Just three weeks into the 2026 Major League Baseball season, there is still plenty of time for teams to show their potential. That said, some teams look destined for a playoff appearance, while other teams are trending towards being out of contention by the time summer comes.<\/p>\n
In my article<\/a> from a year ago, I mentioned how the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> looked like they could easily win another World Series<\/a> in 2025, which they ended up doing, beating the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> in an amazing series. Once again, the Dodgers sit at the top of the standings in 2026, winning 13 and losing four.<\/a><\/p>\n While the Dodgers will almost certainly qualify for the postseason, so will at least 11 other teams<\/a>. I predict the National League playoff field will consist of the Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta Braves and New York Mets.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the American League, I predict the Seattle Mariners and Detroit Tigers will win the AL West and AL Central, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n I also think that the AL East will be the strongest division, and as a result, four teams \u2014 the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles \u2014 will qualify for the postseason.<\/p>\n For now, the league seems competitive, with every<\/a> team having at least six wins so far. While exciting, the parity tends to falter in late summer after the trade deadline<\/a> passes.\u00a0<\/p>\n At that point, the best teams have acquired talent to make a postseason run. Meanwhile, teams that are pessimistic have traded away players to begin rebuilding for the future.<\/p>\n If the postseason were today, this is what it would look like:\u00a0<\/p>\n The NL division winners would be the Braves, Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Padres, Cincinnati Reds and Arizona Diamondbacks would also<\/a> make it as wild card teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the American League, the division winners would be the Rays, Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers. The Cleveland Guardians, Athletics and Yankees would also qualify as wild card teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n That said, it is still early to predict anything, especially considering how long and grueling the MLB season is. Ups and downs are bound to happen, and the teams that can handle them the best will be the ones playing in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n Overall, it is early enough in the season that some teams are significantly overperforming, while others are underperforming. The AL West is a perfect example: the Mariners<\/a> and Houston Astros<\/a>, teams I thought would be at the top, are taking turns holding last place.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a couple of months, it will be much clearer which teams will be contending for the postseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just three weeks into the 2026 Major League Baseball season, there is still plenty of time for teams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-610353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}