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Which characteristics cause a team to either excel or struggle in the postseason? It’s a long-standing debate, and most baseball fans have a preferred theory. Some think it’s having an ace. Others think good contact hitting, or a team’s momentum, is what pushes a club over the top. Some people — the ones most likely to get annoyed when they read my work — think that clutch performances or having veterans with playoff experience on the roster is what causes a club to shine in October. Sadly, the best answer is rather boring: What makes a team play well in the postseason is simply being the better team overall.
In 2022, I examined 63 team characteristics throughout baseball history to see if any of them presaged clubs’ fall fates. Outside of leaning more heavily on home runs to score — top pitchers who struggle in the playoffs are far more likely to be felled by homers than issuing walks or failing to strike hitters out — and a barely significant tendency for younger teams to overperform, there just wasn’t much there, there.
But that’s not to say that playoff baseball is identical to regular season baseball. After all, the former is a sprint while the latter is a marathon, and the challenges in each scenario are different. When I ran the numbers for the aforementioned article, the focus was on how the playoff teams played, rather than who played. I specially used a playoff model that estimated team quality as being different in the regular season due to roster construction considerations. Teams are better able to leverage their front-end talent over a few crucial weeks than a six-month period. The qualities of a team’s fifth starter (not to mention their sixth, seventh and eighth) are less crucial to their success come October, and the key bats in the lineup (if healthy) are almost always going to be playing, thanks to the additional days off that clubs get in the postseason. As the 2019 Washington Nationals demonstrated, you can even paper over half your bullpen being a train wreck.
So which teams are best equipped for the playoffs this year? To estimate that, I projected every team in baseball twice. First, I projected their current rosters based on normal patterns of usage. Then I projected every team again, only this time with a usage pattern that reflects the differences in playoff baseball, with a higher proportion of the playing time given to a team’s best healthy players, especially its starting pitchers.
There are 15 teams, exactly half of baseball, with some plausible hope of making the playoffs (I’m omitting the Red Sox, who are currently teetering on the edge of mathematical oblivion). If we played an entire season again from this point, in violation of the calendar and the MLBPA’s likely objection to doubling everyone’s workload, ZiPS estimates the current roster strength of the 15 playoff-relevant teams as follows:
ZiPS Projected Roster Strength
- Los Angeles Dodgers .560
- New York Yankees .554
- Baltimore Orioles .550
- Houston Astros .550
- Philadelphia Phillies .549
- Seattle Mariners .545
- San Diego Padres .545
- Arizona Diamondbacks .544
- Minnesota Twins .544
- Cleveland Guardians .542
- Atlanta Braves .519
- Milwaukee .534
- New York Mets .523
- Detroit Tigers .521
- Kansas City Royals .507
Every roster has some imperfection, so there’s a fairly small spread between the top and the bottom. Naturally, there are a lot of differences from the preseason, when ZiPS saw the Braves as the best team in baseball prior to their basketful of injuries, and had the Tigers and Royals winning 70-something games.
Next, we’ll add in the estimated postseason strength, a mix of three-game, five-game, and seven-game series constructions, and compare it to the regular season projections:
ZiPS Projected Roster Strength
- Los Angeles Dodgers .560 .586 .026
- New York Yankees .554 .576 .021
- Atlanta Braves .519 .534 .015
- Baltimore Orioles .550 .565 .015
- Houston Astros .550 .561 .011
- Detroit Tigers .521 .529 .008
- Seattle Mariners .545 .549 .004
- Philadelphia Phillies .549 .549 .000
- Milwaukee Brewers .534 .533 -.001
- Arizona Diamondbacks .544 .542 -.002
- New York Mets .523 .516 -.007
- San Diego Padres .545 .537 -.007
- Minnesota Twins .544 .527 -.017
- Cleveland Guardians .542 .516 -.026
- Kansas City Royals .507 .475 -.031
Ranking by relative improvement, the Dodgers come out on top in the projections. While the team has been known for its depth, a boon during the regular season, injuries have sapped the rotation to such a degree that they’re no longer really equipped for a long run at the moment. But facing a maximum of 19 games — game-ending triple plays aside, the Dodgers are still very likely to get a first-round bye — they may be able to hold the pitching together, which would give a lineup with Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman the best chance to avoid having to win a bunch of 10-9 contests.
The Yankees also get a big boost in the postseason format thanks to the team’s power and its ability to slot two MVP candidates in Aaron Judge and Juan Soto into the lineup. ZiPS is quite down on the back of the Yankees’ bullpen, but this estimate considers that less of an issue.
Next up is the Braves, mainly because October gives them the opportunity to mostly start Chris Sale, Max Fried, and Charlie Morton, with less emphasis on Spencer Schwellenbach or having to figure out who their fifth starter is. For all the team’s struggles this season, Atlanta still currently ranks fifth in baseball in runs scored, and as mentioned above, home run reliance does help when matched up against other teams’ aces. These projections reflect that Austin Riley will not be returning this year.
The Orioles would have ranked more highly here, but the questions surrounding Grayson Rodriguez‘s health has lowered their chances of avoiding Dean Kremer or Albert Suárez having to face off against superior opposing pitchers (ZiPS remains skeptical of Suárez as a starter). Félix Bautista’s absence is a big deal here. Things don’t feel great in Baltimore right now, with the team treading water since the All-Star break and falling well behind the Yankees in September, but there’s also no reason to think that momentum plays a significant role in postseason play.
The Astros get to rely on their core offensive talent — I’m assuming Yordan Alvarez’s sprained right knee is a short-term issue — and they get a lot of Framber Valdez, who ZiPS is a big fan of. The Tigers are actually projected as the best AL Central team when it comes to the postseason by virtue of having Tarik Skubal, who ZiPS thinks is currently the best starter in baseball (he also has the top WAR projection of 2025, passing Logan Webb). ZiPS isn’t keen on Detroit’s bullpen as a whole, but when it projects them to mostly rely on Jason Foley, Tyler Holton, and Will Vest, those numbers get a lot sunnier.
On the downside, ZiPS was a fan of the Guardians coming into the season because of what it saw as deep, stable depth. But that’s less of an asset in October, and the computer basically thinks that Cleveland will have the inferior starting pitcher in the vast majority of the team’s matchups. ZiPS is more confident about Cole Ragans than any Guardians starter, but rates Kansas City’s offense as relatively weak outside of Bobby Witt Jr. and sees the Royals as having the weakest bullpen of any of the 15 teams.
Is it possible that the Yankees will get bounced in the Division Series while the Royals steamroll their opponents? Absolutely! And that’s the fun of postseason play — in the end, it’s the players who get the final word on who gets doused in champagne and cheap beer, not the computers.
