Using numberFire's Power Rankings to Predict the 2016 World Series Champion

Can the Chicago Cubs kick the goat to the curb and break the curse? Is David Ortiz's Hall-of-Fame career about to get a story-book ending? Do the San Francisco Giants have more even-year magic in them?

You've already waited 162 games to find out the answers to these questions, and additional patience just doesn't sound all that appealing right now. We need instant gratification, dang it.

While we can't necessarily pin down exactly which team will douse itself in adult beverages after the final out, we can use numberFire's power rankings to get a good idea of who is best equipped to excel in the postseason. These rankings look at every play from throughout the season to measure a team's abilities relative to the field in terms of nERD, our metric that shows by how many runs a team would expect to win against a league-average team on a neutral field.

Let's use these power rankings to predict how the postseason will play out, giving us an idea of who holds the edge in each series. These won't include home-field advantage, though premium users can get game-by-game projections to show which team has the higher odds of coming out victorious. Instead, we'll just play these puppies heads up with the more potent team in terms of nERD advancing to the next round.

Who's the favorite to call themselves the 2016 World Series champions? Let's take a look.