2026 MLB season superlatives: Best stories, biggest surprises and more

The 2026 MLB season is starting to wind down with the playoff picture getting more and more clear by the day. We have a good idea of which teams will be playing in October and which teams will be watching from their couches. As such, this time of year is a good time for reflection.

What went right? What went wrong? What came out of nowhere? This season’s been an eventful one, so there’s a lot to digest. 

2026 MLB season superlatives

With SeatGeek serving as the Official Ticket Marketplace of MLB, we’ve been following this season very closely when it comes to teams and players alike. So with just a few weeks left, we’re going to look back on the 2026 campaign and hand out 10 superlatives. 

Best story (team): White Sox

We’ll start with some low-hanging fruit here. No one outside of Chicago thought the White Sox would be a playoff contender this year, let alone be competing for the AL Central crown and a first-round playoff bye. 

Basically everything has gone right for the White Sox this year. They’ve gotten breakout seasons from a few different starting pitchers, the bullpen has overperformed relative to expectations and a young offensive core has really stepped up with Colson Montgomery, Miguel Vargas and Munetaka Murakami anchoring a dangerous lineup. Plus, the Guardians and Tigers have each taken steps back.

I’m a little skeptical about Chicago’s chances of getting past the AL East trio of Tampa Bay, New York and Boston in an extended series, but that we’re even talking about the White Sox in this light is pretty remarkable. I mean, they lost 100+ games each of the last three years!

Best story (player): Brewers RHP Jacob Misiorowski

The 2026 season has been “The Year of The Miz.” The tall and lanky right-hander has been otherworldly this season. He burst onto the scene last year as a rookie putting up insane velocity numbers, but he had a 4.36 ERA, walked 4.2 batters per nine innings and only tallied 66 regular-season innings. What would the encore be like? 

Well, how about not just Cy Young worthy, but extraordinary? Misirowski has a sub-2 ERA, a minuscule 0.800 WHIP, is striking out 13.2 batters per nine, has cut his walk rate down to 2.3 per nine and is giving up just 4.9 hits per nine. Add in that he has topped out at 104.5 mph and has tossed over 1,000 pitches of 100+ mph and it’s safe to say we’ve never seen anything like this.

For as amazing as Paul Skenes was the last two years, Misiorowski at his peak is a different animal. I was skeptical he could keep this up for a full season, but the youngster has made 27 starts, has pitched less than five innings just twice and has given up more than three runs in only two starts. It’s a pretty incredible season we’re witnessing, and there are a lot of unique factors at play with what Misiorowski has done. 

Best single-game performance: Jacob Misiorowski vs. Phillies

Sticking with Misirowski, who is on track to win the NL Cy Young Award thanks to his incredible season thus far, his single best act came against one of the better teams and lineups in baseball – the Phillies. 

On June 12, the Brewers welcomed the Phillies to town, and Misiorowski put together one of the best performances you will ever see from a pitcher. He threw a complete game shutout, allowing one hit in the process. Misirowski didn’t walk or hit a single batter, and he struck out 15 batters. Add in that he needed just 95 pitches to do so and he negated the lone baserunner with a double play to face the minimum of 27 batters and yeah, it’s pretty insane. 

Misiorowski also hit 104.5 mph with his fastball in this outing – the fastest pitch ever tracked for a starting pitcher. That was one of a whopping 58 fastballs of at least 100 mph that The Miz threw in this outing. It was like playing a video game on easy mode, and he did so against one of baseball’s best lineups. No other single-game performance this year – pitching or hitting – comes close. 

Best surprises (team): Boston and Philadelphia’s turnarounds under interim managers

Firing your manager early in the season can go one of two ways. First, you can throw your hands up and say, “Well, there’s always next year.” Or, it can jumpstart your team. That’s been the case in Boston and Philadelphia.

Both the Red Sox and Phillies fired their managers – Alex Cora and Rob Thompson, respectively – after slow starts to the year. The Phillies quickly rebounded under Don Mattingly, and they’re now one of the top teams in the National League and are 73-45 under Donnie Baseball this season. It took a bit for Boston to get going under Chad Tracy, but the results have been stellar. The Red Sox are 70-50 under Tracy and will almost certainly wind up with the No. 2 Wild Card spot in the American League. 

The Phillies’ turnaround wasn’t totally unexpected given the high-end veteran talent on the roster and the fact that they played great under Thompson, an interim manager, in 2022 and actually reached the World Series. For the Red Sox, they took a bit to gel, but thanks to elite pitching and a blistering offense, Boston went 21-4 in July and really hasn’t looked back.

Best surprise (player): Yankees RHP Cam Schlittler

We talked about the likely NL Cy Young winner in Misiorowski, but don’t forget that Schlittler is another player taking a massive jump Year 1 to Year 2, and he’s the favorite to win the award in the American League. 

What’s interesting here is Schlittler had better numbers as a rookie than Misiorowski did, pitching to a sub-3 ERA across 14 starts. But Misiorowski’s electric heater and prospect pedigree led to him being hyped up heading into 2026 while Schlittler was more of an afterthought outside of the Bronx. But the Yankees’ righty has been unreal this season, pitching to a 2.01 ERA with an 11.1 K/9 and a sub-1 WHIP. Schlittler has been reliable and durable, and his emergence was especially important early in 2026 when the Yankees were without Gerrit Cole and other top starters. 

Now, Schlittler is the best pitcher in the American League, and he’s a major reason why New York has the best team ERA in the sport. Schlittler, Cole and Max Fried make up a dynamic trio that opposing teams will have a very tough time with this October. 

Biggest disappointment (team): Mets and Mariners

We’ll do one for each league here, and to me, the answers are simple. 

For New York, the team had a very busy offseason adding notable players like Bo Bichette and Freddy Peralta to the mix in what was supposed to be a playoff-caliber season. Instead, the team wound up struggling out of the gate with nearly every player having a down year outside of Juan Soto. 

The result was Carlos Mendoza getting fired, the Mets selling at the deadline and competing for last place in the NL East. Losing Pete Alonso was always going to be tough, but the Mets had the overall talent to make a run. That they stumbled that hard that fast was a bit surprising, and where they go from here will be very interesting to watch. 

In the American League, the Tigers are also worthy of mentioning here as a dreadful month of May led to the team trading Tarik Skubal to Los Angeles rather than contending in the AL Central, but the Mariners are the most disappointing team in the circuit, no question. After being less than nine outs from reaching the World Series last year, everything seemed to go wrong. 

The lineup cratered with the team’s biggest stars all scuffling, the once elite rotation has shown cracks in the armor down the stretch and the bullpen wasn’t the same strength it used to be. What makes it tougher to swallow for Seattle fans is that this is an incredibly easy year to make the postseason. The AL West is the worst division in baseball by far, and the third Wild Card spot is also a very manageable spot to nab. Winning 84+ games would likely secure the Mariners a playoff spot. But Seattle’s lineup fell off a cliff in the summer and the pitching followed suit in August. The Mariners are getting youngsters like Lazaro Montes more playing time in September, as Seattle has to effectively win out to have any sort of shot, and that’s not going to happen. 

Biggest disappointment (player): Mariners C Cal Raleigh

Raleigh’s 2026 season has been very strange. He struggled in the World Baseball Classic, got off to a dreadful start, got hurt and then played poorly upon his return. Injuries derailing seasons is nothing new, but Raleigh is likely going to finish 2026 hitting under .200 with an OPS under .700. He was never going to replicate the 60-homer season from a year ago, but that kind of drop off – injuries playing a role or not – is tough to swallow.  

It is worth noting that he’s hit much better of late, compiling an OPS over 1.000 over the last month, and Raleigh has eclipsed 20 homers on the year. But when you hit 60 homers and finish second in MVP voting and then put up these kinds of numbers, you’re going to be heavily scrutinized. 

Best offseason signing: Rays SP Nick Martinez

Dylan Cease going to Toronto is probably the correct answer here given he’s likely going to finish second in AL Cy Young voting and has been awesome all year long, but he signed a seven-year, $210 million deal this offseason. He was supposed to be excellent. 

On the other hand, the Rays’ signing of Martinez for one year and $13 million with a mutual option for 2027 has been the best bargain signing of any team in baseball. The veteran right-hander has been a solid pitcher for the majority of his career, but he’s bounced between teams and between the rotation and bullpen in recent years. This came after having to go to Japan after the start of his MLB career didn’t go as expected. 

But Martinez, now 36, has had a career year for the AL East leaders. He made his first All-Star team, has a 3.04 ERA, 3.4 bWAR and has pitched 160 innings across 27 starts. Martinez is a throwback of sorts as he pitches to contact and has just 95 strikeouts on the year, but he’s been mighty effective for the Rays. Few pitchers pound the zone and limit hard contact like Martinez does, and his changeup has been one of the best secondary offerings in baseball this season. 

Martinez, Shane McClanahan and Drew Rasmussen make up a very nice rotation trio, and whichever team draws the Rays in the postseason is going to have their hands full when it comes to generating offense.

Worst offseason signing: Pirates OF/DH Marcell Ozuna

Not every big-time acquisition hits the ground running. There were a few players in contention here, like the Mets’ Jorge Polanco and even Bo Bichette, Seattle’s addition of Rob Refsnyder and Kansas City adding lefty reliever Matt Strahm. But we’ll roll with Ozuna going to the Pirates here. 

The veteran outfielder and DH was fourth in MVP voting in 2024, which was the second of two straight .900+ OPS seasons. His .756 OPS last year was above average, and he hit 21 homers and drove in 68 runs. But Ozuna’s time in Pittsburgh was a total flop, as he hit .203 with a .612 OPS while striking out on average at least once per game. Ozuna was a weak point of a Pirates lineup that has been surprisingly good this year. He got released last month, ending his time with the Pirates and dashing any hope of his mutual option for 2027 getting picked up. Ozuna remains a free agent, and as he’s about to turn 36, it remains to be seen if he gets another chance at the MLB level.

Team under the most pressure in playoffs: Milwaukee Brewers

I think the two easiest answers here are the Dodgers as they vie for a fabled 3-peat, and the Yankees as they have arguably baseball’s best pitching staff and just got Aaron Judge back. But I’ll roll with the Brewers for this topic.

Milwaukee has been a great team for a while now, and the Brewers have been excellent under Pat Murphy, winning each of the last two NL Central titles, likely winning a third here, and being in contention to win 100 games in 2026. That’s all well and good, but the Brewers haven’t been competitive enough in the postseason under Murphy at this point in time. 

Milwaukee fell to New York in the Wild Card Round in 2024 and got swept in the NLCS by the Dodgers last year, scoring a whopping four runs in the process. It’s clear the Brewers have a recipe for stacking up wins in the regular season, but that hasn’t amounted to as much postseason success as you’d expect. 

With the Brewers almost certainly getting a first-round bye and potentially home-field advantage in the National League, Murphy and Co. are under a lot of pressure to have their style of baseball translate to October.