The Philadelphia Phillies are hosting the Atlanta Braves in Game 4 of the NLDS with eyes on a second consecutive NLCS berth. With the Arizona Diamondbacks already emerging from the other side of the bracket, the winner of the Phillies-Braves series will be heavy favorites to advance to the World Series.
Meanwhile, the American League championship series is set — Texas Rangers vs. Houston Astros, the first-ever postseason battle of the Lone Star State. While those teams are no doubt focused on each other, both will have vested interest in the outcome of the NLDS.
Perhaps most invested, however, are the Rangers.
Rangers should be rooting hard for Phillies to win National League
The Phillies, Rangers, and Astros all won exactly 90 games during the regular season. That makes for quite the potential tiebreaker scenario in the World Series. It all comes down the regular season series for teams that only met once.
Texas won the season series over Philadelphia (3-0), which means Texas would get home-field advantage in a hypothetical Phillies World Series matchup. The Astros lost the season series (1-2), meaning Philadelphia would hold court in Citizens Banks Park to open the title series. Expect Houston to cheer rather hard for Arizona in the NLCS when the time comes.
Both teams would rather face Arizona, one has to imagine. If the Braves come back and get to the World Series for the second time in three years, all roads would lead to Atlanta. The Braves are the best team on paper still. Couple that with automatic home-field advantage, and the Texas teams will be ardently hoping for the Phils to emerge victorious.
We could be due for a rematch of last year's World Series, when the Astros eked past the Phillies in six games. That would make for quite an exciting series. The Astros with a boatload of postseason experience, but weaker than in years past. The Phillies hungry for revenge.
Or... we could get a 2021 rematch with Houston and Atlanta. The possibilities are myriad.
From Texas-on-Texas crime in the ALCS to a potentially combative NLCS — recent history favors the underdog Diamondbacks, who could blow all these scenarios up (then face a road Game 1 in the World Series) — we have plenty of exciting baseball left on the docket.