Finally, the four teams that will participate in each league championship series have been decided. The Phillies are a loud, brash, fun, and intense team with a unique charisma and a home crowd to match their boisterousness. We have the D-backs. They are the team with the least chance of making it this far, not to mention the team that has yet to lose this postseason.The Rangers are a team that hasn’t lost yet this October. and Key players are returning from injury when we need them most. And the defending champion Astros are trying to accomplish something that hasn’t been accomplished this century: win a second straight World Series.
Each of these teams has their own drama, storylines, and narratives, but combining them in a theoretical World Series matchup would create the most compelling team. As the ALCS prepares to open Sunday night (and the NLCS on Monday), here’s a look at the key themes of each of the four potential World Series matchups. One of these actually happens. The story from that time is as follows.
Phillies vs. Rangers: Free Agency Works! Series
Every Hot Stove season, we hear from efficiency experts: Signing players to big contracts is a risky strategy. These are players who have signed contracts that have not performed well and are entering a declining phase. Well, his two with the Phillies and Rangers would be two extremely high-profile rebuttals to that idea.
These teams are in many ways built in free agency. The Phillies spent a lot of money to acquire all the stars: Bryce Harper, Trey Turner, Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos, Zack Wheeler, and even Craig Kimbrel.And the Rangers were even. more Do your best in free agency. The franchise announced its claims to pay big bucks to Corey Seager and Marcus Semien (and Jon Gray) to get out of the AL West cellar by 2022, and a year later to buy Jacob deGrom ( Of course he won’t be here) and Nathan Eovaldi. The next time a team executive tries to argue that they shouldn’t spend money in the offseason, all they have to do is bring up the World Series if this matchup happens. They got here by spending.
D-Backs-Rangers: Quick Rebuild Series
We’ve already established how the Rangers bounced back: spending. — but we haven’t looked into how it’s done in that much detail quickly They did. Just two seasons ago, the Rangers lost 102 games on a team that gave regular at-bats to players like David Dahl, Eli White, DJ Peters and Brock Holt. (That team got a 24-game start from Mike Foltynewicz!) Not that last year was much better: They lost 94 games in 2022.
But it’s still better than the combined record the D-backs had over the past two seasons. In 2021, they lost a staggering 110 games, and Zac Gallen went 4-10 on the year. (It’s hard to imagine Zac Gallen going 4-10.) Last year’s 88 losses wasn’t too bad, but it certainly wasn’t a team that would instantly punch a ticket to the World Series. . But Corbin Carroll, the leading candidate for National League Rookie of the Year, gives the team a bona fide superstar. Ketel Marte is healthy and playing like an All-Star. Christian Walker continued to show that he is one of the best late bloomers in recent history. Oh, and Gallen was a Cy Young Award candidate. Look, you have competition.
If your team is struggling, even if it’s been struggling for a while, these two teams prove that your turnaround could be just around the corner.
Astros-D-Backs: David vs. Goliath Series
Teams are hard to find in a league with only 30 teams and in a sport where the last-place team always wins a series over the first-place team. truth A huge underdog there. But this is as close as you can get, right? The Astros just made it to the ALCS for the seventh straight year and are aiming for their fifth World Series appearance in seven years. They also aim to become the first team since the Yankees from 1998-2000 to win back-to-back World Series titles. That was a long time ago. It was a long time ago that the D-backs were the team whose winning streak ended in their last World Series appearance. The D-backs won only 84 games in the regular season and were considered by some to be the worst team heading into this postseason. And they’ll be playing against a huge team trying to make history. You’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger underdog. And everyone loves the underdog.
Phillies vs. Astros: Rematch Series
You might think World Series rematches would happen much more often than they actually are. The Braves and Yankees basically dominated his ’90s, but they never faced each other in two consecutive seasons (even overall his only two were in 1996 and 1999). ). The same goes for the Astros and Dodgers over the past decade, with the two only meeting once (in 2017) in the Fall Classic. However, if the Phillies and Astros can win the LCS, it will be the first World Series rematch since 1978.
It was the Yankees, led by Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin, who defeated the Dodgers in six games for the second consecutive year in the World Series. Previously, it had not been done since 1958. (You can read the full history of World Series rematches here.) Last year’s World Series was fun, but teams like the Astros and Phillies had even more drama. Here’s mine. He has every reason to believe this team will be even better if the two teams meet again.