Heading into the 2026 postseason, theScore’s Michael Bradburn, Bryan Mcwilliam, Chicco Nacion, Simon Sharkey-Gotlieb, Tom Ruminski, and Brandon Wile laid out their picks round by round, and the board points in a few clear directions.
The Yankees are the overwhelming choice to get past Boston again. Most of the editors have New York advancing to a third straight ALDS, and there’s plenty in the numbers behind that call.
The Yankees took seven of 13 from the Red Sox this season and won four of six in the Bronx. Boston, for its part, still hasn’t won a playoff series since 2021.
The other side of that bracket is much less settled. That’s hardly a shock, considering the White Sox and Astros finished with the two worst records among all playoff teams.
Both clubs also sat in the bottom five in starting pitching ERA. Chicago hasn’t won a postseason series since 2005 and was nine games under .500 on the road this year.
Houston, meanwhile, stumbled into the playoffs at 81-81, but still brings AL MVP favorite Yordan Alvarez to the table.
In the National League, the Phillies arrived in the bracket by the slimmest of margins, sneaking in on the final day after dropping four of their last five. They now run into a Braves team that handled them 9-4 during the regular season. With that in mind, the majority of the editors are taking the NL East champions to defend home field and move on.
The Cubs and Padres are back in a familiar matchup, meeting in the wild-card round for the second straight year, this time on the West Coast. San Diego dropped last year’s meeting at Wrigley Field and will try to flip the script with home-field advantage in 2026. Both teams bring impact bats and both carry real questions on the mound, which is why this one looks like one of the cleanest toss-ups on the board.
There’s also a strong belief in Tampa Bay. After finishing with the AL’s best record, the Rays have nearly unanimous support to reach the ALCS for the first time since 2020.
That was also the last time they won a playoff round. On the other side, the Guardians are getting credit for landing on the softer half of the bracket, and the majority sees them reaching the ALCS for the second time in three seasons.
The Brewers and Dodgers, meanwhile, are the favorites to handle division-series business and get to the NLCS. That’s not exactly a surprise. Both teams are viewed as the class of the National League, and both benefit from receiving byes into the division round.
The biggest consensus pick of all might be Tampa Bay. Even with the American League looking relatively weak overall, the Rays convinced nearly everyone at theScore that they’re the league’s top team. All but one editor has them reaching the World Series.
The National League side is where things really open up. Only three editors think the Dodgers will make a third straight trip to the Fall Classic, which says plenty about how deep and competitive that league was this year. Milwaukee, for its part, is trying to get back to the World Series for the first time since 1982.
That leaves the final call split between a Dodgers three-peat and a long-awaited breakthrough elsewhere. The Rays and Brewers have never won a World Series, while the Phillies have not been champions since 2008. MLB hasn’t seen a team win three straight titles since the Yankees ran the table from 1998-2000, and no National League club has ever pulled it off.
In Other News...
Rays Earned The October Setup Fans Have Been Waiting On
The Rays closed the regular season at 98-64 and walked away with the American Leagues best record, a finish that puts them in the cleanest possible October position. Even after dropping their final game to the Phillies, Tampa Bay secured the No. 1 seed in the AL bracket and earned a path that keeps the focus right where it should be heading into the postseason at Tropicana Field.
Now the waiting begins. Tampa Bay opens the American League Division Series on Saturday against the winner of the Wild Card Series between the Yankees and Red Sox, giving the Rays a few days to reset while the rest of the bracket sorts itself out. For a club that spent six months building toward this, the setup is exactly what it wanted, even if the opponent still has one more round to reveal itself. [Read more 🡒]