MLB Playoff Predictions 2025: Projecting All 12 Postseason Teams

The Major League Baseball playoffs, slated to begin Sept. 30, are going to be an unpredictable free-for-all. But the 12-team field competing for Rob Manfred’s favorite piece of metal? That’s far easier to forecast. Here’s our guess at the dozen clubs that will reach the postseason.

American League

Division winners: Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers, Houston Astros
Wild cards (in order): Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Texas Rangers

With a nine-game lead in the AL Central, the Tigers could swap their big league club for the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens and still win the division without breaking a sweat. Things aren’t quite as easy for the Astros, but their path to the crown is clear with the Seattle Mariners struggling and the Rangers staring at a rigorous schedule through next week.

The AL East offers plenty of intrigue. The Blue Jays, Red Sox and Yankees all entered Tuesday with at least a 96% chance of making the playoffs, per Baseball-Reference. But each team has a series against the others down the stretch, opening a wide variance of seeding possibilities.

While nothing in this unpredictable season will be a surprise, let’s trust the track records and assume Toronto (14-6 against Boston and New York) and Boston (11-9 against the Blue Jays and Yankees) fare well enough against the Yankees to claim the division and the top wild card, respectively.

This prediction will look particularly silly if a 7-1 rout of the Astros last night was the first sign the Yankees — who are 24-30 against teams currently in playoff spots yet boast the AL’s best run differential — are finally going to play to their potential. But we need to see it to believe it, so let’s pencil them in for the second wild card.

Speaking of teams that have conditioned us to skepticism…the Mariners. Seattle missed the playoffs by one game each of the past two seasons, and by two games apiece in 2020 and 2021. They’ve now lost four of five and would be tied for the final wild card if not for the Rangers’ six-game win streak ending Tuesday.

Texas is slated to play 12 straight games against likely playoff teams beginning Friday. But we’re picking the Rangers to outlast the travel-weary Mariners, who are slogging through a nine-game East Coast road trip followed by seven games at home before their next day off Sept. 15.

National League

Division winners: Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers
Wild cards (in order): Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, New York Mets

The NL playoff picture feels close to set in stone. Among these six squads, only the Mets began Tuesday with postseason odds below 97%, and even they were sitting at 80%.

Of course, these are the Mets, so anything — awesome or awful — is in play. Rookie phenom Nolan McLean won’t pitch again before Sunday’s series finale against the Cincinnati Reds, who are tied with the San Francisco Giants and five games behind New York in the race for the last wild card spot. That’s still a big gap to close, so as long as the Mets avoid a sweep by Cincinnati, they should remain entrenched in the sixth seed.

The Mets might even have a chance to move up at the expense of the Padres, who are reminding us of their rollercoaster ways by losing seven of nine since last Sunday, when they missed a chance to sweep the Dodgers and cement themselves as the NL West favorite. But 10 games with the Rockies and White Sox provide San Diego plenty of opportunity to stabilize.

The division races look all but over. The Mets’ tattered rotation behind McLean and fellow rookie Jonah Tong makes it hard to see them erasing Philadelphia’s 5 1/2-game lead in the East. The Cubs have gained four games on the Brewers in the last 15 days, but Milwaukee’s schedule is favorable down the stretch. And the Dodgers, with something resembling a full rotation for the first time since roughly 1978, might be positioning themselves for an October run that makes their “meh” regular season look like one giant troll job.