2026 MLB winners and losers: Pete Crow-Armstrong, surprise contenders, AL West and more

The 2026 MLB regular season is coming to a close. Races and playoff seeding are starting to get locked in place, and we’ve got a stellar postseason in store from the looks of things.

With just a handful of days left in the regular season and with 18 teams set to be done with baseball by the end of Sunday, it’s a great time for reflection, right?

The biggest winners and losers of the 2026 MLB season

With SeatGeek serving as the Official Ticket Marketplace of MLB, we’ve kept a close eye on all things baseball, so from players to managers to divisions to more, we’re going to declare winners and losers for the 2026 season. 

Winners: Surprise contenders

One of the things that makes sports great is parity. We love to see teams emerge as contenders after entering the season without much fanfare. That has especially been the case this year, with the Rays and Braves winning their respective divisions and the White Sox on the doorstep of clinching a postseason berth.

I broke down what went right for all three teams earlier this week for those wanting a more detailed look, but really, each team has made considerable strides after 2025. The Rays’ pitching has been great while the offense is potent, the Braves got healthy and are back to dominating on the hill and a young White Sox team that lost 100+ games each of the last three years has a dangerous, high-scoring and patient lineup that also makes a ton of contact. 

The Rays have the easiest World Series path of these three, but Atlanta has the tools to make some noise while the White Sox season, even if it ends early in October, has been a massive success. 

Losers: Last year’s ALCS teams 

The Blue Jays represented the American League in the World Series after taking down the Mariners in seven games in an epic ALCS, but neither side will come close to sniffing a World Series this year. 

Things went bad for both squads this season. Toronto had a lot of injuries – especially early – and the offense really took a turn for the worse, especially at home for star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Seattle also dealt with a lot of injuries, and seemingly every star hitter – Cal Raleigh, Josh Naylor, Julio Rodriguez – had a poor campaign. Raleigh is going to finish 2026 with a sub-.200 average and sub-.700 OPS after finishing second in MVP voting last year. 

Toronto’s pitching was actually pretty good, but the offense couldn’t keep up. Seattle’s pitching has fallen off quite a bit in the second half after being a strength for so many years. 

The Blue Jays should be equipped to be better in 2027 given what’s set to return, but the Mariners have a lot of work to do and have a lot of questions, namely whether any leadership roles will change and what the team will do if it loses Randy Arozarena as expected this offseason.

Winners: Second-year starting pitchers

Whether it’s baseball or another sport, we often hear about the Year 2 jump. That step forward from one’s rookie season to their second – and often first full – season is always important, and Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski and New York’s Cam Schlittler have been the two best pitchers in baseball after each debuted in 2025. 

These two will win their respective Cy Young Awards, and they’re both having seasons that make even the game’s best pitchers jealous. 

Schlittler has a sub-2 ERA and sub-1 WHIP and has anchored a Yankees rotation that’s the best in baseball. He’s been dominant as can be and consistent to boot, even while throwing fastballs nearly 90% of the time. Misiorowski’s numbers have been even better, and he’s doing things we’ve never seen before with his unreal fastball velocity, which he’s able to carry from start to start and deep into outings. 

These two will take home hardware this winter, and we’ll see them under the bright lights of October very soon. 

Loser: The Tigers’ season as a whole

The Tigers’ season has been weird. They have the fourth-best run differential in the American League and the best in the AL Central by far, but they’re set to finish under .500 and well behind the third AL Wild Card spot. 

A 6-22 month of May really sank the Tigers’ season, as even a 14-14 record would have them firmly in the playoff picture. Instead, they fell behind early and sold Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize. 

It’s a strange year that looks better under the hood than in the standings, and at least at the plate things look solid moving forward with presumptive Rookie of the Year Kevin McGonigle as well as Dillon Dingler and Riley Greene. On the mound, however, will likely be a different story as after Framber Valdez there are plenty of questions. 

Winners: Interim managers

Three managers were fired fairly early into the 2026 season, and really, all three interim skippers have done an admirable job.

Chad Tracy took over for Alex Cora in Boston after a 10-17 start, and the Red Sox have been one of baseball’s best and hottest teams since and are going to the postseason. The same happened in Philadelphia, where Don Mattingly took over for Rob Thomson after a 9-19 start and has Philly playoff bound. Heck, Andy Green has the Mets playing .500 ball since he took over for Carlos Mendoza, who was 34-47 this year. The Mets won’t make the playoffs, but there has been improvement.

Tracy had the interim tag removed this week, as did Green. Mattingly is in the running to be the long-term guy in Philadelphia, which also makes sense considering his son is the general manager there. 

These three have done great work this year, especially Tracy and Mattingly. As for Green, he’ll get his chance to run the show his way moving forward. 

Losers: My preseason Manager of the Year picks 

Let’s hop in the wayback machine for a second and go back to March. One SeatGeek blogger (I wonder who that is?) made his preseason picks for different awards, and he tabbed Seattle’s Dan Wilson and New York’s Carlos Mendoza to win the two Manager of the Year awards. OK, that writer was me, and yes, I have regrets. 

We talked about Mendoza a moment ago, and he was 13 games under .500 when the Mets gave him the boot this summer. Wilson has survived to this point, but reports suggest he will be let go this winter. That’s a big change considering Wilson, a Mariners team Hall of Famer, led Seattle to Game 7 of the ALCS in 2025. But the Mariners are the most disappointing team in the American League – if not all of baseball – in 2026, and it appears Wilson may be a casualty of falling short of lofty expectations. 

Now I was wrong on quite a few other preseason picks, but these two stand out. Ouch. 

Winner: Pete Crow-Armstrong

Even after a really, really good year in 2025, I was skeptical of Pete Crow-Armstrong. He felt streaky after a sub-.700 OPS second half, and he hit just .188 off lefties last year. I thought he was a really good player, but the word “star” getting thrown around made me uneasy. Well, he’s going to win MVP and is one steal from a 40-40 season.

PCA has had a monster season. His swing decisions are better, he’s making more contact, he’s hitting the ball harder, he’s swiping more bags, he’s walking a lot more and he’s still an absolute stud in center field. 

Crow-Armstrong is the epitome of power-speed in baseball, and he’s a true five-tool player right now. He’s flirting with 10 fWAR in one of the more well-rounded seasons we’ve seen from a position player over the last decade. He’s doing prime Mike Trout things, really. 

Even with Shohei Ohtani battling injury and whatnot, PCA is a deserving MVP candidate who is doing things others can only dream of on the diamond. 

Loser: Cal Raleigh

We mentioned “The Big Dumper” earlier, but it’s been a “Big Bummer” for Raleigh up in Seattle this year. The star catcher was coming off a 60-homer season, which was something we’ve never seen from a catcher or a switch-hitter. Expecting him to come close to that season again in 2026 was never fair, but Raleigh’s year has been a disaster.

He was terrible in the World Baseball Classic before starting the season ice cold and landing on the injured list with an oblique strain. He returned and struggled earlier this summer, and while he’s been much better in the second half and of late, he’s going to have less than 30 homers for the first time since 2022, his first full season, and he’s going to end the year hitting under .200 with a sub-.300 on-base percentage and an OPS under .700.

Raleigh’s struggles coincided with a nosedive offensively and on the mound for the Mariners, so he and the team will go back to the drawing board this offseason. 

Winner: The AL East

For a long time, the AL East was the best division in baseball. Back in the era with just one Wild Card team, New York and Boston almost annually made the postseason with each other. With expanded playoffs, the AL East has regularly sent multiple teams. The division sent three teams to October last year, and it will do so once again with the Rays clinching the AL East while the Yankees and Red Sox will take part in the Wild Card round.

New York has had a weird year with Aaron Judge missing most of the season, and he’s back on the injured list with a calf injury that puts his postseason status in doubt. But the Yankees have an elite pitching staff that is more than postseason worthy.

The Red Sox had a dreadful start to 2026, but the team caught fire this summer under Tracy, and their mix of reliable bats and nasty starting pitching make them a dangerous team in October.

As for those Rays, they’re back in the playoffs for the first time since 2023. Tampa Bay has a great balance to the team. The pitching is excellent top to bottom, the lineup has speed, power, patience and makes a ton of contact. The Rays will have home-field advantage in the American League, which is notable as they have the best home record in MLB this year. 

This is a division that’s used to being on top, and this year, they have the clear three best teams in the American League.

Losers: The AL West

The AL East is great! The AL West? Woof.

The division had a 90-game winner last year. This year? The winner may not even be .500. 

The AL West has to send someone to the playoffs, and both Texas and Houston are 78-79, with the Astros owning the tiebreaker. Both Houston and Texas are worse teams than last season, and each are benefiting from one of the worst division races in recent memory.

The AL West is the only division in baseball that doesn’t have a single team with a positive run differential. Texas is best at minus-37, and overall, the AL West is minus-465. No team has scored even 700 runs, which is also the only such case in baseball right now. Heck, the NL Central has two 800-run teams.

It’s rare to see a division this poor, but that’s just how it is this year. So naturally, the Rangers will be the most dangerous team in October.