The playoffs are here, and yet again, our collective reason and logic is clouded by sentiment. Over half the teams — Cubs, White Sox, Rays, Phillies, Brewers — are impossible to analyze for five seconds without pondering their emotional significance. This sentiment I feel, it’s a virus. It threatens to eat me up. It threatens to eat us all up.

It is time, friends, to invest our faith in numbers and find salvation in objective study. With the help of Baseball-Reference, I have compiled each playoff team’s adjusted OPS and adjusted ERA. Unfortunately, OPS+ is not as definitive a metric as ERA+, but it’s just about the closest thing. So we will sum the two metrics, and call the result the Index of Statistical Truth.

American League Divisional Series

White Sox: 102 OPS+, 111 ERA+
Index of Statistical Truth: 213

Rays: 103 OPS+, 114 ERA+
Index of Statistical Truth: 217

Infallible Projection: Rays over White Sox in five.

Red Sox: 108 OPS+, 114 ERA+
Index of Statistical Truth: 222

Angels: 96 OPS+, 109 ERA+
Index of Statistical Truth: 205

The Angels don’t look too impressive, but we must consider that Mark Teixeira hasn’t been around for most of the season. Since moving to Los Angeles of Anaheim, his OPS+ is an outstanding 183. But even if we cheat the Angels’ Index of Statistical Truth up a few points, the Red Sox still stomp them.

Infallible Projection: Red Sox over Angels in three.

National League Divisional Series

Phillies: 103 OPS+, 115 ERA+
Index of Statistical Truth: 218

Brewers: 102 OPS+, 112 ERA+
Index of Statistical Truth: 214

We run into the same problem here. Pitcher CC Sabathia has only been with the Brewers for part of the season, but he has contributed a terrifying 262 ERA+. He is the sort of anomalic presence that could break my calculator if I tried to quantify what he is capable of. He could also break my calculator if he sat on it.

It’s quite possible that an accurate cheat of the Brewers’ IST could put them at a better number than the Phillies. No matter, we have yet another infallible system for this.

A Google search of “the brewers are a good baseball team” yields one result.
A Google search of “the phillies are a good baseball team” yields four results.

Infallible Projection: Phillies over Brewers in five. Each game lasts a minimum of 18 innings.

Cubs: 109 OPS+, 117 ERA+
Index of Statistical Truth: 226

Dodgers: 95 OPS+, 120 ERA+
Index of Statistical Truth: 215

Infallible Projection: Cubs over Dodgers in four.

Following the Indices of Statistical Truth, we can now make the following projections:

ALCS: Red Sox over Rays, six games
NLCS: Cubs over Phillies, five games

World Series: Cubs over Red Sox, six games

There you have it. Cubs fans, go to the park and watch it like you would a play in a theater. Everyone else, stay at home and rest soundly in the solace that you have been judged.