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Outside The Confines: A World Series contender least likely?

Don’t think a lot of people saw this one coming.

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Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images

I think for those who were placing bets on the most-likely World Series matchups, there are likely few remaining brackets who had the Phillies on their list to be NL champions.

The Phillies are the real outliers here. They placed third in the NL East with only 87 wins, and two teams in their own division won 101. The real leaders in terms of winning numbers, though, were the 2020 World Series winners, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won a staggering 111 games only to lose in the first round of the postseason.

Meanwhile, the Astros completed a four-game sweep of the ALCS and will meet the Phillies in the World Series beginning Friday night in Houston.

The Astros were the winningest team in the American League, so their place in the World Series isn’t exactly stunning, but it seemed like every baseball writer mid-season was talking about how the Yankees were poised for a historic winning run, and the focus was so much on Aaron Judge’s home run numbers that a lot of people didn’t seem to realize the Astros won 106 games.

The baseball postseason is literally anyone’s game, which makes this sort of thing par for the course, but it’s still stunning to see the Phillies heading into the next round.

And tomorrow will be a better day, Buster. Make it so.