Are the Arizona Diamondbacks the most unlikely team ever to earn a slot in a league championship series?
The D-backs' résumé, for an LCS team, is wild: They won 84 games -- 10 more than they did a season ago and 32 more than in 2021. They were outscored by 15 runs this season. They were below the big-league average in both OPS+ and ERA+.
These are not the traits of a playoff winner and yet, here we are. After shocking sweeps of the Brewers in the wild-card round and the 100-win Dodgers in the division series, we have a National League Championship Series with as close to a Cinderella team as baseball has had in some time.
There is a good chance that with the benefit of hindsight, we'll come to view this late-season Arizona surge as the start of what should be a sustained window of contention. Things could go awry, but with players like Corbin Carroll, Alek Thomas, Jordan Lawlar and Brandon Pfaadt in the early stages of their careers, this isn't likely to be a one-and-done playoff appearance for the Snakes.
So this question of unlikelihood is more about where the Diamondbacks have come from than where they are likely to go. It isn't meant to slam them, but to help us appreciate what they've accomplished so far.
Let's run through the Diamondbacks' dossier one item at a time, put them into LCS historical context and combine it all into a Cinderella Rating, so we can see where Arizona stacks up.