MLB Playoff Predictions 2024: Rounding Up Experts’ Picks for World Series Bracket

The Major League Baseball postseason has become more difficult to predict under the current format.

Only one top-three seed made it to the World Series over the last two seasons. The wild-card round fueled the playoff push of three of the last four Fall Classic participants.

However, the 2024 postseason seems to be different because of the teams at the top of the regular-season standings.

The New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Guardians and Philadelphia Phillies are all well equipped to win a championship, but they all have to wait a week to play their first postseason game.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan believes one of those teams is the one to win the Fall Classic this October.

Passan picked the Phillies to defeat the Houston Astros in the World Series. That matchup would buck the trend from the last two years, but it would continue Houston’s success in the postseason.

The Astros made it to the World Series in 2021 and 2022. They lost to Atlanta in 2021 and beat the Phillies in 2022. They also advanced to the ALCS in 2023.

Bleacher Report’s Kerry Miller is on the same wavelength as Passan when it comes to the National League. He predicted the No. 1 and/or No. 2 seed would advance to the NLCS.

It’s a bold prediction based on the results of the last two seasons in the NL. The highest seed to reach the NLCS in the new format is No. 4.

The Dodgers and Phillies have been the class of the NL for most of the regular season. The Phillies have come close to winning the World Series in recent years, while the Dodgers now have Shohei Ohtani in the lineup to avoid a third straight early exit.

CBS Sports’ Mike Axisa predicted the first-round bye will “actually be a good thing” in his bold predictions for the postseason.

“The fact of the matter is this is only the third year of this postseason format. The previous two years aren’t nearly enough to say for certain that skipping a round hurts more than it helps,” Axisa wrote.

A two-year sample size is incredibly small and teams should, at least in theory, become smarter with how they manage the week-long rest ahead of the Saturday start to the ALDS and NLDS.

There is a lot of high-end talent on the four rosters of the teams with first-round byes, but only time will tell if they buck the trend or the wild-card teams continue to reign surpreme.