MLB playoffs 2026: Which teams are better than their records say?

The Cincinnati Reds didn’t make the playoffs, but they did lead baseball in at least one category: winning more games than was otherwise expected.

The Reds won 75 games this season, which is 9.8 games above their expected total, based on their Pythagorean expectation. The Pythagorean expectation is a model developed by sabermetrics pioneer Bill James that estimates the number of games a team should be expected to win based on their runs scored and runs allowed. Because a team scores and allows far more runs than it plays games, run totals can give a steadier picture of team strength.

USA TODAY computed the Pythagorean wins for all 30 MLB teams for the 2026 season and compared that result to each team’s actual wins to determine which teams over- and underperformed the most this year.

Following the Reds in beating their expectation are three teams that did make the playoffs: the Tampa Bay Rays, the San Diego Padres and the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Rays notably won the American League East by 4.5 games over the New York Yankees, who got just 66 games out of superstar Aaron Judge. If both teams had better matched their Pythagorean expectation, the Yankees would’ve won the division by more than five games — in reality, Tampa Bay beat its expectation by 7.8 games while New York fell 2.5 games shy.

MLB teams with the most wins above their expected total, 2026

On the opposite side of things, we can also look at the teams that didn’t reach expectations.

Leading that race is the Detroit Tigers, who sputtered to a 76-86 record, nine games out of the AL Central lead and eight out of a Wild Card spot. The Tigers missed their win expectation by 12.6 games, far more than anyone else. Had Detroit reached its expect wins total, it could be in the playoff discussion. The midseason trade of Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal played a role, but the Tigers had been underachieving even with the ace lefty.

The next underperformer is the Los Angeles Angels, one of two teams with 100 losses this season. The Angels finished 8.8 games below their expectation amid a change in ownership.

Fellow underperformers include the San Francisco Giants, the Colorado Rockies (the other 100-loss club) and the Chicago Cubs — who managed to still make the playoffs via a Wild Card despite underperforming by 5.9 games.

MLB teams with the most wins below their expected total, 2026

Does any of this matter in October? It turns out that the Pythagorean expectation has done narrowly better than straight win-loss records in terms of predicting postseason success, based on data USA TODAY analyzed from 2000 to 2025.

In the Wild Card round, which was added in 2012, the team with the better Pythagorean expectation won 55.9% of the time compared to the team with the better actual record, which won 44.8% of the time.

In the Division Series, the team with more expected wins won 58% of the time, while the team with the better record won 49.5% of the time. Meanwhile, in the League Championship Series, actual wins have done a better job at predicting the winner, 56.2% to 56.0%.

However, the biggest gap is in the World Series, where the team with the better Pythagorean expectation won at a 64% clip. Actual records do no better than a coin flip at predicting the winner of the World Series.

It is worth noting, though, that the World Series comparison is only 25 series’ worth of data, so it’s a less reliable result than the Division Series (100) or LCS (50).

Across all 209 series analyzed between 2000 and 2025, the team with the better expected record won 121, or 57.9%. Out of the 198 series with a difference in actual records, the better record won 100, or 50.5%.

Playoff series won by the favorite under each measure, by round, 2000-25

Among this year’s playoff teams, the Milwaukee Brewers posted the highest total in the National League at 102.5 expected wins. The Yankees reigned atop the AL, but were still below the Brewers, with 95.5 expected wins.

In the Wild Card round, there is one series where expected wins and actual records disagree. The Padres (91-71) hold a better record than the Cubs (89-73), while the Cubs have more expected wins (94.9 to 85.3).

There are also a couple of potential ALDS matchups with disagreements including the already discussed Rays and Yankees, while the Cleveland Guardians (85-77) could play the Chicago White Sox (84-78) — Chicago holds the expected wins edge 86.5 to 82.2 in that possible battle between AL Central foes.

Methodology: USA TODAY compiled each team’s wins, losses, runs scored and runs allowed from the official MLB website. Each team’s Pythagorean expectation was then calculated from that, using the formula used by Baseball Reference.

Additional notes:

The New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles only played 161 games this season after their Sept. 27 game was canceled due to inclement weather.
For the historical data, USA TODAY pulled regular-season run totals to compute Pythagorean win expectations and playoff results from the MLB Stats API from 2000 to 2025.
The 60-game 2020 season was excluded.