Underdogs Continue Surprising Run Through MLB Postseason

The Major League Baseball postseason has been anything but ordinary through the first two rounds with underdogs winning at a remarkable rate.

In the division series, three of the four winners did not have home field advantage, with the exception of the Houston Astros, who advanced to their seventh-straight American League Championship Series by eliminating the Minnesota Twins.

The Philadelphia Phillies, the National League's top wild-card team, continued the trend by eliminating the Atlanta Braves in four games for the second straight season on Thursday.

The other two teams bound for the League Championship Series are a pair of wild-card teams in the AL's Texas Rangers and the NL's Arizona Diamondbacks.

Of the four remaining teams, the combined 354 regular season wins is the lowest by the final four teams in baseball history, per ESPN's Jeff Passan.

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For further context, the teams with the top four regular season records in baseball this season were the Tampa Bay Rays, the Baltimore Orioles, the Atlanta Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Those teams combined for 404 wins and have all been eliminated, as referenced by ESPN's Scott Van Pelt.

While fun-to-watch powerhouses have fallen, fans of the sport should be excited by the prospect of new teams getting hot to find success in October. While the Astros and Phillies met in the Fall Classic last season, the Diamondbacks and Rangers have not played in the World Series since 2001 and 2011, respectively.

In a pattern that may just be good for the value of baseball, the 2023 postseason has been completely unpredictable with two more thrilling rounds to go to crown a champion.