The 2015 MLB postseason got started on a high note with Tuesday's wild-card showdown, which promises to set up an exhilarating October as the nine teams left vie for a World Series crown.
The most successful organization in baseball history was the first to go down in the playoffs, as the 27-time world champions suffered a tough home defeat. The New York Yankees fell, 3-0, to the Houston Astros to allow Houston a pass into the ALDS and send the Yankees home packing.
The Wild Card Round won't be in the books until the Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates clash Wednesday night, after which the divisional round will be set. From then on, it will be up to those teams to win a five-game series and then a seven-game championship-round series to punch their tickets to the World Series.
Time is running out before the playoffs are in full swing, so take a look below to make sure you're caught up.
ALDS Schedule
NL Wild Card and NLDS Schedule
Postseason Preview
It shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone following baseball in the last few years that those on the mound promise to dominate October this postseason.
With Cy Young contenders aplenty and the most feared pitching rotations in baseball in the mix, this year's postseason could prove to be one of the lowest scoring in history.
It all starts with the New York Mets, who boast one of the most treacherous rotations of starting pitchers that baseball has ever seen. Behind Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey and Bartolo Colon, the Mets could simply pitch their way into the World Series without much help from their bats.
Throw in Noah Syndergaard as well, and the Mets have accomplished a feat not ever done in the history of baseball, as Erik Malinowski of Rolling Stone showed:
Of course, no club can truly go the distance without considerable help from the offense. While that was a big question mark for most of the season, New York's bats have woken up in the second half, largely because of the trade-deadline acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes.
As long as they can do what Curtis Granderson brilliantly stated, they will march their way to the World Series, as Anthony DiComo of MLB.com showed:
It will be tough getting past the Dodgers' one-two punch of Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, but the Mets do have a much deeper pitching stable that will bode well in a five-game series. The same can be said in the NLCS, as their pitching staff should be able to thwart the offenses of either St. Louis, Chicago or Pittsburgh—depending on who advances.
That means the top seed won't be packing its bags to the World Series in the NL, but the same can't be suggested of the AL.
That's because the Toronto Blue Jays are in the midst of a tear that should have them ripping through the ALDS and ALCS. With a Cy Young contender of their own in David Price, the Blue Jays will guarantee at least one win a series when he's on the mound.
The pitching staffs that the Blue Jays will face won't be anywhere near capable of slowing down their offense, too, as Jayson Stark of ESPN reported.
"Their offense is so good," said one NL exec, per Stark. "They're going to decimate some poor pitching staff. When I look at October, I keep thinking: 'What pitching staff would be able to come out of there alive?' With some of these staffs, by the time you go through Toronto, your pitching staff will be exhausted."
With Toronto strolling through the AL, that leaves a mouth-watering World Series clash between the Blue Jays' boisterous bats and the Mets' daunting pitching staff.
Once you're done reveling at the possibility of such a matchup, leave room to realize which team has the complete package necessary to make it all the way.
That's certainly not the Mets, whose offense ranks in the lower half of baseball in runs, while the Blue Jays have put up a whopping 891 runs on the season—over 120 more than the next team. It takes a proper mix of pitching and batting to make it all the way, and that advantage goes toward the Blue Jays.
The New York pitchers will allow the Mets to steal a few games but not enough to complete the storybook season as they go down a similar road as the 2014 Royals and come up just short of glory.
World Series Prediction: Blue Jays over Mets in six games
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