The Best of the Rest: 2026

 

On a day where all 30 teams are playing for the last time in, depending on how cynical you're feeling, six months or eighteen months, I'm somehow watching more football than baseball. Mostly because if I end up watching the Phillies game they'll just start to betray me. 

The thrilling part of today's goings-on, even two days away from a really fun playoff schematic, is that there were still two spots open, both due to historic collapses. The Phillies had a huge lead for that wild card spot, then just stopped winning and had to win today's to ensure a sixth seed. The Astros, while leading the AL West, refused to stay above .500, leading to today's stalemate with the Rangers, where one needed to win while the other lost in order for anything fun to happen [and nothing fun did happen]. 

It's a picture of a season where nothing was pinned down, even when it should be. The Orioles and Pirates, after being eliminated, had late swells that drastically changed divisional pictures. The Marlins were a very fun spoiler of a team despite ruining their own playoff chances. The Diamondbacks kept fighting until the very end, in a way where you could never count them out. Considering how many of these non-playoff teams just lay down and die in September, it was a nice change of pace.

This makes this year's Best of the Rest superlatives post a bit more fun, because in addition to the usual amount of cynicism, I actually have some good things to say about a few of these teams. As usual, these are superlatives for the teams that didn't make the playoffs, in the same vein as 'best dressed', 'class clown' and 'most improved'. This one was in flux til post. 

Most Likely To Succeed [According to the Sportswriters in January]: Seattle Mariners

Team That Peaked Too Early: St. Louis Cardinals

Team That Peaked Far Too Late: Pittsburgh Pirates

Best Squanderer of Hopes Their Fans Had in 2025: Toronto Blue Jays

Best Squanderer of Hopes Their Fans Had in May: Sacramento Athletics 

Best Pitching Staff for a Team That Didn't Make the Playoffs: Pittsburgh Pirates

Worst Pitching: Colorado Rockies, third year running

Most Willing to Settle: Minnesota Twins

Most Puzzling Use of Money: Washington Nationals

Most Depressing Team To Write About Every Two Weeks: Kansas City Royals

Team Who May Be Delighted to Know That There’s An Opening Shaped Like a Doorway Where You Could, In Theory, Exit the Revolving Door, But Only if You Wanted To: Baltimore Orioles

Most Comically-Timed Injuries: Detroit Tigers

Best Immediately-Distinguished Glimmer of Hope: Miami Marlins

Best Backfiring of 'Titanic Will Never Sink' Logic: New York Mets

Most Unwilling to Recapture the Lightning in the Bottle: Toronto Blue Jays

Most Anonymous September 28-Man Roster: San Francisco Giants

Best Straw Breaking the Camel's Back: Los Angeles Angels

Team That Has No Idea What It Wants: Cincinnati Reds

Biggest Anticlimax: Texas Rangers

Best Overall Team That Didn't Make the Playoffs: Arizona Diamondbacks

Least Likely to Make This List in 2027: Baltimore Orioles, Pittsburgh Pirates

That's our roundup of the other 18 teams. Now it's down to the other 12 to make this a satisfying conclusion to the season. No pressure. 

Brain Sku

 

Remember a week or so after Tarik Skubal made it to LA and he was only doing okay and people were worried the Dodgers gave Zyhir Hope away for nothing? I mean, all will be revealed when Skubal signs with somebody after the season, but...you don't get Tarik Skubal on your team because of the okay starts. So when the good starts happen, nobody's gotta be shocked. He's Tarik Skubal. He does this.

Sku in LA has been as successful as you might expect. In 9 starts, he's 4-2 with a 2.95 ERA and 60 Ks. This is exactly what he was doing in Detroit but with a much thinner ERA. He had some trouble for about a week and a half, got over it, got better and put in another excellent season, one the Dodgers are now reaping the benefits of. Skubal has been a very nice addition to the Dodgers' rotation, which now has Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Emmet Sheehan all working pretty well. The key to this team, once again, will be legging out starters as relief pieces, as Justin Wrobleski, Roki Sasaki, and I can only assume Eric Lauer if he's back this year, will be used in long relief and will strengthen the postseason bullpen...which, to be clear, is already very strong because Tanner Scott, Alex Vesia, Jack Dreyer and Brock Stewart are all having great seasons and it won't be as hellish to call for a 'pen boost midgame. 

For the second year in a row, the Dodgers are entering the postseason as something other than the clear favorite. The Brewers will be the top seed, and though the Dodgers will also get a first round bye, they will have to work their way up to a prevailing spot. The Braves, Phillies, Cubs and Padres all want the opportunity to take them down, and the Padres have done it before. The Dodgers are very good this year, but have lesser performances from Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernandez and Will Smith, which is...their core. They also are just now getting production out of Kyle Tucker, but who knows how long that'll last. The pieces of this team are excellent, and could potentially get them a third straight ring, but...the strings are showing. It's a more human version of this team, with parts that can go wrong [Edwin Diaz, the catching for a month, Enrique Hernandez FOR NOW..] and guys who can, and have, not show up for big moments. Thanks to a really easy schedule, the Dodgers are 15-5 in September, and it's worth asking...would they still have been 15-5 last year given this schedule? They are better than bad teams, even depleted, heading into October...but are they gonna be better than good teams when it counts? No one's quite sure yet.

I think Ohtani's gonna be the big question mark. A lot has been made of Aaron Judge missing Yankee playoff games, but Judge is notoriously bad in October. Ohtani's got 11 postseason homers and 24 postseason RBIs, and that's just in two seasons. If he's got everything straightened out, he'll be that postseason hero again, which sounds like it'll be pretty easy to do, but...if he's not all the way there in October and struggles...that may say all it needs to. The Dodgers are going to fight like hell to ensure that nothing can stop them, but as we've seen in 2019, 2022 and 2023, even if they're extremely good, there could end up being someone better when they don't expect it. 

Coming Tonight: The Rays claimed him off waivers before the season and he's been a major contributor to their astonishing regular season run.

Somebody Has to Win

 
It is...the last week of the season. The thread lines are getting wrapped up before the playoffs start. Everybody is jockeying for position. The Rays already have a first round bye, the NL race is just coming down to wild card seeding. Everything is coming together.

The one issue is that not only do we not have an AL West champion yet, but neither team is above .500. So...if either the Rangers or Astros could stop not wanting it for a moment, we could actually figure out what the story of this division will be.

At the moment, the story of the AL West in 2026 has just been not committing. The Mariners were primed to win out this year, and they continuously refused to put anything together. The A's had a big push early on but completely fell apart once the tentpole hitters got hurt. The Rangers were technically next best but they kept frigging losing. They remained determined, refusing to deal at the deadline despite nearly giving Jacob deGrom to the Braves, and then they roared back in September with the return of some needed pieces. And yet...they're still under .500. They had a leg up on the Astros a moment ago and now they're tied again at 1st. The Astros, meanwhile, have bubbled under, grabbed 1st for a bit but haven't had it commandingly arguably, and don't want to let a postseason opportunity slip by for a second consecutive year [man imagine like...not making the playoffs for a decade]. 

So what happens now? Well...somebody is going to need to show up. Either the division winner will be a momentum team and slay some people despite the record, or it will be a cut and dry in and out appearance during wild card week. Either way, it needs to be earned.

The Rangers have become a very scrappy, hard to keep down sort of team, which is what happens when Jake Burger, Joc Pederson and Ezequiel Duran play crucial roles. Corey Seager, Wyatt Langford, Josh Jung and Brandon Nimmo make up a really nice core which has kept the team from completely sinking under recent losses. The successor for Marcus Semien has arrived almost immediately, and it is Justin Foscue and his contact work. And then you've got the return of Nathan Eovaldi, utilized as a long relief guy with perks. Eovaldi's had a down year after his strong 2025, which is kind of expected, but he's still got 11 wins and 147 Ks. Between Evo, deGrom and Gore, they're not exactly down on strikeout artists, and now that Cody Bradford's back it's even better. I think from a pitching standpoint they're better suited for October, as they also have Jacob Latz, Jakob Junis and Tyler Alexander standing by. It's not as deep as the 2023 team, but they could surprise some people.

And then you have the Astros, who are dangerous enough to still be a factor. Yordan Alvarez, Isaac Paredes, Jeremy Pena and now Yainer Diaz have been very reliable at the plate. Alvy's obviously looking for an MVP, but quietly Paredes is somehow just as good right now? He's got 23 homers, 90 RBIs and an .800 OPS, and has gotten even better as the year's gone on. This is another all-timer year for Josh Hader in the ninth, a strong season for both Hunter Brown and Hayden Wesneski, and a surprise comeback from Peter Lambert. The Astros teams are just very well built, can sustain bad seasons and injuries, and can never be counted out. I owe it to the strength of the organization and the depth of the roster. The issue is, and this ties into why they're not a runaway 1st place team, you can tell this is a depleted version of this team. Big pieces have moved on, big homegrown players are in other markets, and the reinforcements haven't completely taken over yet. Cam Smith, Brice Matthews, Ethan Pecko, Miguel Ullola and Lucas Spence are here, but they're not running away with anything, at least not in the way that some of the Rangers rookies are.

It's still a toss up, and the fact that the Mets have been fighting back against the Rangers and the Astros have had no trouble with the Mariners proves it's not a sensible path at all. It could come down to the wire, and the winner may still not be a .500 team. I think, just from a logic standpoint, that the Astros will probably win out just because they've had more season leverage...but I still kind of want the Rangers to work an upset at the eleventh hour. The Astros thrive with a late rally, but the Rangers have proven that they can find momentum even before the Astros do.

Whoever wins will definitely earn it. Where they go from there is up to them.

Coming Tomorrow- Oh, you know...the most important guy moved at the deadline and all...

98 to Beat

 

Now only could the Brewers set a new season wins record this year, which they've already pretty much done, but they could be a 100-game winner in an era where winning 100 games is so rare. And they could do it with a smaller market, farm system based team that's only getting better. I know they're in Philly this week and fundamentally I still want them to lose, but...considering that they're also my pie-in-the-sky World Series winner, I just want good things to keep happening to this team.

The way I've figured out that this is the best lineup in baseball is that even the guys who switch in and out still make it the best. David Hamilton is a glorified utility man who swoops in and covers 2nd and 3rd, and he's really good on defense and good in a pinch offensively, in addition to leading the team in stolen bases with 28. Luis Lara was brought in as an auxiliary outfield guy, to back up Frelick, and he's been wonderful, hitting .250 with 24 RBIs in 57 games, plus some amazing outfield catches. Andrew Vaughn and Jake Bauers are essentially sharing 1st base and both are wonderful, with Vaughn hitting .300 and leaning on his contact skills while Bauers leads the team in homers and has a .397 OBP. 

And Joey Ortiz was essentially made an infield swing once Cooper Pratt came up, and he's parlayed that into a starting 3rd base job thanks to some elevated batting numbers, including a .267 average, 9 homers and 46 RBIs. Ortiz is usually the ninth batter but he makes himself known, and he's a lot more dangerous than the usual caliber of guys batting ninth. And that's not even mentioning the fact that Gary Sanchez, who only catches against lefties, has 11 homers and 36 RBIs. They've got it all worked out. Chourio, Turang, Bauers, Mitchell and Contreras are a mighty backbone of this team, Pratt and Lara are both 21 and feel like they belong, and Made, Williams, Pena and Fischer haven't even gotten here yet. 

I put the bullpen in a similar category as the lineup, because it's very multifaceted. You'd think it was as simple as Megill and Uribe, but Chad Patrick and Aaron Ashby are long men that could start but are better utilized in relief, and they both have 9+ wins. D.L. Hall finally works as a setup man. Jojo Romero isn't Cardinals good but he's a handy guy to have around. Grant Anderson's a good piece too. It all fits together really well, and supplants an already-strong rotation combo of Jacob Misiorowski, Logan Henderson and Robert Gasser, who I assume's getting the third spot as Drohan and Harrison have fallen off. 

There's so much depth, so much truly working, and so many areas that aren't letting up, that I still think these guys have the best World Series case of anyone. The Dodgers are gonna try for it, and they have the legs, but the Brewers may have enough to keep them down, and potentially the rest of the NL. Whoever ends up beating these guys will need to do so with everything they have, because the Brewers truly have everything right now.

Coming Tomorrow- He's been looking at playoff situations for over a decade. He's staring down the barrel of another as we speak. 

Comin' Up From Behind

 

Second year in a row the Guardians have hung back for the race and sprung forward for the division in the last month. They've gotten extremely good at this. Just waiting patiently for another team to fall apart and staying consistent, with a lower budget and lower stakes. They got the injuries out of the way, got the blown saves out of their system, and now the best version of this team has the division, is painstakingly close to a first round bye, and might be a sleeper favorite this postseason. 

The reality of the postseason picture is that the Yankees, Rays and Red Sox, the three best teams in the league are all in the same corner of the bracket because of how the seeding works. Meaning the other three teams, inferior as they are, will have their own part of the map, and will square off to see who gets to be the underdog in the ALCS. The Guardians have a spot in this, and it's looking like the other two will be whoever wins the AL West [currently the Rangers, at .500] and whoever takes the final AL Wild Card spot [looking like the White Sox at the moment]. That's three okay teams, at best good, who will be looking to play one of those three AL East titans for a World Series spot. It's gonna be a game of momentum. Whichever of these teams gets the most momentum could go all the way. And if any of these teams...know how to ride momentum...it is the Cleveland Guardians. Because that's how they managed to get a division title, potentially, even after nearly losing their way in July.

The Guardians are the kind of team where, if something snaps off, they make an even sturdier fix. The catching situation wasn't working, so they added Patrick Bailey and that's been a real success. Kyle Manzardo still can't really hit at the MLB level, so they got Nathaniel Lowe, who's a classic power 1st baseman who can plug in anywhere. Chase DeLauter kept getting hurt, so Jo Adell became outfield security, and he's been fantastic, with 6 homers and 31 RBIs in 42 games. The fans love him in Cleveland, as I knew they would, and he could be a burgeoning star for the Guardians, arguably more than he was for the Angels. Plus, Angel Martinez is hitting his second wind, and could get 60 RBIs before the week's out, in addition to the strong rookie campaign from Angel Genao and the walk-off theatrics of Brayan Rocchio. This is a way more efficient version of this team than we started out with, and the hitting does feel like a layered variety of people who can step up. Bazzana, Ramirez, Kwan, De Lauter and Adell are all capable of being the hero, as are the smaller guys. And even though nobody's finishing the season with 20 homers, the contact work and the base-running, all the fine details of the game, have been excellent. 

And then on top of that, if the postseason rotation is Gavin Williams, Parker Messick and Tanner Bibee, with the occasional assist from Foster Griffin and Joey Cantillo...that's better than what a lot of other teams will throw out there. Better than the White Sox, surely. And who knows how the Rangers' rotation will do, or the Astros'? I think Williams is a genuinely dangerous pitcher with some definite velocity pros. I think Messick is so hard to hit and will be a postseason threat again. And I think Bibee's better than his numbers would have you believe. So that's a pretty good formation, especially with a little more rest.

The way it's looking right now, the Guardians may have lucked into the most prime playoff position they've had in years. They just need to keep it. They need to stay ahead of the White Sox, and be strong enough to take down whoever wins that wild card bracket. And they need to keep doing what they've been doing all year, finding away and holding onto whatever momentum they can. 

Coming Tomorrow- The past few years he's been the Brewers' secret weapon, always coming alive midyear, even as the 9 man. 

Better to be Steady Than Not

 

People are going to be discussing and dissecting exactly what went wrong with this Mets team for years probably. It killed the goodwill of the 2024 run, soured the friendship of the two top players, chased away two of the savviest trade acquisitions in a while and made competition even less of a possibility going forward. The decision to let Pete Alonso walk and replace him with Jorge Polanco is one of the dumbest ones in recent memory, and the fact that they actually found a working 1st base option in Jared Young only for the best pitcher on the team to step on his head and give him a concussion is just a terrific sign of cosmic irony. 

The issue, much like the contracts the 2012 Marlins took on, or the ones the 2013 Indians took on, or the ones the 2015 Padres took on, was that there needed to be a harmony between the preexisting core and the entering personnel. If there's barely a core to begin with, the contracts won't do anything. If there's too much of a core, the contracts will clash. And in this case, there was a core that was already becoming incompatible, and adding these new contracts did not help.

And so, the best players on this Mets team were the ones who remained steady, fundamentally, while everything else was tumultuous and indistinct. Juan Soto had a decent enough season but missed time. Francisco Lindor similarly was out for a bit and did what he could when he returned but it wasn't much. The core of this team were the guys that either were too young to give into the bullshit or just too consistent to care. Luis Torrens is a perfect example. Career system catcher, does what he can wherever he goes. Has become a nice piece with the Mets, everything Tomas Nido was supposed to be. Torrens was one of the best players on the Mets this year, he was excellent defensively, and he had 9 homers and 40 RBIs in 88 games. He came in, did his job, and didn't start shit. With so many people who couldn't even do that, it was very welcome.

I also think Nolan McLean, Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing all impressed this season because they were just trying to prove themselves, and weren't too high on their own egos. McLean could have coasted on his own resume after a strong WBC run, but he instead put in the work and despite a higher ERA, left with a nice full sophomore year, with a 3.18 ERA, 11 wins and 189 Ks. Zac Thornton also falls into that category, he made the most of the call-up and had a 3.40 ERA in 14 games. Jonah Tong's slowly figuring himself out as well. And Benge and Ewing became the backbone of this team by using the frenzy around the big guns distract the media from their early struggles, and by the time people were paying attention they were excellent stories. Benge hit .275 this year with 19 homers, 61 RBIs and 22 steals. Ewing hit 10 homers, 40 RBIs and stole 24 bases. Those two are the future, and they're very much ahead of the pack, which is wild to say about two guys under 24. 

There's a lot of money baked into this team's success, and it's the guys who aren't overpaid, aren't overexposed and aren't under pressure who are doing the most. That should be an important piece of information to carry into 2027.

Coming Tonight: He was fine in LA but never really hit the heights he was supposed to. Somehow he's getting closer in Cleveland. 

Whatever Gets You There

 

Connor Norby's trajectory is fascinating. He's brought up by the Orioles in 2024 as an infield contact bat, is traded to Miami for Trevor Rogers and becomes a corner infield power bat, dilutes himself thanks to injuries, hands in a very weak 2026 campaign in Miami and gets himself traded to Denver for Victor Vodnik, a trade where I'm still not entirely sure who was selling and who was buying, and then suddenly solves the Rockies' second base problem with a positive month and a half of contact hitting. The fact that this man did not work in Baltimore or Miami yet somehow can work with the Rockies, a team that either rewards contact hitting or buries it, is astounding. I think the Rox are gonna go with Norby at 2nd after 2026, because they seem to have gotten him to work. 

And yet if the O's hadn't traded him, likely to make room for Jackson Holliday, he'd be vying for that all-important third base spot with Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Blaze Alexander and Coby Mayo. And uh...he'd be losing, because CES has already become a fan favorite in Baltimore on account of his power abilities, Alexander had a .300 season despite injuries slowing him down, and Coby Mayo is hitting .315 against lefties with 16 of his 24 home runs and a 1.097 OPS. Mayo was one of the people Norby lost playing time to, and now we're finally seeing why, because if this guy can learn to hit like that against righties then the O's might be in business. 

It just shows how wild the O's talent farm has been in the last few years, seeing as they were buyers, and now they've been sellers the last two years, so they've given away talent to teams like the Brewers and Marlins, and now they've received talent from teams like the Red Sox, Nationals, Twins, Rays and Mariners. So far this half they've seen a Nationals outfield farmhand gets some starts, a Mariners relief project become one of the best relievers on the team, and a handful of new prospects become organizational diamonds. All while the guy they traded Connor Norby and Kyle Stowers for justified the deal with another strong, if inferior to 2025, season on the mound.

The Rockies, meanwhile, are trying to do what they can with 'what the hell' deals like the Norby one. Already, they've seen Jake McCarthy and Mickey Moniak, two guys that organizations gave up on, become standouts for them. They've also seen a guy they got from the Yankees' farm system for practically nothing go from an also-ran to the starting first baseman with a relatively high season. Is this 'we'll take anybody and make 'em great' mentality owing to Paul DePodesta's regime being in full swing? The reclamation projects used to be 'uhhh Edouard Julien needs a job' or 'we can try Austin Gomber', and now it's 'Troy Johnston's an insane contact hitter that gets on base and we can totally DH him' and 'why not have Tomoyuki Sugano out there every 5 days slowing people down' or 'I think we finally can get Adael Amador hitting at the MLB level.' This year was bad for Colorado, but I feel like you're seeing things come around. Especially if Goodman, Rumfield, Karros, Carrigg, McCarthy, Norby and Veen are all in it for the long run. 

The moral is that eventually we get to where we're supposed to be, even if we take a weird path to get there. I think Connor Norby's in position to be the best he's ever been in Denver, and in turn it's made Coby Mayo a big force in Baltimore. In time it all smooths itself out.

Coming Tomorrow- For everything he's gone through in his first 10 or so years in the bigs, to become the only steady part of the most tumultuous team in baseball this year certainly is an accomplishment.