With the 2026 MLB postseason beginning on Tuesday, I take a look back at what I was the most wrong about with my preseason predictions.
The end of the 2026 MLB regular season is finally near, with just two of the 12 MLB playoff teams still undetermined entering play on the penultimate day of the regular season.
The focus has shifted to October for this year’s playoff teams, many of whom are trying to avenge their losses in recent years. While the Los Angeles Dodgers have a third consecutive World Series title in their sights, the 101-win Milwaukee Brewers and AL East champion Tampa Bay Rays are among the clubs hopeful that they can break up the Dodgers’ dominance.
Yet for many other teams, 2026 was a wildly disappointing campaign – whether that came by virtue of relentless injuries, as it was in the case of the Athletics, or star players underperforming well below expectations, a fate seen by the New York Mets, Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners.
I highlight those four teams as they are four of the clubs I predicted would make the postseason in 2026, the most conspicuous errors from my very wrong preseason predictions.
Now every year, there are things that happen over the course of the season that just about no one predicted. I, just like everyone else, did not think the Chicago White Sox would make it to the playoffs in 2026, nor did I anticipate the Detroit Tigers being as bad as they were – yet since just about everybody missed on those, I’m not including those as the predictions of mine that were uniquely bad.
I suppose I can’t look at my predictions as the biggest disaster of all-time, and predicting each team’s record in a 162-game season seems impossible for even the most dedicated of baseball dorks out there. Hell, if the Astros win their final two games of the season, I will have predicted their exact record from the beginning of the year at 81-81. Now did I think that could be a playoff team? Hell no!
I also could potentially hit the records for the Braves and Phillies, who I predicted would finish 94-68 and 89-73, respectively. With two games left, the two clubs stand at 93-67 and 87-73 – so maybe that can serve as a decent consolation prize.
Still, many of my predictions turned out to be an absolute trainwreck – here were the three that stuck out to me the most:
1. Thinking the Mets were a 99-win team
I know I’m not fully alone in buying the Mets as a competitive team in 2026. After an incredibly disappointing 83-79 finish to the 2025 campaign, Steve Cohen’s team was remarkably busy last offseason – parting ways with Pete Alonso and Edwin Díaz while trading away longtime fan favorite Brandon Nimmo in exchange for Marcus Semien.
The Mets also went out and signed one of the top free agents on the market in Bo Bichette to a massive deal while also picking up starter Freddy Peralta in a trade, appearing to have a much different, albeit still very competitive team to field in 2026.
However, just about nothing went to plan for the Mets in 2026. Injuries kept star players Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto off the field for good chunks of the season, while the former has been a mere shell of himself when he’s been active.
The Mets middle infield of Bichette and Semien, viewed by many to be one of the more solid offensive middle infield duos heading into the season, have combined for just 0.8 bWAR in 2026 – with both players clocking in as below-average hitters.
While the Mets have had several brightspots in 2026, including the emergence of Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing as well as a stellar rookie campaign from starter Nolan McLean, the fact remains that this is a top-dollar team that has put up consistently mediocre results for well over a year now.
Injuries only tell some of the story with the Mets, and for a team that doesn’t have the player development infrastructure of fellow big-market teams like the Dodgers and crosstown Yankees, I’m not sure if the Mets can buy their way back to the playoffs moving forward.
2. Buying the hype on the Seattle Mariners
Maybe it’s been a consistent case of wishful thinking, but I’ve always been a believer in this Seattle Mariners core – especially after they fell just one game short of the World Series in 2025 with an exceptionally well-balanced team that appeared poised to dominate the AL West in the immediate future.
Yet in typical Seattle Mariners fashion, they followed up what was technically their most successful campaign in franchise history with an absolute dud – sitting at a 74-86 record with just two games left to play after having the Fall Classic at their fingertips a year ago.
The most obvious place where things went wrong in Seattle begins and ends with Cal Raleigh, who had perhaps the most precipitous year-to-year drop-off we will ever see for a star player. After setting the sports world on fire with a 60-homer season in 2025 that made him the first catcher to ever reach the mark, Raleigh has been much more of a Big Slumper than a Big Dumper in 2026.
Despite finding a bit of a groove late in the season, Raleigh’s end-of-season numbers will still be quite ghastly – guaranteed to finish with a batting average well below .200 while seeing his OPS drop nearly 300 points. For a lineup that had such a formidable juggernaut in Raleigh last year, he spent most of 2026 being an easy out.
As for the rest of the team, things didn’t go particularly well for many other Mariners either. While Randy Arozarena has turned in a career-year with his best offensive season yet, he’s had very little in the way of help – Julio Rodríguez, who I predicted would win the AL MVP, has been a 3.1 WAR player in 2026 with an unremarkable 107 OPS+.
Josh Naylor, a trade deadline pickup in 2025 who was signed to a long-term deal in the offseason, has also been quite disappointing this year – posting just 0.2 WAR with a 96 OPS+, coming from a hitter who is supposed to be one of the most dangerous hitters in the lineup.
Furthermore, what was an excellent pitching staff in 2025 saw some very noticeable regression this season – none more notable than Andrés Muñoz, who has been a replacement-level closer after two consecutive All-Star seasons that saw Muñoz compile a 1.92 ERA in 124 outings.
Then, there’s a juggernaut of a starting rotation that turned out to be…just okay. George Kirby, Bryan Woo and Bryce Miller all finished the season with an ERA hovering around 4, while Logan Gilbert, the de facto staff ace and my preseason pick for the AL Cy Young, posted 3.0 WAR and a 3.81 ERA in 31 starts.
This season was a nightmare for the Mariners, and it was solely at the hands of underperforming players – I’m not sure how this gets fixed moving forward.
3. Slept on the fucking Brewers – again
I think it’s funny that I somehow convince myself every year that the Brewers will fall out of the mix – likely a case of wishful thinking in the same way that I tell myself the Mariners will be a serious contender before each season begins.
Under the leadership of Pat Murphy and armed with perhaps the best player development in the league, the Brewers have consistently been able to weather the losses of major contributors via trade – being completely unfazed by the subtractions of Freddy Peralta and Chad Durbin as the team’s core continued to take massive steps forward.
While the Brewers are certainly not a team that will overwhelm you with power, they still possess plenty of slug via extra-base hits, hurling into the playoffs as a contact-heavy team with tough outs throughout the lineup and a pitching staff that has been absolute nails all season.
If those characteristics of a winning team sound somewhat familiar, it’s because they should be – as this is awfully similar to the blueprint of the 2014 and 2015 Kansas City Royals, who fell a game short of the championship in the former season before winning it all in the latter.
I see a lot of those Royals in this Brewers team, and as a lifelong Brewers hater, it truly pains me to say that. While hitters like Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alex Gordon and Lorenzo Cain were far from the most intimidating hitters in the league at the time, they were all capable of getting the big hit (or home run) and were all fairly tough to retire.
The Brewers feel the same this year, armed with tough outs like Jackson Chourio, Brice Turang, Jake Bauers and William Contreras – all of whom protect one of the league’s finest pitching staffs headlined by phenom Jacob Misiorowski.
I do think, unfortunately for myself in a year that I already had to stomach a New York Knicks championship in, that this is the year for the Milwaukee Brewers. Yet with that said, there are still things that can go awry for the club, particularly their relatively inexperienced rotation and dealing with the pressure of being a true championship favorite.
All I know is I wanted this team to finish 85-77, and they look nothing like it.
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