Why every remaining MLB team can win the World Series — and Passan’s predictions

After six months and 162 games — including one bonus doubleheader on Monday, with two playoff spots still at stake — Major League Baseball will enter its postseason on Tuesday with no clear favorite to win the World Series.

For a sport forever endeavoring to find on-field parity amid financial disparity, the 2024 MLB season offered a near-perfect example of what baseball can do: field a postseason with markets big (Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and possibly the New York Mets) and small (Kansas City Royals and Milwaukee Brewers), with payrolls high (Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros) and low (Cleveland Guardians, Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers).

The expansion of the MLB playoffs to 12 teams did nothing to eliminate the excitement from the regular season this year. It also, as evidenced by the 90-win Texas Rangers last season beating the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks for the World Series title, enriched the opportunity for teams that didn’t excel quite as much over the slog of a full season. In baseball, anyone can win a championship.

Here, then, is the case for every remaining team, listed in ascending order of regular-season winning percentage, including all three teams still battling for the final NL playoff spots. This is Why Your Team Can Win the World Series — followed by my 2024 World Series prediction, forecasting which of the remaining teams actually will win it.

Watch: Mets-Braves doubleheader, starting Mon. at 1 p.m. ET on ESPN2

Why the Detroit Tigers can win the World Series

The Tigers have been winning everything for almost two months. On Aug. 10, they were 55-63, and they had traded Jack Flaherty to the Dodgers, and yet everything wasn’t exactly gloomy. They had managed to stay afloat, and now was time to summon the kids. And as Detroit got younger — Parker Meadows in center and Trey Sweeney at shortstop and even Jackson Jobe, the best pitching prospect in baseball, as a late-season bullpen addition — at the big league level, something happened: They got better, too.

Beyond ace Tarik Skubal — who might be the likeliest candidate to single-handedly win a game this postseason, ahead of even Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani — the Tigers are a whole greater than the sum of their parts. Riley Greene is an All-Star caliber left fielder, and flanking him on the other side of Meadows is Kerry Carpenter, the best hitter of the bunch. Their infield makes the necessary plays and hits enough, and their bullpen is ridiculous, a testament to the pitching program developed in Scott Harris’ tenure as Detroit’s president of baseball operations. To those who can’t make sense of how this happened: Join the club. End-of-season leaps of this magnitude are rare gems, and Detroit deserves a winner.

Why the Kansas City Royals can win the World Series

Kansas City stumbled into the postseason, losing seven consecutive games twice in the past five weeks. Still, it wasn’t enough to spoil the Royals’ first playoff experience since winning the World Series in 2015. The Royals’ pitching, as it has all year, concluded the season projecting strength — and Minnesota blowing its lead in the wild-card race allowed Kansas City to waste neither Cole Ragans nor Seth Lugo before its playoff series.

The Royals getting to start those two in any order is deeply disadvantageous for the Orioles. Ragans has pitched like an ace this season, and Lugo has been every bit as good. And out of nowhere, the Royals’ bullpen has been among the game’s best. In the past two weeks, Kansas City sports the second-best reliever ERA at 1.42. The Royals will need all the zeroes they can muster. Beyond Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Perez, the Royals’ offense is iffy, and the likelihood of Kansas City making a run deep into the playoffs will rely on some of the supporting cast learning how not to be iffy. Maybe it’s Tommy Pham or Yuli Gurriel, guys who have been there. Or, if they’re lucky, maybe Vinnie Pasquantino, who’s desperately trying to make his way back from a broken thumb and sounds optimistic about it happening. However far the Royals go, it’s a stark reminder: Invest money like owner John Sherman did, and very good things can happen.

Why the Houston Astros can win the World Series:

Since June 1, they’ve got the best record in the AL. No team in the league has a better run differential. The big fear: That slugger Yordan Alvarez won’t be ready for Houston’s wild card series against the Tigers. A sprain in Alvarez’s knee wiped out the final week of his season, and he could be the biggest absence of the wild card round. Alvarez, one of baseball’s best hitters, is imperative to Houston’s chances. With Kyle Tucker finally back (and raking, of course), their offense should’ve been about as good as it’s going to get. While even without Alvarez the core of the lineup — Jose Altuve, Tucker, Alex Bregman, Yainer Diaz, Jeremy Pena — is solid, the bottom-third has been something of an issue all season long.

When you’ve got pitching like the Astros, though, lineup depth is not of the utmost importance. Framber Valdez is putting up ace-like numbers again. Hunter Brown has the fifth-best ERA in baseball since June 1, one spot ahead of Valdez. The Astros finally lost a game Yusei Kikuchi started after nine consecutive post-trade deadline wins. Ronel Blanco‘s April no-hitter was more a sign of things to come than a fluke. Spencer Arrighetti would start on almost every other playoff team and is a depth option here. Perhaps the best way to sum up why so many think the Astros are going to their eighth consecutive ALCS — and perhaps farther? Their pitching is so deep future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander might not have a spot on their playoff roster.

Why the Arizona Diamondbacks can win the World Series

Even with their end-of-season collapse, the Diamondbacks are an absolute treat to watch. For almost the entirety of the season, as quietly as possible, they’ve had the game’s best offense. They have scored the most runs in baseball, and it’s not particularly close. Behind the Diamondbacks’ 886 (5.5 runs per game) are the Dodgers (842) and Yankees (809). Arizona hit home runs (211, fourth in MLB), has a high batting average (.263, tied with the Padres for best in the majors), takes walks (9.1%, fifth), doesn’t strike out (20.2%, fifth) and is a middle-of-the-pack stolen-base team but runs the bases well. That’s as well-rounded an offense as you’re going to find.

All that’s standing between the Diamondbacks and the World Series title that eluded them last season, then, are arms. Arizona has allowed 781 runs, the fourth most in baseball. The team has the very odd combination of the second-worst average on balls in play in MLB (.309) and well-above-average defense — which suggests that the balls are falling less on account of the fielding and more having to do with bad luck. And we’ve seen a very similar Diamondbacks staff — Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Brandon Pfaadt — carve through the playoffs. Get them rolling, add in A.J. Puk and Justin Martinez out of the bullpen and the Diamondbacks very well could have enough arms to make this October even better than last.

Why the New York Mets can win the World Series

Because this is a team of … no, Passan, don’t say that. The Grimace thing was funny, and the OMG thing is a great stroke of luck because it brought the team together, and the Mets going a major-league-best 19-6 after WWE announcer Michael Cole, a die-hard fan, declared them dead on a “Baseball Tonight” podcast episode I guest-hosted is just so them. You think they’re done? Come on. These Mets don’t stay down. They amaze and frustrate with no warning. This week has been seemingly disaster after distaster, and yet they find themselves here, with an opportunity.

The offense, headlined by Francisco Lindor and Mark Vientos and Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo goes so deep. Francisco Alvarez and Jose Iglesias and Jesse Winker and J.D. Martinez and Harrison Bader and Tyrone Taylor and Starling Marte and Luisangel Acuna and literally every Met can hit and hit for power. And talk about impressive: The Mets’ starting pitching — led by Luis Severino, David Peterson, Sean Manaea and Jose Quintana — has the second best ERA in the NL since June 3 at 3.66. A middle-of-the-road bullpen and iffy defense prevent the Mets from machine status, but they certainly have amped up excitement with a run that makes them look much more dangerous than the last wild card typically does.

Why the Atlanta Braves can win the World Series

For those who haven’t noticed, the Braves’ starting pitching has been exceptional. They have struck out hitters at the highest rate and allowed home runs at the lowest, a nifty trick, and they’ve done so without Spencer Strider, who was supposed to be their best starter. That’s the thing about these Braves, though. They’re a giant mess of supposed to. Ronald Acuna Jr. was supposed to follow his 40/70 season with a triumphant encore. A torn knee killed that idea. Austin Riley was supposed to make up for Acuna’s loss. Nope. He got hurt, too. On and on it goes, and if there’s an answer as to why the Braves can win, it’s simple: Because they have.

Certainly a Chris Sale–Max Fried–Spencer Schwellenbach rotation is formidable. They’ve also got Charlie Morton and a returning Reynaldo Lopez. So the starting pitching is there. And Atlanta’s bullpen has been generally filthy all year long, also a strength. The Braves, then, will go only as far as their offense. Matt Olson has been exceptional all month. Michael Harris has heated up, Jorge Soler is playing well, Marcell Ozuna keeps hitting and even Ramon Laureano has gotten into a rhythm. If the Braves make it after this injury-pocked mess of a season, they’ll have done what they were supposed to.

Why the Baltimore Orioles can win the World Series

Once upon a time this season, the Baltimore Orioles looked like a juggernaut primed to run roughshod through the rest of the AL. Gunnar Henderson was outplaying Bobby Witt Jr., Adley Rutschman and Jordan Westburg and Colton Cowser and Ryan Mountcastle were mashing. At that point, Anthony Santander had only seven home runs in 40 games — and now he has put together an all-time power season for a switch hitter, belting 44 home runs. Corbin Burnes was dealing and Grayson Rodriguez was back and so were Kyle Bradish and John Means, and it felt like something different was happening than last season, when 101 wins melted into a three-game division-series sweep by Texas.

The Orioles we’ve seen for the past three months are closer to that October mess than 101 wins. Since July 7, just before the All-Star break, Baltimore was 29-37 before ending the season with a sweep of the sputtering Twins. Rutschman hit .196/.277/.281 in that stretch. Baltimore’s best batter, by weighted on-base average, has been third baseman Ramon Urias, who has missed almost all of September. Rodriguez, Bradish and Means got hurt and aren’t on the roster. That’s simply not going to cut it. The Orioles having Burnes for Game 1 stakes them a massive opportunity to win every series, and Zach Eflin is a very strong 2. The bats need to outslug the opponents, though, and by a considerable margin, because Baltimore’s weakness in the bullpen is something opponents will try to exploit. The Orioles can be good. They have been good. They know what good looks like. Sometimes you just have to play that way to feel that way, and they haven’t.

Why the Cleveland Guardians can win the World Series

The Guardians’ bullpen has defied concerns about overuse all season, and in September it put together its best month yet, which is saying something seeing as in every month except August, the Guardians’ relief ERA was 2.67 or lower. In September: a 1.38 ERA, just a 15 earned runs in 98 innings pitched. Emmanuel Clase has been the best reliever in MLB this year and deserves down-the-ballot Cy Young votes, and he hasn’t allowed a run this month. Neither have Eli Morgan, Erik Sabrowski and Andrew Walters. And Cade Smith, Hunter Gaddis and Tim Herrin all have ERAs 1.00 or below. Cleveland’s relievers are a true weapon.

Which the Guardians need with iffy starting pitching and a lineup that, though better this year, has been hit-or-miss in terms of consistency. Lane Thomas and Kyle Manzardo have helped make up for Josh Naylor‘s and Steven Kwan‘s offense falling off in September — and if the four of them can get going around Jose Ramirez being his typically excellent self, Cleveland will have the thump to get ahead and let first-year manager Stephen Vogt continue working his bullpen magic.

Why the Milwaukee Brewers can win the World Series

For all of the rightful love San Diego’s bullpen receives, Milwaukee’s has been superior in every way this month. More strikeouts. Fewer walks and homers. Lower ERA. Closer Devin Williams looks better than he has in years. Joel Payamps is dealing. Aaron Ashby has been brilliant. It’s a bunch of mid-to-high-90s fastballs combined with swing-and-miss off-speed stuff. And Pat Murphy, the Brewers’ first-year manager who’s the favorite to win NL Manager of the Year, has handled them as deftly as his predecessor, Craig Counsell, whose Cubs finished 10 games behind of the Brewers.

This team might not enter the postseason with as much hype as the other NL division leaders, but here’s the thing: Milwaukee is really good. William Contreras is the best-hitting catcher in baseball. Willy Adames is the 12th shortstop ever to hit 30 home runs and drive in 100 runs in a season. And Jackson Chourio — all of 20, signed for the next decade, a franchise-player-in-the-making — is ready to take his second-half slash line of .309/.354/.556 into the postseason. They catch the ball very well. Their 217 stolen bases is the most of all playoff teams. The Brewers’ starting pitching, for so long a defining element of their success, is not loaded with names but is quietly effective. Freddy Peralta still punches out batters galore, and Tobias Myers is one of the great stories of the 2024 season — and that could be enough to sustain a real run.

Why the San Diego Padres can win the World Series

The Padres’ philosophy of loading up on stars has produced its finest group yet, and certainly its most equipped to win a World Series. San Diego is going to be a trendy pick because of its bullpen, which is as nasty as general manager A.J. Preller envisioned when he mortgaged a significant chunk of his farm system to acquire right-handers Jason Adam and Bryan Hoeing and left-hander Tanner Scott at the trade deadline. Combine them with Jeremiah Estrada, Adrian Morejon, Yuki Matsui and closer Robert Suarez and it is the nastiest bullpen in baseball. Since the deadline, Padres relievers have the highest K-BB% in the league as well as the lowest ERA in a number of predictive categories, including FIP and SIERA.

The big names are at the plate. Jackson Merrill is an instant star; Fernando Tatis Jr. is playing like one again; Jurickson Profar has joined him there; Luis Arraez added another low-strikeout element to the party; Manny Machado is finished one long ball shy of reaching 30 home runs and 100 RBIs for the second time in three years; and they’ve got an awesome bench with Donovan Solano and David Peralta. But there is starting pitching, too: Dylan Cease has thrown like an ace in his first season with the Padres, and Michael King is not far behind. Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish are back. This is a deep, well-rounded unit that San Diego is dying to cheer to the city’s first World Series since 1998.

Why the New York Yankees can win the World Series

Aaron Judge hits second and Juan Soto hits third. Perhaps it’s overly simplistic to distill the Yankees’ fortunes to two players on a 26-man roster, but it’s the truth: If Judge and Soto are not performing like two of the best hitters on the planet, the Yankees don’t have the surrounding talent to beat the top teams. It’s a good thing, then, that Judge is having the best year of his career — yes, better than his 62-homer season in 2022 — and Soto the same. They are the best duo this century, and Soto’s impending free agency will be looming over every moment this October. Getting production from any other bat — Jazz Chisholm Jr., Gleyber Torres, Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe, Jasson Dominguez, someone, anyone — would certainly alleviate matters for Judge and Soto.

Where else can they take advantage? Almost all the Yankees’ starters have pitched quite well over the past six weeks — and the bullpen, with Clay Holmes demoted from the closer’s role, has tightened up, too. Luke Weaver and Ian Hamilton in particular look excellent; Tim Hill and Tim Mayza have been effective left-handed options; and it’s worth remembering: The Rangers won last year relying on Jose Leclerc and Josh Sborz, so name-brand bullpens are not necessities for rings.

Why the Philadelphia Phillies can win the World Series

They’ve got the talent, the experience, the urgency and the look. They’ve got the ace and an excellent supporting crew. They’ve got the masher at the top of the order, the star shortstop after him and the two-time MVP up next. They’ve got four genuine options to close out games — maybe even five or six, just on stuff alone. The question here might be the wrong one. Why can the Phillies win the World Series? Because they’re the best team in the field. Because they finished the regular season with the second-best record after 162 games but have fewer lingering questions than the team ahead of them. Because the most electric ballpark in America is back for another October. And as others stake a claim — we see you, Petco Park, and we hear you, Citi Field — Citizens Bank Park endeavors to hold its place as a horror show to opposing baseball teams.

So, why can’t they? Phillies pitchers have gotten homer-happy at times this season. They’re good with the routine defensive play but not the spectacular. Seven playoff teams — including three from the NL West — have better wRC+ than the Phillies. Compared with the rest of the teams, this is nitpicking. The Phillies are a very well-built team. Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sanchez, Aaron Nola, Ranger Suarez, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Bryce Harper, Carlos Estevez, Orion Kerkering, Jeff Hoffman, Matt Strahm. There’s a reason the Phillies are tough to beat. The talent keeps coming.

Why the Los Angeles Dodgers can win the World Series

The variations of Shohei Ohtani help define his career. There was Two-Way Ohtani, WBC Ohtani, DH-Only Ohtani. Finally, after seven years of waiting, baseball gets to experience Playoff Ohtani. The weight on him will exceed that on any other player in recent memory, and that is fine because Ohtani bears weight like an Olympic lifter. He didn’t just reach the 50-home-run, 50-stolen-base threshold that, at the beginning of the season, never crossed anyone’s mind. He obliterated it, hitting 54 homers and swiping 59 bases. A highly motivated Ohtani is the most dangerous kind, and if the postseason brings out in him what the WBC did, the Dodgers could have a long ride, even with questions about their pitching.

It’s true. They don’t have anywhere close to as much starting pitching depth as they did earlier this season. But Yoshinobu Yamamoto is back, and he is capable of shutting down good offenses. And Jack Flaherty has been excellent all season and saved the Dodgers’ rotation. And Landon Knack is solid, giving up two or fewer runs in 10 of 14 appearances. They’ve always got at least a couple of relievers who peak around postseason time and fall into familiar late-inning roles. As long as Ohtani hits and Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman don’t have a repeat of last postseason, they’re as dangerous as anyone.

Predictions

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Passan’s pick for best team in MLB

Jeff Passan joins “The Pat McAfee Show” to talk baseball and the upcoming MLB playoffs.

Landing in a place where I picked the Houston Astros despite Yordan Alvarez’s uncertainty took time, and yet it’s where I kept returning, because even without him, the Astros’ offense has been among the best in baseball. This is less about the Astros, though, and more about the American League being a collective of teams with deep weaknesses.

The Phillies, meanwhile, roll into October not with the best record in the league but with experience and the sort of formula that can really play en route to a championship. Starting pitching, bullpen excellence, lineup depth. Other teams check plenty of those boxes, but no other quite as frequently as Philadelphia.

Finally, after two years of misses, it’s the Phillies’ turn to win their first ring since 2008.

Passan’s World Series prediction: Phillies over Astros