MLB Playoffs 2026: Picks and predictions for every round, including World Series champ

Predicting the MLB Postseason is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but the haystack is buried in a sealed government vault thousands of feet underground to protect it from a potential nuclear attack. An MLB season is a progression of millions of weighted probabilities, discrete events, unpredictable mistakes and dumb luck; trying to predict the next month is essentially a 53-leg moneyline parlay with odds of +9 quadrillion. I don’t love our chances.

But we’re going to do it anyway. Why? Because we’re human and are burdened to look for sacred purpose in a never-ending chain of random events until our last day in this mortal coil … okay! I think we’ve maybe jumped the shark a little bit with this intro, so let’s talk about some baseball!

I love baseball analytics and data; those of you that have read or watched my stuff recently will recall my rabid hatred of bunts, my love of pull-side power and of impact-based pitching evaluation. But all of that kinda … doesn’t apply in the playoffs. I mean, it does, but even the furthest out teams in the Wild Card only need to win 13 of 22 games to win the World Series. Going 13-9 is not an especially potent stretch of baseball; you can kinda just … mess around and do that accidentally. The Boston Red Sox got criminally hot and won 25 of 30 this year at one point including 15 in a row! I watched every single game, and I’m still not sure why it happened.

For baseball writers like myself, the regular season is thus a massive information-gathering period so that we are prepared for articles like this one. I won’t be able to point to every piece of data that informed this piece, just like the apple cider maker can’t point to every single apple that they used to make your beverage. But I am asking you to trust me, because I have done my homework. What follows is my best attempt at the final exam.

Wild Card Round Predictions

The Wild Card round is where this is all going to go right … or where it’s all going to go horribly wrong. We will be far more verbose here than in the rest of the column because I won’t spill too much ink over hypothetical series that may or may not happen. We at least know these games will occur.

I have the Red Sox beating the Yankees 2 games to 1 because I’ve just had it up to here with uncertainty surrounding Aaron Judge’s status and think Boston’s lineup is flat-out better. The Yankees have a slight pitching advantage with Cam Schlittler, Max Fried and Gerrit Cole, but it’s not that big of an advantage or enough to offset their decimated hitting corps. Three games in the Bronx could rattle Boston’s young players, but I have landed on the Red Sox for this one after much deliberation. Also I’m totally biased.

Meanwhile, we’re going with the White Sox over the Astros 2 games to 1 mostly on principle. The Astros are at home but have had a terrible season; I can’t sit here and tell you that an 81-81 team with a bullpen game to open the series is on my list of potential ALDS teams, Yordan Alvarez notwithstanding. Despite … also having a bullpen game, I think the White Sox have somehow become underrated for the season they had, though they are certainly going to be living and dying with the .200 batting averages of Colson Montgomery and Munetaka Murakami — Montgomery just finished blowing the MLB single-season strikeout record out of the water by four with an unfathomable 227 Ks. Still, I don’t think the Astros are worth much more than a single Hunter Brown win, if that — Chicago is better.

In the National League, we’re on upset o’clock and picking the Phillies to beat the Braves 2 games to 1. The Phillies just had a disastrous week of PR after almost missing the playoffs, but an apparently healthy Jesus Luzardo starting Game 1 turns their three-man rotation from nasty to shnasty — if good Luzardo shows up on the mound, I don’t see how he, Cristopher Sanchez and Zack Wheeler lose two out of three games. Chris Sale must deliver in Game 1 if Atlanta wants a chance at this. They have an incredible bullpen, but may wind up having to hit themselves out of this one like they usually do.

Finally, we’re ending the feel-good Cubs run by picking the ripping-hot Padres over the Cubs 2 games to 0. San Diego is downright out of control since the All-Star break, a completely unstoppable force of nature that tops all sorts of charts in hitting production. The Cubs had MLB’s most potent offense for the season as a whole but sport well-below-average pitching. The Padres, meanwhile, currently have MLB’s most potent offense and a bullpen duo of Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller that you just don’t want to deal with. I don’t think the Cubs will be able to deal with any of this unless Pete Crow-Armstrong’s heroics hit another level completely. It’s not the romantic pick, but it’s the one I can live with.

Division Series Predictions

We’ve had an entire season to figure out if the Guardians are actually better than the White Sox, and I officially think they are. Facing fully rested Parker Messick and Gavin Williams is not anyone’s idea of a good time, and I’ll take the Guardians over the White Sox 3 games to 1. Meanwhile, two of the American League’s three best teams, the Red Sox, Yankees and Rays, face off in what should really be the ALCS, and I’ll take my Red Sox over the Rays 3 games to 2. This one isn’t even because I’m a Red Sox fan, but because I’ve spent an entire season explaining why the Rays are a bunch of overrated contact merchants who will get exposed once they face a good team in a longer-than-four-game series. Their rotation is good … but Boston’s is better. Junior Caminero is the best hitter in the series, but Boston’s lineup once again is better. Boston’s bullpen, you guessed it, is better. If the Yankees get here instead, I’m picking them as well; the Rays are not that good; I will die on this hill.

Full disclosure: I’ve watched much less National League but I have crunched the numbers and … yep, the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers are indeed the two best teams in baseball. Give me the Brewers over the Padres 3 games to 2 and the Dodgers over the Phillies 3 games to 0. It’s hardly a foregone conclusion that the Padres will go quietly, though, but the Brewers are a legitimate powerhouse. The Dodgers sweeping the Phillies feels like it just will happen whether we like it or not; coming off a Wild Card win, the Phillies will be at such a pitching disadvantage to the Dodgers who will immediately fire up Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, which is the baseball equivalent of showing up to a knife fight and the other guy has a tank. It’s the single best thing in baseball and one of the best rotations in MLB history. If they had a healthy Shohei Ohtani rounding it out, it might have been the single best ever. Poor them.

Championship Series Predictions:

Because of how poor their start to the season was and their awkwardly timed September slump, it’s easy to ignore that the Red Sox have built an incredible roster; Roman Anthony, Willson Contreras and Adley Rutschman are an unassailable hitting trio, and the defensive prowess of Wilyer Abreu and Ceddanne Rafaela is probably the best of any outfield in the majors (sorry Cubs). It really does feel like the winner of the Red Sox-Yankees series has an incredible shot at the American League. They’ll probably be favored over the Rays and will definitely be favored over whoever emerges from the sorry state of the lower half of the bracket. Boston will only get stronger the longer they’re in the playoffs, particularly as Garrett Crochet slowly makes his way back to the mound. Feeling a dirty water World Series with the Red Sox beating the Guardians 4 games to 2.

Every fiber of my being wanted to pick the Brewers to stop the Dodgers’ three-peat bid, but I just can’t do it. The Dodgers are only mathematically below-average at one position: second base. Everything else — all eight other positions, starting rotation and bullpen — are all either good, great or elite. Most of it is elite. This will be more competitive (I hope) than last year’s laugher, but I can’t not pick the Dodgers to beat the Brewers 4 games to 3. Maybe there is an Achilles heel somewhere around here, but I can’t find it. It is so easy to ignore, or at least block out, how stupid the Dodgers roster is during the regular season. But it is getting really hard to ignore on the eve of the Postseason.

World Series Predictions:

Notice how I structured this column to get everything I had to say about the Red Sox and Brewers out of my system before we got to the World Series section? That’s because the odds that this paragraph about the Dodgers stays relevant are pretty damn high; with the Dodgers winning the World Series over the Red Sox 4 games to 2, Los Angeles achieves the fifth three-peat in MLB history — four by the Yankees and one by the Oakland Athletics. This would be by far the most competitive environment to do it in, and they have the troops to pull it off. You may have expected it, you probably still don’t like it, but it’s happening. At least, I think it will happen. Remember, this is all a needle in a haystack in a government vault buried underground. Or maybe these 1800 words were the haystack … think about it.

Final thoughts on the 2026 Postseason: Will all of this need a salary cap?

Because I just predicted the Dodgers to three-peat, because of the impending lockout and because these could be the last baseball games until 2028, it’s worth reflecting on if this season felt like something that really needed a salary cap and if it’s worth canceling an entire season to get one. I’ve been vocal in my support of a salary cap conceptually, but I’ve mostly landed on the belief that the innovation is not remotely worth the ensuing fight it would take to get it. Baseball may or may not have a competitive balance problem, but MLB owners aren’t looking for a salary cap for competitive balance: they want one because it will artificially skyrocket the values of their franchises without them having to give up a penny because a cap appears to create competitive balance. When the Pittsburgh Pirates sell their team in seven or eight years, it will be worth double if there’s a cap in place to show the new owners they “automatically” have a chance to compete. With the current bubble of sports franchise valuations, owners seem intent on making the most of their investments.

But building a winner takes years, often decades of investment in the right things, not just player spending. The Dodgers built a juggernaut because they mixed an absurd payroll with extraordinarily competent management, elite domestic and international scouting and developmental resources — it’s why their neighbors the Los Angeles Angels under Arte Moreno failed despite a willingness to spend real money on players year after year: they lacked any kind of supporting infrastructure. A salary cap would improve the sport, yes, but it wouldn’t improve it enough to lose a full season when baseball is at its most popular. And the main beneficiaries of this battle would be billionaires getting yet-more billions of dollars — not a project I’m going to sit here and canvas for. Maybe a three-peat will radicalize me, but on the eve of the postseason, that’s where I’m at with a salary cap.