The playoffs have arrived and here’s my non-analytical, highly personal take on who will win it all.
Playoff baseball is here. After a long six-month season where teams play every day and the cream generally rises to the top, we switch to short series that often favor teams who get hot at just the right moment.
The ultimate winner may not be the best team entering the playoffs . . . but that’s the reason my Nationals were 2019 World Series champions. Teams like those Nats which are loose, full of skilled players, yet often underestimated can often win it all. Or not. (I’m looking at the Dodgers and their push for a three-peat.)
What follows is my take on the 2026 playoffs based entirely on personal rooting interests. But before that, let’s begin with my annual rant against gambling in baseball.
“MLB HAS TAKEN OUR BEAUTIFUL GAME AND TURNED IT INTO A TAWDRY, CHEAP, AND CORRUPT SLOT MACHINE.”
During the Wild Card games, Joe Posnanski had a righteous rant about the capitulation of baseball to the gambling mafia. I couldn’t have said it better.
“There was a moment during the White Sox-Astros broadcast that I cannot shake . . .
They came back from a commercial break showing Houston rookie Lucas Spence in the on-deck circle. That alone was weird. Why Lucas Spence? He’s a 23-year-old rookie who has played 19 big-league games. He’s an undrafted free agent out of Black Hawk College in Moline, IL—I guess he’s the first Black Hawk College alum to play in the Major Leagues, which is, you know, kind of cool.
But they weren’t showing him as an homage to Black Hawk—whose most famous alum before Spence might be Richard Kauzlarich, the former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan.
No, it turns out Lucas Spence was the featured player in the Fan Duel Same Day Parlay!
If we hurried, the broadcaster told us, we could still bet on HOW MANY PITCHES LUCAS SPENCE WOULD SEE. Wow! The over/under was 3.5 pitches. So we could bet the over, bet that Spence would make Chicago’s Jordan Hicks work a bit, or we could bet the under, bet that Spence would be aggressive and go after an early pitch.
And then, seconds later, the bet changed because the White Sox pulled Hicks —I guess he’d reached his pitch limit or something—and brought in Sean Newcombe.
Whoa! A whole new scenario for how many pitches rookie Lucas Spence would face!
And I thought to myself, not for the first time but probably the loudest time, that MLB has taken our beautiful game and turned it into a tawdry, cheap, and corrupt slot machine. To think that there were people out there who lost actual money because Lucas Spence faced five pitches in the bottom of the fifth inning of a 5-0 wildcard game before singling off Sean Newcombe makes me so sad.
To think that MLB encourages—practically begs—its fans to make that bet hurts my very soul.”
Preach it, Joe!
WILD CARD SERIES
What I liked best about the just completed Wild Card games: The Philadelphia Phillies (not the Quakers) losing (finally) to the Atlanta Braves in a playoff series. Bryce Harper will go yet another year without a World Series ring after jilting the Nationals to chase big money with the Phillies. I’m not bitter or anything (especially after the Nats won the year after Harper left the team).
What saddened me about the Wild Card series: Besides half the games being played on a streaming channel I don’t subscribe to . . . the Cubbies falling out of the playoffs so quickly. I had hopes to see Pete Crow-Armstrong continue his magical year a bit longer than just two games.
WHO I WANT TO SEE WIN IT ALL
I’ve listed the eight teams that start play today in the divisional series in reverse order of my rooting interest to see them win it all.
8. New York Yankees—Unless you live in New York, all baseball fans are contractually obligated to hate the Yankees.
7. Los Angeles Dodgers—Why root for a team that has a bazilliongillion dollars to spend? I wish these guys owned the Nationals.
6. Tampa Bay Rays—I have a personal policy to root against all teams from Florida.
5. Chicago White Sox—I don’t have anything personal against the White Sox, but I’m really a National League guy. Plus their stadium is not very good.
4. Cleveland Guardians—Cleveland is a city I’ve long enjoyed. The Guardians have a nice downtown stadium and a long-suffering yet loyal fan base (still hoping to finally win a World Series since their last one in 1948).
3. Atlanta Braves—I would have the team I rooted for in my teenage and young adult years higher on the list. They have a great team and Chris Sale is a monster of an ace. (Loved the way he struck out Harper in the 8th inning of the third game of the Wild Card series.) However, the owners of the Braves moved their stadium away from easy transit access, away from their traditional fan base (and the Black neighborhoods in downtown Atlanta), and built a theme park masquerading as a baseball stadium that is only accessible by car. None of those things are good for baseball.
2. San Diego Padres—As compared to the Braves, the Padres have a wonderful stadium situated right in downtown San Diego. Plus, their team is a lot of fun to watch. They are also pretty hot at the moment.
1. Milwaukee Brewers—Milwaukee is the only team hotter than the Padres as they’ve been playing great baseball all year. Plus, they are a small market team, and I instinctively root for these guys. As an added bonus, they have the second best mascot race in all MLB.*
So in my ideal world, it would be Milwaukee vs. Cleveland in the World Series. Small market, Midwest baseball! That would be classic!
As my good friend and Brilliant Reader John says, ABTY (anyone but the . . .).
TO GET READY FOR THE PLAYOFFS AND OFFSEASON
While Joe Posnanski gets a lot of things right, he’s wrong about the best baseball movie ever. In a recent column, he placed Bull Durham as #2. Bull Durham is not only the best baseball movie ever but also the best sports movie ever. It’s not even close.
This is one of about twenty clips from the movie I could show to prove my point:
I wrote an entire post earlier this year about baseball songs, so if you want to dive deep into music about the national pastime, check this out. For now, I’ll simply send you to John Fogerty’s Centerfield. It belongs on any list of great baseball songs and not only because it has a role in the best of all baseball films, Bull Durham (I’m not giving up on this!). All you have to do is be at a ballpark and watch people sing along when it is played to know how much it connects. “Put me in coach” indeed!
But we still have a month of baseball left before the season ends and it breaks your heart. So let’s play ball!
More to come . . .
DJB
*The Racing Presidents for the Nationals are still the best mascot race, even with a mediocre team.
Playoff bracket credit Yahoo Sports
