) and the Red Sox (90.6%).
Can the Yankees flip the script on the World Series-winning rivals and out- play the Astros once and for all?
Luis Severino (Yankees) and Justin Verlander (Astros) are two of the best pitchers in the MLB at this time.
Yet, if the Yankees are going to pull this off and win the World Series, they need Severino to have the same consistency he had all season to go toe-to-toe with Verlander to win this thing.
“I think I am at my best,” Severino says. “I had three regular season outings before this… So I think that’s good enough to be at my best.”
At the end of the day, it might come down to the pitching duel between Severino and Verlander to see which team will make it all the way to the end.
Now it’s time for Severino and the Yankees to prove it – prove that the regular season can carry out into the playoffs; prove that the grueling hard work can beat the second best team in the MLB.
*editor’s note: Alas, the Yankees could not prove it and dropped the series to the Astros, who went on to play seven games against the Nationals in the World Series…only to lose.
by Ava Turner
CougarBuzz 