Ranking the 4 possible World Series matchups

Twenty-six teams have been thrown out of the ring. Four teams remain. Let us talk about these four teams. Specifically, which World Series matchup would be the most compelling.

It’s a trick question. They’re all incredibly compelling.

Not just from a baseball standpoint, either. From a historical standpoint. The Blue Jays have spent the last two decades in a weird purgatory. It’s been a 22-year-long Eagles album, spinning and spinning, often bland, occasionally awful, and with a few moments that got you excited if you were drunk enough. The Mets have alternated between deliriously lousy and excellent in that time, but there was always a pit of spikes at the end of those excellent seasons. The Royals were a punchline, an honest-to-goodness punchline, for those decades, the kind of organization that could screw up a bowl of cereal.

The Cubs.

Personally, it’s a final four that features four teams I could enjoy if they won, mostly for all those reasons up there. My team’s hated rivals are out, and there aren’t any other grabby teams that just won a championship and are trying for another. It’s the first time since the White Sox/Astros World Series in 2005 that I haven’t been rooting for or against a specific team (or disliked both teams). No matter what happens, it will be the anti-2013 World Series.

We still have to rank them, though. Starting with ...

Pitching is nice. Dingers are even better. And while these two teams have their fair share of 20-homer hitters, they don’t have GRAAAAHHH POWER. Okay, maybe Yoenis Cespedes does now, but no one else really comes close. Eric Hosmer, Lucas Duda and Curtis Granderson have power, but it’s a part of what makes them good, not what defines them. The best Mets’ and Royals’ hitters get on base and work the count, but they’re not exactly the types of hitters that make anyone put off a trip to the restroom.

Is that nitpicking? Perhaps, but instead of that “4” up there, pretend it’s “1-D.” I could get used to watching Matt Harvey against Alex Gordon with the game on the line, and the Royals’ defense is always a treat. These two teams have a similar kind of pragmatism to their lineups, though. And pragmatism and competence is welcome and exciting when it’s your team.

When it’s not, you sit, arms folded, watching singles and occasional doubles, wondering where the oooomph is.

Whoa, buddy. Not that much oooomph. It would be selling the pitching from both sides short to suggest this matchup would be a series of 12-10 games, but it would lack a certain nuance. “Oh, look. There’s that human pillar of meat. Let’s watch him swing hard.”

When I put it that way, I want to move it up, actually.

No, no, no, this is probably right. The two teams are structured too similarly, prizefighters with similar builds and technique. Part of that makes it fun -- at least it’s the most entertaining kind of technique, if you’re into dingers -- but part of that makes it monotonous. Compared to the two better alternatives, at least.

Man, I want to watch a Blue Jays/Cubs World Series so badly. Just not as badly as ...

Here be contrast. The Royals have speed and doubles power. The Cubs have beef. The Royals have an even pitching staff built around their defense and bullpen, the Cubs are a little top-heavy with their rotation.

It’s also a battle between two teams that have had a rather miserable recent history. The Cubs had success in the Wood-Prior era, with peaks and valleys before and after, but they were never able to escape their inherent Cubsiness for too long. The Royals we talked about, except they’re a formerly hopeless franchise that has the taste of championship flesh still stuck in their teeth. They were a Salvador Perez home run from winning the World Series last year. The Cubs haven’t been to a World Series since right after World War II.

It’s the right mix of desperation, talent and desire. Both ballparks would be silly and frenetic. I had this in the top slot for the first two hours, but I eventually gravitated toward ...

The R.A. Dickey Invitational. Has there ever been a World Series between two teams that have a lot to do with how the other one is constructed? If you think that’s laying it on too thick, imagine the Blue Jays with Noah Syndergaard talking to Billy Beane about a Josh Donaldson trade. Imagine the A’s demanding Syndergaard and the Blue Jays refusing. A butterfly flapping its wings, man.

Both teams are here because of the wacky, haphazard paths they took after that trade. More than that, though, you have the absurd lineup of the Blue Jays against the young pitching of the Mets, and if the Mets are in the World Series, you know they’re on something of a hot streak. I’m not seeing a path to the pennant for the Mets that includes a lot of 10-7 slugfests, which means we’ll be so jazzed to watch Jacob deGrom throw to Jose Bautista, or for Syndergaard to try to sneak a 100 mph fastball past Edwin Encarnacion.

It’s a regional thing, too. The biggest city in Canada vs. the biggest city in the United States. Cosmopolitan vs. cosmopolitan. America’s Kid ‘N’ Play Haircut vs. America. The Mets haven’t won since the NES, and the Blue Jays haven’t won since the SNES. Both fan bases are rabid. There will probably be a fight, just because.

Blue Jays vs. Mets. It would be awesome. So would the other three matchups, but I hold a special place in my heart for this one.

The only thing we know is that it will be a sweep by one of these teams just because we’re looking forward to it so much. That’s okay. The World Series is coming, and it’s going to be filled with some new, exciting teams. It’s about time.