Six Takeaways From Our Playoff Odds Release

Every February, a series of rituals brings baseball back from its wintry break. Pitchers and catchers report. Spring training starts. My dad calls me to tell me Rogers Hornsby’s quote about the offseason. FanGraphs releases its initial run of its Playoff Odds.

Maybe that last one isn’t as ingrained in baseball culture as pitchers and catchers reporting, but it sure gets me excited. So much offseason analysis is hot air – This new hitter is great! We like him! And have you seen their new pitcher? – that I get the feeling that every team got better. Until we plug them all into a big old spreadsheet – well, a metaphorical spreadsheet; the projection system lives in the cloud – we don’t know how each team’s annual roster overhaul, along with the natural ebb and flow of talent over time, coheres into a new competitive landscape. In the cold light of computer-generated projections, it’s easier to see which offseasons clicked and which fell short, who’s playing for tomorrow and who’s ready to win today.

The winter isn’t over, to be clear. Among the top free agents, Framber Valdez is still unsigned, and there are other difference-makers available as well. The trade market is heating up. Inevitably, there will be injuries throughout the spring, and at least a few rookies will force their way into the playing time picture. Our odds will update to reflect all of that; you can find more about how the odds are generated here. Today, though, we can only speculate based on what we know. Here are six takeaways, one for each division, from our initial odds release.

The AL East Is Stacked
Top to bottom, the AL East looks like the best division in baseball this year. We have the Orioles down as the fourth-best team – and we also project them for 84 wins. The poor Rays are on the outside of the playoff picture looking in despite being a reasonably talented team overall. That’s what happens when you play in a division that won’t stop escalating.

The Blue Jays went to the World Series and then spent the offseason adding to their roster. The Yankees had the best BaseRuns record in the majors last year and are essentially bringing the same squad back in 2026. The Red Sox swung two of the biggest trades of the winter, and if someone ever tells them they’re short an infielder or two, they might be truly fearsome. Even the generally thrifty O’s signed Pete Alonso and Ryan Helsley. It was a winter of upgrades, in other words.

It’s also a good reminder that when a division is this good, it’s hard to get any truly gaudy records. Yeah, the Yankees are great, but they have to play the Jays, Sox, O’s, and Rays 13 times each. I seem to say some version of this sentence every year, but that doesn’t make it less true: This division is tough. It has the highest chance of sending three teams to the playoffs. Its worst team is still pretty good. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Our Models Hate the Guardians
The two-time defending AL Central champions place shockingly low in their division; this year’s initial odds run has them at 76 wins. What gives? Every year we project the Guardians for 81 or so wins. We’ve been doing it for years now. Why the sudden drop? And why the sudden drop when they’ve averaged 90 wins in each of the last two seasons? It’s the offense, more or less.

In 2025, the Guardians scored fewer than four runs per game, 28th in baseball. Offensively, they were worse than the putrid White Sox. They had a good run prevention season, but even then, they were outscored on the year, and their BaseRuns record was a paltry 77-85. Then they went into the offseason and did essentially nothing. The three largest moves they’ve made have been an extension for José Ramírez (great!), a one-year deal for Shawn Armstrong (eh), and a one-year deal to bring back Austin Hedges (yikes). Maybe they can pull off their usual Guardians magic, but we’ve never found any secret formula to beating your BaseRuns record in the long run. This team just isn’t going to score enough runs.

I’m skeptical that Minnesota will actually pass Cleveland. Our projection systems don’t know that the Twins are in the middle of rebuilding and just shook up the front office. They don’t know that Cleveland tends to make go-for-it trades at the deadline. But the Royals and Tigers both look like more than a match for the Guardians, and they too will probably look to add at the deadline. This is going to be a close race, and given that our model has been about six wins per year low on the Guardians in the past half decade, I’m hardly confident that they’re dead in the water. But if you’re wondering how a defending division champion has such a bad projection, look no further than the offense. And for the record, we might have been low on the Guardians in recent years, but in the first five years of our playoff odds model, we had them bang on. Variance happens. Cleveland will have to hope that upside variance hits twice in two years.

The Mariners Stand Alone
The Mariners don’t do easy. Just ask their fans. The 21st century has been full of near misses, starts and stops, long stretches of hopelessness. But 2026 might be different. Our odds have the M’s down for the best playoff odds in the entire American League, and I can’t think of anything less “Mariners” than that.

The team’s ascension is about two things: their continued growth and the rest of the division’s decline. The Mariners have had a quiet offseason, but I like what they’re doing. They spent some resources and time addressing the bullpen, retained Josh Naylor, the best of their departing free agents, and even brought in Rob Refsnyder as a high-impact platoon bat. Cole Young, who just graduated from prospect status, looks ready to take over second base, and guys like Colt Emerson will enter camp with a shot to make the Opening Day roster. The rotation is among the best in baseball. This is a solid team, albeit one with a thin offensive unit.

Just as importantly, the rest of the West is down. The Astros are interesting – Tatsuya Imai is a wild card and I think a full season of Carlos Correa in Houston will work out well – but their pitching depth leaves a lot to be desired. Their roster is also a difficult puzzle to unlock. There are plenty of interesting platoon bats, but they have a declining veteran first baseman clogging things up, and not enough playing time to go around for some of the highest-upside arms. The Rangers are aging fast, and while they shored up their rotation by trading for MacKenzie Gore, the offense is light on star power and also on depth.

The A’s are the most interesting of these teams to me. We have them down in the 70s when it comes to projected wins, and that’s for one reason: pitching. Their offense is playoff-caliber, and it looks like it’ll be that way for years to come given their recent spree of contract extensions. But this is kind of like the meme of drawing a horse – you’ll have a hard time convincing me that the same artist drew the Sacramento offense and pitching staff. No playoff contender has less going on on the mound than the A’s. Few teams do, period. They’re probably still a year off, in other words – and their loss is Seattle’s gain.

The Inevitable Braves Projection
Find someone who loves you like FanGraphs Depth Charts loves the Braves. In the past five years, our average projection for Atlanta has been a whopping 93 wins, the second highest in baseball. Yeah! Silly FanGraphs! Overestimating the Braves like a bunch of dummies! Only, it hasn’t been much of an over-estimate; the Braves have averaged 91.5 wins over that time period, one of the best marks in the game. This year, we have them down for a banner season yet again. It feels a little different coming off of their worst campaign since 2017, though.

I think the Braves are going to be just fine, honestly. Their offense is deep and has more backup options than we’ve seen in Atlanta in a while. Their rotation goes five deep with starters who I’d be excited to have in my rotation, and eight deep with starters who I think are at least acceptable. There’s always injury risk – it’s the Braves, after all – but put last year’s swoon out of your mind when considering this Atlanta team. It looks formidable.

The Mets, coming off of a disappointing season, have remodeled the roster, and our projections love what they did to the place, adding three wins to their projected total as compared to 2025. The Phillies look good, too, though aging, injury, and roster turnover have us down on their chances relative to last year. That should make for a good race at the top of the division. It might also make for three playoff teams; the Marlins and Nats are pretty clearly off the pace, which means that the cream of the East might rack up a lot of intra-divisional wins. But the most striking part of the projections has to be the Braves at the top – just like we think they will be every year.

Does FanGraphs Know Who The Brewers Are?
The Brewers are the foremost reason that we’ve been digging into our playoff odds for potential depth-related improvements. We’ve been low on them, year in and year out, for the better part of a decade, and given that they keep constructing their team in a similar way, I wouldn’t be shocked if we’re low again. They build around depth, defense, and speed, all three of which have proven difficult to model using public projection systems. Their continued ability to wring a little extra out of pitchers who our projection systems aren’t enamored with adds another element to the mix. One way to look at this projection is that we think the Brewers will be middling. Another is that we think that their true talent is about the same as it was in 2025 – and in 2025, they won the most games in the majors and had a 95-67 BaseRuns record.

The Cubs also project similarly to last year, and they were pretty dang good then. Swapping former Astros Kyle Tucker out and Alex Bregman in changes the mix somewhat, but their offense looks similar to last year’s squad overall despite its cosmetic changes. An offseason trade for Edward Cabrera, combined with a full season of Cade Horton, should keep their already-excellent run prevention unit humming. Pete Crow-Armstrong probably isn’t as good as he was in the first half, but he’s probably not as bad as he was in the second half; we have him down as a clear All-Star. This is shaping up to be another two-team race.

It’ll be a two-team race unless the Pirates butt in, that is! Our model thinks Pittsburgh is nearly as good as Milwaukee this year, and while I’ve already explained why I think we’re too low on the Brewers, that doesn’t mean we’re too high on the Pirates. Sure, they lost 91 games last year, but a lineup overhaul has them looking like a meaningfully better team. Three new offensive starters should provide more spark. Paul Skenes and a solid pitching staff give those hitters a cushion; you don’t have to score as much to win when the best pitcher in baseball is on the mound. This is the most wins we’ve projected the Pirates for since 2016, though fair warning: They missed the playoffs that year too.

Triple-Digit Dodgers
Fine, the Dodgers aren’t actually projected for a clean 100 wins, but 99.6 is close enough for me. Believe it or not, this is the most wins we’ve ever projected them for. Projection systems are inherently conservative; 100-win projections are rare. This team simply looks that good. When you take the two-time defending World Series champions, lose almost no one, and add the top hitter and top reliever available in free agency, an already-rosy projection simply spikes to the moon. We think the Dodgers have a comically high 94.1% chance of winning the NL West. That’s silly.

The other teams in the West are actually locked in an interesting race for second. The Padres and Diamondbacks have made playoff noise in recent years, but we have the Giants narrowly ahead of those two this year despite a relatively quiet offseason. Their big addition will be a full season of Rafael Devers, and adding solid veterans like Harrison Bader and Luis Arraez won’t hurt. The Padres, on the other hand, lost three important contributors and added no one of note to replace them. The core group of Machado, Tatis, Merrill and Co. is still excellent, but the long-term impact of the trades the Padres made to surround that core with a good supporting cast means that there’s very little depth to go around here at the moment.

The Diamondbacks are more of a wild card than the Padres, who we know will be good, but expect to be less so than in recent years. The D-backs, on the other hand, has been pivoting all over the place. They sold at the deadline last year, then added this offseason by trading for Nolan Arenado and bringing Merrill Kelly back to replace Zac Gallen. There’s a ton of upside here – three different Snakes project for 4 WAR or more, with Gabriel Moreno not far behind at 3.9. But between some lineup holes – presumptive DH Adrian Del Castillo feels particularly risky to me, but first base isn’t great either – and a thin pitching staff, it’s easy to see how this team could fall out of the race early.