This bodes well for the Astros and the Indians, because, ever since Major League Baseball instituted the best-of-five division series in , 63 of the 88 contests have gone to whichever team won the first game.
If history is any guide, this means the two winners have a 72 percent chance of advancing to the league championship series, which, like the World Series, is a best-of-seven contest.
The following graphic shows all 88 contests colored by whether the winner of the first game won the series green or eventually lost red , with circles for first-game wins at home and squares for first-game wins away. Of course, all hope is not lost for Red Sox and Yankees fans. While a best-of-five model stacks the odds against the team that loses the first game, there are plenty of exceptions. Here are the full odds to win the World Series:.
Editor's note: All odds are provided by our partner, PointsBet. PointsBet is our Official Sports Betting Partner and we may receive compensation if you place a bet on PointsBet for the first time after clicking our links.
This could go horribly wrong in a hurry, especially with the uncertainty of the single elimination wild card format.
Things get even more difficult in the next round. The Braves were a nice story during the regular season after battling so many injuries, but they played in the worst division and have the worst record of any team in the playoffs. The Brewers advance to face the Giants. On the AL side of the bracket, the Rays will dispatch the Red Sox in what should be a relatively easy series. Not exactly the sexy, big market matchups MLB might want, but there will be some great baseball played.
Milwaukee has an incredible pitching staff featuring three starters that have an ERA under three and closer Josh Hader is 34 for 35 on save attempts. The World Series pits two teams who thrive in opposite areas. Houston led the league in runs, hits and batting average. Milwaukee led the league in strikeouts and was third in ERA and quality starts.
The Astros are making their fifth straight playoff appearance, the Brewers are making their fourth. Like Logan Webb recording an out on a slow roller up the first-base line in the eighth inning of Game 1, atoning for an error he made on almost the exact same play four innings earlier. Or Cody Bellinger ambushing Dominic Leone 's first-pitch fastball in the sixth inning of Game 2, breaking out of mystifying struggles in dramatic fashion. Or Steven Duggar , in the lineup for his defense, running down a deep drive by Chris Taylor through hellish winds in the sixth inning of Game 3.
Or Walker Buehler , starting on short rest for the first time in his career, pitching around back-to-back singles in the second inning of Game 4, setting an important tone for a performance that saved the Dodgers' season. Expect more of these. Keown: Game 5 creates its own hype, so whatever has happened to this point -- and it has been a good but not great series, in my opinion -- will be subsumed by the energy and anticipation of a deciding game.
Given the previous 23 games between these two teams in , there's every reason to believe the last one will be tight and well-played. It's cool, and fitting, that they get the entire stage to themselves. Gonzalez: How good Gavin Lux has looked. He nearly tied the game with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 3, sending a deep drive to center that was knocked down by the wind, then got the start in Game 4 and reached base four times, drawing a couple of walks and lining a couple of singles.
Lux, 23, has been one of the Dodgers' most heralded prospects over the past handful of years, a future cornerstone the team refused to trade in multiple instances. But he struggled mightily through infrequent plate appearances in and didn't take advantage of an opportunity for semi-regular playing time in Lux made two trips to the injured list, was demoted to the minors in late August, then learned to play the outfield in a desperate effort to contribute.
When he came back up on Sept. It began to translate into production that spilled into the postseason, assuring that Lux will start in the winner-take-all Game 5. Keown: How much the Giants have missed Brandon Belt's production in the middle of the order. When Belt and Max Muncy were declared out for this round of the playoffs, the depth of the Giants' roster seemed like a major advantage.
It hasn't turned out that way. It's clear Bellinger has been gaining confidence with each at-bat, and Lux is turning himself into a problem for San Francisco. Evan Longoria has looked good just once, but it won Game 3. The lack of production from LaMonte Wade Jr. During the Giants' hero-of-the-day regular season, that was rare. Gonzalez: This series is completely different if not for the leaping catch Brandon Crawford made late in Game 3.
The Giants led by a run in the bottom of the seventh, with runners on first and second and two outs. Mookie Betts smoked a mph line drive with an expected batting average of nearly. It wasn't just that Crawford was athletic enough to catch it, but that he was positioned perfectly to do so, a fitting representation of what has made the Giants such an impressive defensive team this season.
Keown: We're going to differentiate between aesthetics and importance here. The double play turned by La Stella and Crawford on Justin Turner in the fourth inning of Game 1 was among a handful of the best defensive plays of the entire season. La Stella fielded the ball on the third-base side of second with all of his momentum heading toward left field, made a backhand flip to Crawford, who glided over the bag like a speed skater and made a cross-body throw to first.
Each runner was out by the length of a shoelace, making it obvious how perfect all of it -- the flip, the turn, the throw -- had to be. However, the most important play was Crawford's catch of Betts' liner in the seventh inning of Game 3, but here's where Crawford's ho-hum brilliance comes into play: If you've watched him closely this season, you would have been surprised if he didn't make that catch.
Gonzalez: For the Dodgers, it has undoubtedly been Buehler. He took the loss in Game 1, but he gave his team a chance to win despite Webb's dominance on the other side. More importantly, his taking the ball on short rest in Game 4 assured that the Dodgers would navigate through this series with their top three starters Buehler, Max Scherzer and Julio Urias. Their key to advancing through October will be for Buehler, Scherzer and Urias to absorb as many of the starts as possible, if not all of them.
Any other circumstance could exhaust the Dodgers' bullpen. Keown: Dodger hitters rediscovering their patience after flailing at everything Webb threw at them in Game 1.
Webb pounded the zone early, got the Dodgers in swing mode and then used his off-speed pitches to expand.
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