Pinstripe Alley predicts the Division Series

As Josh and Jake detailed on the site earlier today, Division Series play is upon us. For most fans, it’s a return to the familiar, as the best-of-three Wild Card Series round was a relative newcomer for 2022, having only been preceded by the COVID-altered 2020. Otherwise, the Wild Card round had only been a single game for each league from 2012-21. It didn’t take any time at all to reach the start of the ALDS and NLDS!

As of 1:07pm ET today though, we’ll be off and running with the next round of the MLB playoffs. So just as I did for the start of the Wild Card Series, I asked the Pinstripe Alley staff to weigh in on each of the four sets, and since the series length variance is more interesting, I asked for that in the predictions as well.

Here are the four series ...

ALDS: New York Yankees vs. Cleveland Guardians
ALDS: Houston Astros vs. Seattle Mariners
NLDS: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Diego Padres
NLDS: Atlanta Braves vs. Philadelphia Phillies

... and here are the prediction results:

Look, we’re a Yankees site, so you can’t blame us for favoring New York in this series against Cleveland. That was probably inevitable, particularly since the Yankees are the betting favorite by even neutral observers. We’re just hoping that it comes to fruition.

As for the other series, most of us are going chalk since the top two seeds in each league are so overpowering. The possibility of ALCS and NLCS matchups of Yankees/Astros and Dodgers/Braves is extremely compelling. However, we did get six upset picks of the Mariners over the Astros, four of the Phillies over the Braves, and even three of the plucky Padres taking out the mighty 111-win Dodgers. I say this to Jesse, Dan, and Kunj with the utmost sincerity: I want to believe. But it’s probably not a surprise that the most common answer was “Dodgers in three,” which is exactly how they dismissed San Diego en route to a title in 2020.

What are your ALDS and NLDS picks though? How did your Wild Card Series picks fare? (For us, only John nailed all four outcomes.) Let us know in the comments!