The Chicago Cubs were seeking the first step toward ending a 100-year-plus championship drought. The Pittsburgh Pirates were hoping to win their first playoff game since 1992, after two Wild Card play-in game losses in 2013 and 2014. Chicago prevailed on the road, shutting down Pittsburgh in a 4-0 win that sent them to the NLDS against the St. Louis Cardinals.

(Did we mention that the NL Central had the top three records in Major League Baseball this year? Only one of those teams will make it to the NLCS. Wow.)

Meanwhile, the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers knew they would be matched up once the regular season ended, and they’re ready to get started in their NLDS on Friday. New York hasn’t been to the postseason since 2006, while LA has been there the past two years and six times since 2004 but hasn’t played in a World Series since they won it all in 1988.

So, how does Out of the Park Baseball 16 think will end up in the NLCS? As with the two AL Division Series, we simmed each series five times and created a composite of the results to arrive at our prediction. We were helped by a handy option that was added to a special internal build of Out of the Park Baseball 16: a Game Importance dropdown that tells the AI if it should treat the sims as if they’re regular games or do-or-die affairs. It will be available to the public in next year’s OOTP 17.

This is what we think will likely happen in both series:

Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals

This one doesn’t look good, Chicago Cubs fans: St. Louis won three of the five series and did so in convincing fashion, while Chicago had to go the distance to win its two series. The second sim, which lasted five games and had each team scoring just 14 runs, was a tight back-and-forth series that saw two shutouts and a save by the winning team’s closer in each game.

It’s hard to believe that Chicago’s offense will be stymied this much, but St. Louis has stellar starting pitching and a lineup with the potential to score a lot of runs. Unfortunately for Chicago, Jake Arrieta can’t start every game.

Here’s the high level breakdown. Click a sim to see its team and player stats.

Series Chicago Cubs St. Louis Cardinals Chicago Runs Scored / Avg. St. Louis Runs Scored / Avg. Sim 1 0 3 14 / 4.7 24 / 8.0 Sim 2 3 2 14 / 2.8 14 / 2.8 Sim 3 1 3 18 / 4.5 30 / 7.5 Sim 4 3 2 32 / 6.4 23 / 4.6 Sim 5 0 3 8 / 2.7 16 / 5.3 Totals/Avg. 7 13 86 / 4.3 107 / 5.4

New York Mets vs. Los Angeles Dodgers

A caveat: Due to circumstances beyond my control, I needed to be out of the office on Friday, and neither team had released official rosters as of Thursday evening, when I had to simulate the series and get this article done. I set up the rosters based on the informed speculation that’s been available online the past few days and have confidence in my decisions, but if a last-minute surprise snuck in when rosters were announced on Friday, that was beyond my control.

As it turns out, New York fans should hope that the informed speculation was wrong, because the Los Angeles Dodgers trounced their opponent in these sims. They won all five of them, four of them in four games and once in a sweep. In the first sim, New York closer Jeurys Familia earned the save in a 4-2 Game 1 victory and was then saddled with the loss in Games 2 through 4, as Los Angeles mounted some late-inning offense to spoil solid performances by New York’s starting pitchers.

If there’s a silver lining for New York fans, it’s in LA’s own offensive struggles in this series. If NY can get its bats going in real life, perhaps they can prove our simulation wrong.

Here’s the high level breakdown. Click a sim to see its team and player stats.