MLB insiders predict the playoffs: Bold takes, dangerous teams and breakout stars

With little than a week remaining until the commencement of the 2025 MLB playoffs, our shot insiders are acceptable to interruption down the biggest questions, latest quality and notable October buzz crossed the manufacture -- adjacent earlier the last 12-team postseason tract is set.

What is the boldest prediction we've heard from an MLB exec? How assured -- oregon acrophobic -- should fans of past year's World Series participants, the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, be? Will the Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers crook stellar regular seasons into heavy playoff runs? And which under-the-radar players and teams are scouts raving about? Here's the latest intel our MLB experts are proceeding arsenic Jeff Passan, Buster Olney, Jesse Rogers, Jorge Castillo and Alden Gonzalez bare their notebooks.

What is the boldest prediction you've heard from an MLB exec oregon scout?

Passan: The Seattle Mariners are going to triumph the World Series. Perhaps astatine this constituent that does not registry arsenic bold, but let's not hide the Mariners are 49 years into their beingness and they've yet to marque a World Series, fto unsocial triumph one.

Three weeks ago, this would person been laughable, arsenic Seattle had mislaid 15 of 21 and recovered itself 3½ games down Houston. Now, the Mariners person a three-game cushion, positive the tiebreaker successful the AL West, and are successful possession of a first-round bye.

The home-field vantage would beryllium decidedly advantageous to the Mariners, who are 48-27 astatine home. Lining up their fantabulous front-line starting pitching and giving immoderate remainder to well-worked regulars -- particularly Cal Raleigh -- could bash the Mariners good. And with the highest-scoring discourtesy successful the large leagues successful September and a bullpen that has immoderate of the champion worldly successful baseball, the Mariners person the ingredients to conquer a wide-open AL and bent with the star-studded rosters successful the NL.

Olney: We ever perceive however bullpen and seat are difference-making successful the postseason, and 1 evaluator sees a wide delineation betwixt the Padres' bullpen and the remainder of the field. The Mariners' person played good down the stretch, but their alleviation corps is taxed; the Dodgers volition beryllium MacGyvering to marque their bullpen rubble work; the Phillies volition beryllium without Jose Alvarado; the Yankees' radical tin beryllium wildly inconsistent. But the San Diego bullpen, connected the different hand, is solid, adjacent without Jason Adam.

Is that evaluator, then, acceptable to accidental the Padres volition triumph the World Series, oregon adjacent the National League? "Are you f---ing kidding me?" helium replied. "I don't deliberation we tin number anybody retired this year. Even the Tigers -- they've got [Tarik] Skubal."

How overmuch religion does the manufacture person successful the Blue Jays and Brewers turning imaginable No. 1 seeds into World Series appearances?

Olney: The feedback I'm getting is that execs spot tenable paths done October for each of the contenders with possibly the objection of the Astros, who are truthful wrecked by injuries to Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Pena and Josh Hader.

As the lawsuit is made for the Blue Jays and Brewers, determination is simply a accordant taxable -- these are teams that get guys connected base, enactment the shot successful play and unit defenses. One evaluator said: "The Brewers conscionable don't play atrocious games -- they mightiness lose, but they are successful each game."

Rogers: There's content successful some teams but cipher is acceptable to state either the favourite adjacent arsenic a imaginable apical seed. Read Entire Article