For better or worse, Rob Manfred has finished turning Major League Baseball’s postseason — once the shortest tournament and the one that most rewarded regular season excellence — into the most unpredictable free-for-all this side of the NCAA Tournament.

The wild-card round is particularly challenging to forecast. Think of it as the first round of the NCAA Tournament, if every first-round game was an 8 vs. 9 coin flip. The team with fewer regular season wins is 9-3 in the best-of-three wild card series since 2022.

And since this is only a four-round tournament, your entire bracket can be in tatters with one wrong pick.

In other words: Don’t blame us if these picks go sideways. Here’s our best guesses as to how the next three days will unfold.

No. 3 Cleveland Guardians (88-74) vs. No. 6

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