With the 2026 MLB season now officially underway, here’s a look at the teams that have fared the best across 162 games since the turn of the century.
After a long, turbulent offseason that finished with the riveting 2026 World Baseball Classic, MLB action has officially returned, with the last of the league’s 30 teams playing their first game of the season on Friday.
While offseason additions and subtractions often dominate headlines and set expectations for the league’s top teams, Opening Day remains a moment of hopefulness for fans of all 30 teams – that expectations and odds be damned, everyone has a chance.
Of course, goals vary widely among the league’s 30 teams. For the Los Angeles Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays, only a World Series title could feel like a satisfying conclusion to an arduous season.
For others, like the Cincinnati Reds, Athletics and San Francisco Giants, a goal of simply reaching the postseason is more widespread, with whatever coming afterwards only feeling like gravy.
Even with the expanded playoff format, a successful regular season is still imperative to help a team heading into the playoffs – especially as each league’s top two teams are now gifted a bye through the best-of-three Wild Card Round.
Yet regular season success doesn’t at all guarantee the same through October. Of the 36 teams to have won at least 100 regular season games since the start of the 2000 season, only nine made it all the way to the World Series – with five of those teams ultimately winning it all.
Perhaps more stunningly, 20 of those 36 clubs were met with elimination in the League Division Series – meaning the majority of 100-win teams since the turn of the century have failed to win a single playoff series.
Looking beyond the 100-win teams, there’s another echelon of especially elite clubs that have etched their names into the history books based on their regular season achievements – though even most of these teams struggled when the lights shine the brightest in October.
Here’s a look at the five teams that have compiled the best regular season records since 2000 – along with how they fared in the postseason:
1. 2001 Seattle Mariners: 116-46 (Lost to New York Yankees 4-1 in ALCS)
Despite fears of a downturn following an ALCS trip in 2000 and the subsequent loss of Alex Rodriguez to free agency, the Mariners more than made up for what they lost in what remains a season that is near impossible to replicate.
The biggest and most obvious jolt came from 27-year-old rookie Ichiro Suzuki, who immediately became the league’s first Japanese superstar upon his arrival in Seattle, ultimately going on to win both the AL MVP and AL Rookie of the Year awards.
Still, the ’01 Mariners were much more than just Ichiro. Bret Boone compiled 8.8 WAR en route to a 37-homer, 141 RBI campaign, while John Olerud, Mike Cameron and Edgar Martinez all posted monstrous numbers offensively.
In addition to having AL ERA champion Freddy Garcia leading the rotation, Aaron Sele, Jamie Moyer and Paul Abbott each won at least 15 games, with the former two tossing well over 200 innings. The bullpen was headlined by All-Star closer Kazuhiro Sasaki, the reigning AL Rookie of the Year who cruised to a 45-save campaign in 2001.
After edging out the then-Cleveland Indians in five games in a tight ALDS, the Mariners were overwhelmed by the three-time defending World Series champion New York Yankees, who blew past Seattle in just five games. The Yankees went on to lose the 2001 World Series in seven games to the Arizona Diamondbacks in what is widely regarded as one of the greatest Fall Classics ever played.
2. 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers: 111-51 (Lost to San Diego Padres 3-1 in NLDS)
As a lifelong baseball fan, very rarely has a team felt as complete and inevitable as this iteration of the Dodgers did.
Sure, there’s a new degree to that inevitability now that exists regardless of how the Dodgers do in the regular season thanks to the presence of Shohei Ohtani, but this was about as great as a team could feel without having possibily the greatest player in the sport’s history.
Offensively led by Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and Trea Turner who all had monstrous seasons, the Dodgers were perhaps even more impressive with their pitching staff – with the highest ERA between their four most-used starters clocking in at just 2.57, belonging to Tyler Anderson.
Julio Urías, Clayton Kershaw and Tony Gonsolin anchored the rest of the rotation, helping to supplement the midseason loss of Walker Buehler to injury. The team’s bullpen didn’t feel like a weakness either – with Craig Kimbrel leading the way as the closer while top reliever Evan Phillips posted an asinine 1.14 ERA.
None of these things mattered once October rolled around for the Dodgers, who fell apart to the division rival Padres after taking Game 1 of the NLDS at home. Their three games in a row dropped to the Padres was just one game short of their season-long losing streak, while being enough to crush their dreams of being the wire-to-wire best team in the league.
Of course, these demons were exorcised in the following years, with the Dodgers winning consecutive World Series titles in 2024 and 2025 after acquiring Ohtani.
3. 2018 Boston Red Sox: 108-54 (Defeated Los Angeles Dodgers 4-1 in World Series)
The lone team on this list to win it all, the 2018 BoSox are the best regular season team in the 21st century to go on and win the World Series, capping off a season that felt effortless from start-to-finish for this team.
The most obvious strength of the team was seen in its lineup, with both Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez posting an OPS above 1.000 while occupying two of the top four spots in MVP voting, with Betts winning the award.
In addition to two MVP-caliber seasons, the Red Sox got just under 5 WAR from Xander Bogaerts and Andrew Benintendi each, providing plenty of firepower for a remarkably consistent pitching staff.
It was Chris Sale who led the way in that regard for Boston, with Rick Porcello, Eduardo Rodríguez, Nathan Eovaldi and David Price closing out the rotation – the latter of whom stomped his October demons with an incredible showing in the World Series.
The Red Sox cruised from April through September, and continued to do much of the same in October – dropping just one game in each of their three postseason series en route to their ninth and most recent World Series championship.
4. (tie) 2019 Houston Astros: 107-55 (Lost to Washington Nationals in World Series 4-3)
After winning the World Series in 2017 and winning 103 games en route to an ALCS appearance in 2018, it felt like the Astros couldn’t possibly dominate much more – a sentiment they were eager to prove wrong in 2019.
Led by breakout years from AL MVP runner-up Alex Bregman and AL Rookie of the Year Yordan Alvarez, Houston had a mind-boggling seven hitters that posted an OPS+ of at least 126, with George Springer’s 6.5 WAR and 150 OPS+ in just 122 games jumping off the page.
Though this was the season of the juiced ball, Houston’s offense from both a contact and power standpoint was incredibly difficult to slow down, as contact stalwarts Jose Altuve and Michael Brantley only made things more difficult in between power hitters.
Although the back end of Houston’s rotation was constantly in flux throughout the year, the ‘Stros had the league’s two best pitchers leading the rotation throughout the season in Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, who finished 1st and 2nd respectively in AL Cy Young Award voting.
Both pitchers recorded at least 300 strikeouts, while Verlander’s 0.803 WHIP led all of baseball in a year where it felt nearly impossible to slow down offenses throughout the league.
While the Astros outlasted the Tampa Bay Rays in a five-game ALDS before walking off the New York Yankees in a six-game ALCS, the World Series did not provide the same fortune. In a historic first, the road team won all seven games of the Fall Classic, dooming the home-field advantaged Astros who lost four times in their own ballpark en route to a crushing defeat.
5. 2021 San Francisco Giants: 107-55 (Lost to Los Angeles Dodgers in NLDS 3-2)
It made absolutely no sense when it was happening, and it makes even less sense now.
But sometimes in baseball, the most random and mind-blowing things do just happen, even if they happen over the course of several months. After having not made the playoffs since 2016, the Giants, coming off a 29-31 campaign in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, won 107 games and dethroned the Dodgers as NL West champions.
Despite mostly running back a below .500 team from the year before, this Giants team turned into one of the most unexpected juggernauts in recent sports history. Nine of the 10 Giants hitters to have played in at least 100 games posted an OPS+ of above 100, with especially noteworthy seasons coming from veterans Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford.
Posey, in what was ultimately his final MLB season at the age of 34, posted a 140 OPS+ and a .304 batting average with 18 home runs, while Crawford was surprisingly one of the league’s most effective hitters. With 30 doubles, 24 home runs, 11 stolen bases and a .298/.373/.522/.895 slash line, Crawford posted the best season of his career in his age-34 campaign, winning a Gold Glove and earning an All-Star selection while finishing fourth in NL MVP voting.
The Giants also featured an incredibly stable top four in their rotation with a remarkable bullpen, as none of the team’s six-most used relievers had an ERA above 2.92. Kevin Gausman served as the staff ace for the season, posting a 2.81 ERA with 227 strikeouts in 192 innings, good for a sixth place finish in NL Cy Young Award voting.
Despite winning 107 games, the Giants secured the NL West crown by just a single game, with the archrival Dodgers going 106-56 before outlasting the St. Louis Cardinals in the now-extinct one-and-done NL Wild Card Game.
The Giants ultimately fell in five games to the Dodgers in a back-and-forth NLDS that ended on a controversial check-swing call. Further adding to the mystique of this season, the Giants have failed to make the playoffs or even post a winning season since 2021, topping out at 81 wins in the four seasons since.
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