Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports
Astros or Mets? Yankees or Dodgers? Here’s how the starting staffs compare among the potential postseason clubs.
During the regular season, it’s fairly easy to determine the relative strength of different teams’ rotations. Just about every team is on even ground in using five starters (though some use six these days) to grind through the 162-game schedule, so statistics can often tell most of the story.
It’s far more complicated, though, to discern which team has the starting pitching advantage during the postseason, especially with the new 12-team format. In the best-of-three wild card series, teams may only end up using two starters, so front-end dominance could play a greater role in the playoffs moving forward.