The MLB playoffs field is set after the regular season concluded on Sunday, and the postseason begins on Tuesday with the Wild Card Round. The march to the 2026 World Series is about to begin. But which teams should fans have their eyes on when they make their World Series futures picks?
Trade on the World Series and get a $55 trading bonus with the Kalshi promo code CBSSPORTS55: We'll take a look at the latest World Series odds at DraftKings Sportsbook and break down which teams offer potential MLB betting value, as well as which teams may be best avoided. For more MLB postseason picks, check out SportsLine for expert bets and forecasts from the SportsLine Projection Model, which simulates every MLB game 10,000 times. Bet on MLB and more at DraftKings, where new users get $150 in bonuses after spending $5: The Dodgers have won two straight championships and enter the playoffs as the favorites to win a third.
Shohei Ohtani has looked noticeably human this year thanks to some nagging injuries that have forced him to once again stick to only hitting. Big-ticket free agent reliever Edwin Diaz has been unreliable. Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts aren't getting any younger.
But let's be real -- the Dodgers enter the playoffs with the MLB's best pitching staff by fWAR and second best position player group. They can roll out Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tarik Skubal, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell to start playoff games. This is a team built to win in October.
Some of L.A.'s best players (Glasnow and Snell, for example) need only be healthy and available for the playoffs to bring home a ring. The Dodgers are not immortal -- just ask the Toronto Blue Jays how perilously close they got to a ring -- but they are deserving favorites. The Rays have true star power in Junior Caminero and good supplementary offensive pieces around him.
But can they get enough outs to do the job? Past Rays teams were built around run prevention, but Tampa Bay has gotten surprisingly medicore production from its bullpen and merely decent pitching from the starting rotation. A recent return to form from Freddy Peralta may be the key.
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