With NFL Week 2 in the books, the sporting world heads back to the diamond where the MLB regular season will reach its conclusion by Sunday. Only a few teams will have their playoff dreams realized-or-dashed by Sunday, and even more could be playing for positioning right up until the very end.
Then there's the question as to the fairness of this all. An 81-75 Cleveland team is currently sitting in the 2 seed with a first-round bye. An 89-66 Yankees team is right now the 4 seed and will be packing a bag. That is 8.5 games of separation, and it is entirely legal, because division winners get seeds 1-thru-3 and everybody else lines up behind them no matter how the summer went. Don't even let me get started with the AL West.
Scratch that, I probably should. After all, that's what this article is for.
Here is what that bye is worth. FanGraphs gives Cleveland a 7.5% chance to win the World Series and the Yankees 6.6%, which means a week off is currently worth more than eight and a half games of baseball.
16 games on the board Tuesday. And yeah, a lot of them cannot change the bracket. But four of them can move a seed, and two of those four can flip an entire division. So without further ado, here is what you need to know heading into Tuesday's massive slate to make the best predictions you can. Just please tread lightly.
If The Playoffs Started This Minute
Seeds 1 and 2 get the bye. Seeds 3 and 4 host the wild card round — every game of it, at their park, which is the part people forget until they are buying tickets in the wrong city.
American League
| Seed | Team | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rays | 95-60 | Division · bye |
| 2 | Guardians | 81-75 | Division · bye |
| 3 | Rangers | 78-78 | Division · hosts |
| 4 | Yankees | 89-66 | Wild card · hosts |
| 5 | Red Sox | 84-72 | Wild card |
| 6 | White Sox | 80-76 | Wild card |
First out: Astros 77-79, three back. Blue Jays 77-80, three and a half back.
National League
| Seed | Team | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brewers | 98-58 | Division · bye |
| 2 | Dodgers | 96-60 | Division · bye |
| 3 | Braves | 92-64 | Division · hosts |
| 4 | Cubs | 87-69 | Wild card · hosts |
| 5 | Padres | 87-69 | Wild card |
| 6 | Phillies | 86-70 | Wild card |
First out: Diamondbacks, 82-74, four back.
Every club still alive has six games left except Tampa Bay and New York, who have seven apiece and are playing two of them Tuesday.
And here is what FanGraphs thinks of all that, which is where it gets interesting:
| Team | Win division | Get a bye | Make playoffs | Win it all |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brewers | 100% | 100% | 100% | 14.1% |
| Dodgers | 100% | 99.2% | 100% | 29.1% |
| Rays | 99.1% | 99.1% | 100% | 10.3% |
| Guardians | 62.8% | 61.1% | 98.7% | 7.5% |
| White Sox | 37.2% | 36.2% | 97.0% | 2.3% |
| Yankees | 0.9% | 0.9% | 100% | 6.6% |
| Red Sox | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100% | 6.3% |
| Braves | 100% | 0.8% | 100% | 4.6% |
| Phillies | 0.0% | 0.0% | 97.3% | 5.6% |
| Cubs | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100% | 5.2% |
| Padres | 0.0% | 0.0% | 97.0% | 3.5% |
| Rangers | 56.1% | 1.9% | 57.3% | 2.8% |
| Astros | 43.8% | 0.9% | 45.4% | 1.8% |
| Diamondbacks | 0.0% | 0.0% | 5.7% | 0.2% |
| Blue Jays | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.2% | 0.1% |
| Orioles | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.2% | 0.0% |
| Mariners | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.0% |
FanGraphs playoff odds, division and wild card pages, read September 22, 2026. The other 13 clubs sit at 0.0% across the board.
Los Angeles at 29.1% to win the whole thing is the number that jumps off that table, and it is more than double anybody else in baseball.
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All 16 Games, First Pitch To Last
In first-pitch order, with what each club is actually playing for. All times Eastern.
1:05 p.m. ET — Rays at Yankees, game one. Martinez against Rodón. Tampa Bay can put the East away here; New York is the 4 seed whether it wins out or loses out.
6:35 p.m. ET — Blue Jays at Orioles. Scherzer against Bassitt, which is a sentence that would have sold out a stadium a decade ago. Toronto is 77-80 and three and a half out at 1.2%; Baltimore is 76-81 and down to 0.2%. Technically alive, functionally a formality.
6:40 p.m. ET — Brewers at Phillies. May against Wheeler, and the best record in baseball visiting a team clinging to the 6 seed. Milwaukee is protecting a two-game cushion for the top seed; Philadelphia is a game out of hosting rights.
6:40 p.m. ET — Cardinals at Pirates. Both eliminated. Two clubs auditioning next year's roster in front of an honest crowd.
6:40 p.m. ET — Nationals at Tigers. Also both eliminated, and Detroit at 74-83 is the harder one to sit with given where that club was two seasons ago.
6:45 p.m. ET — Guardians at Red Sox. The one I would put on the big screen. Cleveland is one game up on the White Sox in the AL Central, and that division lead is the whole thing: hold it and you are the 2 seed with a week off, lose it and you are the 6 seed opening on the road. Boston is locked into the 5 seed and has nothing left to chase.
7:05 p.m. ET — Rays at Yankees, game two. Rasmussen against Fried, and the math here is worth knowing before you touch the game. Tampa Bay's magic number over New York is two, and because these two are playing each other, a Rays win in the opener counts twice and clinches the AL East on the spot. Which would put first pitch of the nightcap roughly an hour after a champagne celebration, and a team with nothing left to win would be entirely within its rights to hand in a lineup card you need a program to read. New York is the 4 seed either way.
7:15 p.m. ET — Reds at Braves. Ritchie for Atlanta, who is technically four back of the Dodgers for the last bye and given 0.8% of getting it, so this is a tune-up for hosting as the 3.
7:40 p.m. ET — White Sox at Kansas City. Chicago is one game back of Cleveland in the AL Central and 36.2% to get a bye, with the last wild card as its fallback, which means every inning here is worth more than the standings make it look. The market has them at 2 cents to win it all, which is the cheapest any team with a live bye case has ever felt.
7:40 p.m. ET — Marlins at Cubs. Junk goes for Miami; Chicago has not committed, with Imanaga and Gausman both in play. The Cubs are tied with San Diego at 87-69 for the 4 seed, and the 4 seed hosts. Home field in a best-of-three, decided by whoever blinks over six games.
8:05 p.m. ET — Mets at Rangers. Manaea against Gore. Texas is defending a division lead and the 3 seed at exactly .500, and at 57.3% to reach October this is the most consequential game on its schedule.
8:40 p.m. ET — Diamondbacks at Rockies. Arizona's last real gasp: four back, and FanGraphs has them at 5.7%. Colorado was the first team in baseball eliminated this year, on September 7, and has been playing out a very long string ever since.
9:40 p.m. ET — Astros at Mariners. Javier against Gilbert. Houston is 45.4% to reach the playoffs with no fallback, so this is as close to an elimination game as a Tuesday in September gets. Seattle is done and would like nothing more than to end a division rival on the way out.
9:40 p.m. ET — Angels at Athletics. Both eliminated, both rebuilding, first pitch at 9:40 on a Tuesday.
9:45 p.m. ET — Twins at Giants. Both eliminated, Minnesota 73-84 and San Francisco 65-92. Bradley against Molina is genuinely interesting if you are a person who watches games for the pitching, which I am.
10:10 p.m. ET — Padres at Dodgers. The best game of the night and it starts at 10:10, so you will be watching it one-handed with the captions on if your house looks anything like mine. King is official for San Diego. Los Angeles is not, and the choice is the story: Yamamoto starting, or Wrobleski opening with Sasaki behind him for length. Two back of Milwaukee for the top seed, a tied opponent for the 4 seed, and a pitching plan that tells you which one the Dodgers actually care about.
What The Market Thinks Of All That
Models are opinions. Prices are opinions with money behind them, and the interesting part of this week is where the two disagree.
Kalshi runs a World Series market on all 30 clubs, priced in cents, and every one of these carries real depth — two to five million contracts traded apiece, so these are not thin quotes nobody can get filled on. Here is the top of that board against the model, read Tuesday morning:
| Team | Kalshi | All-in after fee | Effective odds | FanGraphs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | 31¢ | 32.7% | +206 | 29.1% |
| Brewers | 17¢ | 17.7% | +466 | 14.1% |
| Yankees | 9¢ | 9.4% | +967 | 6.6% |
| Guardians | 4¢ | 4.6% | +2,079 | 7.5% |
| White Sox | 2¢ | 2.6% | +3,792 | 2.3% |
Kalshi asks read Tuesday, September 22, 2026, with the taker fee of 0.07 × price × (1 − price) added in, then converted to American. FanGraphs from the same read.
Look at the two rows that do not match. The market has the Yankees at 9.4% all-in against a model that says 6.6%, and Cleveland at 4.6% against a model that says 7.5%. Those are mirror images, and they are the same two clubs the seeding format has upside down. The crowd is paying a premium for 89 wins and pinstripes, and paying almost nothing for the team that is actually holding the bye.
I am not telling you to buy either one. I am telling you that if you have read this far and you have a hunch about how the last week breaks, there is a screen where you can put an actual number on it instead of arguing about it in a group chat. That is the useful thing about an exchange in the last week of a season: every one of these implications has a price, and you can take the other side of the consensus if you think the consensus is wrong.
The Dodgers at 31 cents are the one the market is most sure about, and 32.7% all-in is the highest number anybody has on anything in baseball right now.
The Only Two Divisions Still Breathing
You get two races, both in the American League, and they look identical until you read the odds.
AL Central — Guardians 81-75, White Sox 80-76. One game, and both clubs are already in: Cleveland 98.7% to make the playoffs, Chicago 97.0%. So this race is not about survival, it is about rest. Winner takes the 2 seed and a week off, loser slides to the 6 seed and opens on the road. Cleveland is 61.1% to land the bye and Chicago 36.2%, and the gap between those two outcomes is worth about five points of World Series equity.
And the tiebreaker belongs to Chicago. The White Sox took the season series 7-6, the last three games of it in Cleveland the week before last, and there are no meetings left to change it. So a tie on the final day sends Chicago to the 2 seed and the week off, and sends Cleveland to the 6 seed and the road. Chicago is a game back holding the only coin flip that matters.
AL West — Rangers 78-78, Astros 77-79. Same one-game margin, wildly different stakes. Texas is 57.3% to reach the playoffs, Houston 45.4%, and neither has a wild card fallback worth the name at 1.3% and 1.7%. The Central is playing for a nap. The West is playing for its season.
Houston owns that tiebreaker too, and not narrowly: the Astros went 9-4 against Texas across 13 meetings, all of them finished. Which makes the Rangers' one-game lead worth exactly one game. Texas has to stay in front outright, because a tie on Sunday hands Houston the division, the 3 seed and every home game of the wild card round, and leaves Texas with a 1.3% wild card and a long winter.
Everywhere else is decided or close to it. Tampa Bay leads the East by six with seven to play, so New York needs a collapse that has to start immediately. Milwaukee, Los Angeles and Atlanta have their divisions. The NL wild card is three teams for three spots with Arizona four back at 5.7% and needing help it probably will not get.
Who Actually Has A Reason To Rest Somebody
This is the part the market is slowest to price, and it is where a slate like this pays you.
Nothing left to play for, everything to protect: the Yankees and the Red Sox. Both are 100% to make the playoffs and both are locked into their seed — New York is the 4 if it wins six straight or loses six straight, Boston the 5. Two clubhouses with a training staff quietly lobbying to get a veteran off his feet. Watch the lineup cards before you touch a total.
Playing like it matters, because it does: Cleveland and the White Sox for a bye, Texas and Houston for their lives. Milwaukee and Los Angeles are still trading punches over the top seed, and the Cubs, Padres and Phillies all have seeding to gain. Those clubhouses are running their real people out there.
14 clubs are at 0.0%, and their lineup cards can look nothing like their season-long numbers. Monday night in San Francisco was the proof. The Giants beat the Twins 5-2 behind a batting order that led off Drew Gilbert and hit Marcelo Mayer fourth, while Minnesota ran Walker Jenkins, Aaron Sabato and Emmanuel Rodriguez out there. 18 names, and a fair number of them you would have to look up. Those two clubs play again Tuesday at 9:45, and nothing that happens in that game would surprise me. Bullpen games, a 40-man call-up hitting fifth, a starter on a firm 65-pitch leash. Same name on the jersey, a different roster underneath it.
The shape of the week is the part worth thinking about, and I lean one way on it without pretending it is more than a lean. A locked team has the least to lose by resting people early and the most to lose by sitting them too long, because nobody wants a lineup walking into the wild card round having seen live pitching twice in six days. So my read is that Tuesday and Wednesday are the thinnest cards the good teams hand in all week, and that by Sunday you are looking at something closer to the real thing, veterans back for a last look in front of a home crowd. Tuesday is the easy one to read. Sunday is the one that gets people.
Kalshi is useful here as a timing device rather than a bet. A clubhouse that has clinched behaves differently than one sitting at 61.1% to clinch, and the bye market will tell you which one you are looking at before the manager does. When Cleveland's number gets to 99 cents, the lineup card changes the next day.
Where The Edge Is On A Night Like This
The straightforward one: totals in games between two eliminated teams, once you know who is actually pitching. A bullpen game is a different market than a starter, and the number does not always move as fast as the announcement does.
The one with the most money in it Tuesday is the nightcap. Los Angeles has not named a starter, and the two options are not close to each other: Yamamoto for six innings is one total, an opener with Sasaki working long relief behind him is a different total entirely. If that announcement lands after the number is already hanging, there is a window.
The sharper one: a locked team against a desperate one. Boston hosting Cleveland is exactly that shape — one side is defending a bye worth five points of title equity, the other has a seed it cannot change. And if you think the market is wrong about Cleveland at 4 cents, that view has a price on it too.
And the boring one that makes the most money: shop the number. The gap between the best and worst price on a September total is wider than it is in July, because the books are not all modeling September rosters the same way. Run the same game through our live odds screen before you fire, and take the best of DraftKings, FanDuel and everybody else on the board. Same bet, better payout, and it costs you nothing but a second tab.
Final Thoughts
Six games left for everybody still breathing except the Rays and the Yankees, who get seven, and the whole American League bracket hinging on whether an 81-win team can hold off an 80-win team for four more days.
One thing before you go. Every longshot ticket on a September race is more likely to miss than hit, and the odds are telling you so out loud: Arizona at 5.7% and Toronto at 1.2% are not live dogs, they are lottery tickets with nice stories attached. Say the number to yourself before you buy it.
Tuesday should be great. This whole week should be cinema. Let's enjoy full-slate baseball for the last few times all year.
— Lindy
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