Division Series week is the best baseball week of the year. The Championship Series has higher stakes, but it can’t match the volume of games. The World Series is a treasure, but it’s so dang fussy, and the quality varies wildly from year to year. No, give me the ol’ DS, with eight teams believing in this moment that this might be their year, only to have four of them get pantsed on national television.
It’s the perfect amount of overwhelming.
Not all Division Series are created equal, however. All of them are fantastic matchups, but some are more fantastical than others. Here’s an unofficial, but quite correct, ranking of how interesting each of the four series will be. And remember, kids: It’s not “clickbait.” It’s “subscription bait.” But, seriously, once you’ve lived with the NYT Cooking app, you won’t know how you ever lived without it.
There are eight teams left. Two of them will go to the World Series. One of them will win it. Which teams should you watch on their way there?
4. Detroit Tigers vs. Seattle Mariners
Why the series ranks fourth
There’s no way to do this without being rude, so we might as well rip the Band-Aid off. The Tigers being here is like the winner of the N.I.T. immediately getting a pass to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. It’s a fun story! But it’s probably not going to be the best baseball out of the other four series. You see that one of the other teams has Shohei Ohtani, right? The Blue Jays, I think. The Tigers can’t compete with that.
All eyes will be on Cal Raleigh, who slugged 60 homers in the regular season. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
They probably can compete with the Mariners, of course. This might be the most even matchup of all four series; both teams have an 88-74 Pythagorean win-loss record. The Tigers scored 758 runs this season, and the Mariners scored 766. The Tigers allowed 691 runs, and the Mariners allowed 694. These are the same teams, for better and for worse. Compared to the other teams, worse. Doesn’t mean we can’t have fun and make friends along the way.
Why this series should actually rank first
Both of them have that right stink of crazy about them. Every postseason gets the mad, berserking underdog that it deserves, and both of these teams feel like perfect candidates. With Cal Raleigh, you get to watch a two-way threat coming off one of the greatest all-around seasons from a catcher in baseball history. With Tarik Skubal, you get a combination of technical precision combined with raw, unearthly stuff that almost nobody in baseball can match. They’re going to win awards. They’re going to face each other. It’s going to rule.
3. Yankees vs. Blue Jays
Why the series ranks third
It’s neither team’s fault, just simple American League East fatigue. That’s cutting the divisional rivalry of the Yankees and the Blue Jays short, I’m sure, and fans of both teams can probably rattle off where they were during the “Rance Mulliniks Game,” or some such nonsense. Neither fan base will need a reason to get fired up, and both crowds should be among the most boisterous of the remaining teams.
For the rest of us, the outsiders, this kinda feels like Batman vs. Killer Croc after three games of Batman vs. Joker. You can’t just have one rivalry, or else it’ll get stale, so you need the pantheon of lesser villains. But that doesn’t mean they’re anything but lesser villains. And if Blue Jays fans are upset about the analogy, they should consider themselves lucky. The franchise is named after one of the most annoying creatures on the planet. They’re lucky they’re not being compared to Snarf from “Thundercats.”
Why this series should actually rank first
This one has Aaron Judge. It’s tempting to claim Judge fatigue, as we all got an entire extra month of him last year, too. He’s one of the only baseball players your neighbors might bring up in small talk, and he’s one of the most celebrated players in the sport. At some point, you’d rather have a more avant-garde baseball experience, especially in the postseason.
Judge is still one of the greatest hitters to ever live, though, and he’s building a case as the greatest right-handed hitter of all-time. Would you like to see him in a postseason series? Well, here you go. The Blue Jays can’t match his kind of star power, but they’re a well-oiled, competent baseball team with more than a chance against the Yankees. The Yankees had a nine-game advantage in expected win-loss percentage, but I’m willing to ignore that on account of divisional shenanigans. They’re such a great equalizer.
2. Cubs vs. Brewers
Why the series ranks second
It’s got everything that the Yankees and Blue Jays series has, at least from a divisional-shenanigans perspective. You can make the case that Milwaukee’s roster has more than a few similarities with Toronto’s, with both clubs thriving on a similar quantity-of-quality approach to roster building. There isn’t anyone quite like Judge on either roster, so it’s hard to make a case for the Cubs over the Yankees in terms of watchability. So how did they sneak into the runner-up spot?
Because the Brewers have to want to stick it to Craig Counsell. I have no idea what the relationship is between the Cubs’ manager and his former players, so don’t take this as a suggestion that Christian Yelich or Brice Turang has it out for him. No, we’re talking about the idea of the Cubs poaching Counsell in the first place. The idea that one team is a special, precious destination and the other one is just a way station to somewhere else. The Brewers don’t want to stick it to Counsell, the person. They want to stick it to him as a concept.
Or, heck, maybe they want to stick it to him as a person, too. One-hundred-and-sixty-two games is a lot of games. You can get tired of someone really fast in that kind of environment.
Why it should secretly rank first
I’m not tired of either of these two teams, though. I’m tired of specific parts of them, to be sure. I’m tired of the Cubs not aping the Dodgers and blowing every offseason out of the roster, allowing the Brewers to zip past them in the NL Central every season. And I’m tired of the Brewers playing like a cohesive unit in the regular season, only to put Mentos and Coke in their mouth after the first pitch of every postseason, screaming “AHHHHHH MY MOUTH IS MELTING, WHAT DO I DO?’” as firefighters and paramedics chase them around the ballpark.
Still, the teams are still fresh to the seasoned baseball watcher, and whatever NLCS fatigue there was for the Cubs after their back-to-back-to-back appearances from 2015 to 2017, it’s mostly gone now. That was so very long ago. The Brewers have been to only two NLCS since moving to the National League in 1998, and they’re one of the only teams left without a championship. It’s always easier to watch a team you have a soft spot for, and it’s always easier to have a soft spot for the long-suffering franchises.
1. Dodgers vs. Phillies
Why the series ranks first
Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Schwarber always have a chance to hit 2,000 feet of homers in the same game. One of the two can pitch, which is apparently a “big deal” to some easily impressed people, and it’s made Ohtani one of the biggest superstars in the sport’s history. If you’re looking for individual matchups, this is the series to dive into, with the Dodgers being lefty-heavy at the top of their order, and the Phillies likely to use three straight left-handed starters, each of them coming off excellent seasons.
Even more than the players we’re used to, though, is the idea of Roki Sasaki as the postseason’s 𝓂𝓎𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓎 𝓅𝓁𝒶𝓎𝑒𝓇. He wasn’t quite good enough to be in the major leagues until recently, but now he’s seemingly tasked with being the closer for a team that has as much of a championship-or-bust mindset as any team in professional sports history. Talk about pressure. And I gotta see it. Sounds like amazing television, regardless of the outcome.
Why it should secretly rank fourth
You want to talk about NLCS fatigue? Borrr-ing. The last time there was an NLCS without either one of these teams, it was 2019, when the Nationals and the Cardinals faced off. It’s somewhat compelling that the Phillies are the one team that the Dodgers haven’t checked off their postseason list during their historic run, and it’s kinda cool that the last time these two met in the postseason, Greg Maddux was pitching for the Phillies.
None of it can make up for the fact that we see one of these teams around this time every year. The writer’s room is getting lazy.
(Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images)