IIf you had wanted to bet in early September that the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks would be the participants in the World Series, you could have gotten fantastic odds. On September 8, Arizona’s odds of reaching the postseason—not even the World Series, just the playoffs—were 46.2%, according to FanGraphs. The chance in Texas was a modest 38.6%. The D-Backs had cooled off considerably after a hot start and appeared to be circling the drain in the National League wild-card race. The Rangers would lose prized trade deadline acquisition Max Scherzer to the injured list in a matter of days with a strained shoulder, and he wouldn’t return until October. Both clubs were afterthoughts in the Fall Classic, expected to miss the postseason or retire early.
How drastically things have changed. The Rangers and Diamondbacks will indeed be playing for baseball’s ultimate prize after their parallel tracks took a wild turn for the better in October. Both teams won their wild card series two games to none, then defeated the 100-win majors in a three-game series sweeps. Both fell three games to two in their respective championship series, and both won their final two games along the way, clinching their World Series tickets. The Rangers dispatched their rival Houston Astros; the Diamondbacks shocked the Philadelphia Phillies. And so when the World Series begins Friday night in Arlington, Texas, the teams with a chance to win the World Series will be a pair of underdogs who have won 84 and 90 regular-season games, respectively.
In ramping up their turnaround, the Rangers and Diamondbacks got plenty of the old-fashioned baseball luck every team needs to thrive in the postseason. But they both had rosters set up to give them a chance, and their pennant runs were also triumphs of precision.
The Rangers built their offense with a mix of old and young. They had one of the most productive lineups in the Majors all season. Their adjusted on-base plus slugging percentage was 113, which equates to 13% better than the MLB average. the fourth most productive offense in the game. But the lineup got a huge boost when outfield prospect Evan Carter arrived in the major leagues on September 8. Carter immediately caught fire, posting a 1.059 OPS in 75 plate appearances to end the season.
According to baseball-reference.com, Carter was worth 1.6 wins above replacement, and the Rangers cleared the postseason by two games over the Seattle Mariners. Carter, on the margins, was a crucial difference. Meanwhile, the Rangers got great work all season from their middle infield duo of second baseman Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, while catcher Jonah Heim and outfield Adolis García were dynamos in their own right. The Rangers didn’t have a front-line pitching staff, but they got so much offense that they didn’t need one. The franchise has spent years developing offensive talent and signing more of it through free agency, especially the high-priced additions of Seager and Semien, and then putting together complementary pieces. Scherzer’s return from injury, even in a reduced state, was a useful boost.
The Diamondbacks are a different proposition. They had a relatively weak lineup, especially for a World Series team. (Their adjusted OPS of 99 was a touch worse than league average.) But they have four players at the keystone position: outfielder Corbin Carroll, second baseman Ketel Marte, first baseman Christian Walker and catcher Gabriel Moreno. Carroll and Walker sputtered in the NLCS against Philadelphia, but Marte hit .387 and two of the team’s lighter hitters, center fielder Alek Thomas and shortstop Geraldo Perdomo, found unusual home run power.
Arizona’s strength lay in its two stalwart starting pitchers: staff ace Zac Gallen, who posted a 3.47 earned run average in 210 innings, and 35-year-old journeyman Merrill Kelly, who played in South Korea until 2019 and has found his place as a reliable Arizona starter for six seasons. Both struggled in the NLCS, but the Diamondbacks’ bullpen has come into shape to help them at the perfect time. In 49 postseason innings, Arizona relievers have done just that posted an ERA of 2.94 and protected many tight leads in crucial places. Ryan Thompson, Kevin Ginkel and Paul Sewald have given up three runs in 27 and two-thirds of those innings, striking out 32 and walking six. In October, the auxiliary was the distinction between an OK ball club and a legitimate championship contender.
This was the second year of MLB’s expanded postseason format, which welcomes six of the 15 clubs in each league. Much like when the Phillies went to the World Series in Cinderella a year ago, much debate has flared up following the success of the wild-card teams about whether MLB has devalued the regular season and should shake up the playoffs again. After all, the sport’s three 100-win teams all exited the tournament early. Neither Arizona nor Texas can credibly claim to be the most complete baseball team or the best team from April through October.
And if baseball were English football, proponents of moving the postseason to a more exclusive set of teams (or no teams at all) would have a point. But the playoffs-versus-regular-season ship left port from America long ago. In a ruthless search for television and ticket sales dollars, MLB and its American compatriots have opted for big, splashy postseason tournaments that anoint the game’s champions.
The pledge is about drama, not accuracy, and American audiences seem to like it that way. Even until 1968, when the World Series was the title only postseason series, there was the possibility that an inferior regular-season club would defeat a superior club. And then, as the postseason grew, the potential for incongruity grew with it. The 2006 St Louis Cardinals won the World Series after just 83 regular season wins, five more than their losses. Those playoffs included just eight teams, a lower percentage of the competition than any other major American sport, and an intruder still caused chaos. With our TV remotes and eyeballs, we as a sports-watching public have been voting for exactly that kind of opportunity for decades.