You know who could win the World Series this year? Anybody. You know who the clear-cut favorite is to win the Series? Nobody.

There have been other seasons when we could look ahead to baseball’s postseason and see October as being as wide open as March Madness so often is for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. We had a surprise World Series just last season, when the Rangers upset the Astros and the D-backs did the same to the Phillies after it had started to look as if we were going to get a rematch of the ’22 Series between the Astros and Phils.

But nothing in October Madness this time -- and that means absolutely nothing -- is going to surprise anybody once the tournament begins. How could it? We’re still a long way from even knowing which team is going to end up with the best record in each league, and who the Wild Card teams are going to be.

We came into Thursday’s games with 10 teams in the Major Leagues having 70 wins or more. Any one of them could win it all. This year’s version of the Astros, even though they just lost two of three to the Red Sox, hasn’t gotten to 70 yet and might actually end up being a favorite by October despite not even getting to .500 this season until June 26.

The Dodgers, after all the injuries they’ve survived so far, sure are sitting there with the kind of record (76-52) everybody thought they would have at this point in the season after they signed Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. But they’re still being chased and hard by the Padres (having the season they’re having and coming on the way they are after trading away Juan Soto) and the D-backs, who lately really have looked as if this season is last season.

It was just a month or so ago at the All-Star break, when the Phillies were the ones who looked like the class of the field, with a record of 62-34. But now they’ve gone 12-18 since then, and still haven’t put away a Braves team in the NL East that lost Ronald Acuña Jr. for the season, lost Spencer Strider for the season, just lost Austin Riley for 6-8 weeks and still doesn’t have Ozzie Albies back. And that’s not even the entire list of injuries the Braves have encountered this season.

There was a time when the Orioles looked as if the obvious favorite in the AL East, but they came out of Wednesday’s games behind the Yankees again in their division, having just lost two games to the Mets in bottom-of-the-ninth walk-off home runs, the latest by Jesse Winker.

It was in mid-June when it was the Yankees who started to look like the best team in baseball, and then they only managed to win 10 of their next 33 games before finding their footing all over again. They’ve got the same bullpen problems that a lot of the other contenders do, but they’ve also got Aaron Judge and Soto hitting the way they’re hitting. Soto hit another one against the Guardians on Wednesday night. Judge hit two. They now have 83 home runs between them this season, and they are set up to be only the third combination in Yankees history to hit 40 or more homers in the same season, the way Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and then Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle did before them.

Can the two of them slug the Yankees back in the Series for the first time in 15 years? It’s a hard thing to do in October. But if any two guys in baseball seem capable of doing that, it’s No. 22 and No. 99.

The Red Sox, with a deep and dangerous batting order, have had 12 blown saves since the All-Star break alone. Even with that, and now on their way back from Houston to play the D-backs, the Sox were still just 3 1/2 games behind the Twins for that last Wild Card slot in their league, still chasing them and Bobby Witt Jr. and the Royals.

The Guardians have probably been the most consistent team in the American League, but they can’t pull away from either the Twins or the Royals. The Brewers have -- quietly, at least outside of Milwaukee -- been the most consistent team in their league, and have the biggest division lead (11 games). Terry Francona moved on from the Guardians. Craig Counsell moved on from the Brewers. Somehow, even losing managers like them, both teams have better records this season than they did last season at this point.

Crazy season. So many teams that have looked crazy good for extended periods of time, even with their flaws and inconsistencies. Still, there is no clear-cut favorite to even end up with the best record in both leagues. We can already see how much fun September is going to be. October is going to be better. Madness.