The 2023 Major League Baseball playoffs have been defined by upsets, and that is showing itself in the two League Championship Series matchups.
The upsets continued on Thursday night when the Philadelphia Phillies eliminated the league’s best regular-season team, the Atlanta Braves, in four games to advance to their second straight NLCS.
It is the second year in a row the Phillies will have reached that point in the season while winning 90 games or fewer. They reached the World Series a year ago winning just 87 regular-season games.
This time they will be joined in the LCS by three other teams (Texas, Houston and Arizona) that also won 90 games or fewer.
If that seems like an outrageously low number for the final four teams in the playoffs, that is because it is. This will be the first time (excluding shortened seasons) that all four LCS teams will be participating after failing to win more than 90 games during the regular season.