Outside The Confines: A playoff preview

The regular season is over and the playoffs start in a few hours.

• Here’s a preview of the playoffs from ESPN dot com with important details and the strengths and weaknesses of each team.
• Fangraphs has a preview of all four wild card series:

Mets/Padres

Cardinal/Phillies

Blue Jays/Mariners

Guardians/Rays

• David Schoenfield makes the argument that this year’s postseason could be the best ever. It could be! It could also be terrible.
• Mike Axisa has some “bold” predictions for the playoffs.
• Isaac Levy-Rubinett explains why each playoff team will—or will not—win the World Series.
• MLB dot com has one reason each playoff team could win the World Series.
• The MLB dot com writers also predict the playoffs. Or try to, at least. Lots of Astros and Dodgers predictions with a stray “Braves” thrown in there.
• Will Leitch ranks the top 50 players in the postseason.
• The Mets are starting Max Scherzer in Game 1 of their Wild Card Series and are reportedly holding off on starting Jacob deGrom until a possible elimination game. Zach Crizer asks if this strategy makes any sense, and other questions surrounding the Mets this series.
• Ken Rosenthal tells the Mets to not overthink things—just start deGrom in Game 2. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• This is partly a Cubs story, but Jon Heyman argues that the Mets may have cost themselves a title by their unwillingness to part with prospects at the trade deadline. According to Heyman, the Mets were only offering prospects ranked in the mid-teens to early-twenties (depending on whose ranking you look at) in their system for Willson Contreras and David Robertson. You can see why Cubs president Jed Hoyer said they’d just take the draft pick in that scenario.
• Mark Feinsand has 13 potential free agents who could increase their market value with a strong postseason performance.
• Gabe Lacques writes that the Blue Jays’ Alejandro Kirk could be an “x-factor” in the playoffs this year.
• I guess we have to deal with the fallout of Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge hitting 62 home runs this season. Tom Verducci has the inevitable article that calls Judge the “authentic” home run king.
• Jeff Passan has the rebuttal, which says that Barry Bonds’ 73 home runs is just as “real” as any other record. (ESPN+ sub. req.) So of course, it’s behind a paywall.
• Gabe Lacques agrees that Bonds still holds the single-season home run record, but what Judge did this season was transcendent.
• Santul Nerkar agrees and adds that even though he didn’t win the Triple Crown and only set the American League home run record, he still had a season for the ages, which is more than just a record.
• Commissioner Rob Manfred said that fans can come to their own judgment as to who holds the “real” home run record. Good. Can I judge the Cubs as the “real” winners of the 2003 National League Championship Series?
• Bob Nightengale writes that despite his record-breaking season, Judge likely will get less money than you might think on the free agent market this winter.
• Ben Lindbergh takes a stab at the AL MVP race and says just because the voters have to make a choice between Judge and Shohei Ohtani, that doesn’t mean that we should have to choose between two impossibly magical and historic seasons.
• Jeff Passan looks at all the unique ways that Ohtani is doing what everyone thought couldn’t be done. (ESPN+ sub. req.)
• Ben Clemens notes that Ohtani took a new approach to pitching this year and it paid off with an historic season. Not only does Ohtani have a fastball that touches 100 miles per hour, he also has one of the best sliders in the game now.
• Angels general manager Perry Minasian said that the $30 million deal for 2023 was just “step one” and that they intend to negotiate a new long-term deal for the superstar.
• The Angels also announced that manager Phil Nevin will return for 2023.
• Sticking with the Angels, Tom Verducci and Joe Maddon have an excerpt from their new book about the day the Angels fired Maddon and how it was about a conflict of philosophy between Maddon and Minasian. Mostly about the changing role of the manager in today’s game.
• Minasian responded to Maddon’s book by saying “He’s trying to sell books.” Minasian also answered a lot of other questions about the Angels in an end-of-the-year press conference. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Sam Blum writes that the person who should really be answering questions about the Angels is owner Arte Moreno, but he’s been missing-in-action. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Normally a managerial firing would be the first or second story on OTC, but this week it ends up way down here. The Royals fired manager Mike Matheny and pitching coach Cal Eldred.
• Cardinals DH Albert Pujols nearly retired mid-season.
• However, Pujols went on to have a terrific second half and the Cardinals won the NL Central. Pujols said that “this is how I want my career to end.”
• Austin Mock looks at which teams over-performed and under-performed relative to their pre-season predictions and why. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said that the team will try to sign shortstop Xander Bogaerts to a new contract before he reaches free agency after the World Series.
• This isn’t a big story now, but it will be next April. Humera Lodhi and Neil Paine document that about 1 in 5 pitchers routinely take longer to throw a pitch than the pitch clock limits that go into effect next season.
• Attendance in 2022 was up over last season, but it still trails the numbers from before the pandemic.
• And finally, the MLB beat writers for each playoff team picked their team’s best walk-up song.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Let the playoffs begin.