Milwaukee’s 103 Wins Crash the Dodgers’ Three-Peat Odds

Bradford Doolittle’s 10,000 simulations give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 21.9% chance to three-peat and the Milwaukee Brewers 21.4%. DraftKings still lists the Dodgers at +200, the shortest price in the 2026 MLB playoffs field, with Milwaukee at +600.

The same October just let in the Houston Astros at 81-81, the first full-season playoff club without a winning record. Wild Card Series games start Tuesday, Sept. 29.

I spy … 12 #Postseason teams 👀 pic.twitter.com/GZjosWap70

— MLB (@MLB) September 27, 2026

The Simulations Do Not Crown the Dodgers

Doolittle’s model uses power ratings to run 10,000 seasons. It has the two National League bye teams in a virtual tie. The sportsbook implied chances, by comparison, are 33.3% for Los Angeles and 14.3% for Milwaukee, a much wider gap than half a percentage point.

The 12-team format awards first-round byes for the top two seeds in each league, then sends the other eight into best-of-three Wild Card Series. That structure is why a 103-win club and a.500 division winner can open the same month in such different spots.

THE 12-TEAM TITLE BOARD

Bill James-style team temperatures, where 72° is average, put Milwaukee at 116° and the Dodgers at 105°. San Diego is at 109° as a wild card. Philadelphia is the coldest club in the field at 61°.

An 81-81 Club Hosts the White Sox

Houston clinched the AL West on Sunday with a 9-0 win over the Athletics after the Texas Rangers lost 6-4 at Minnesota. The Astros finished one game ahead of Texas at 80-82 and would have taken the division on a tiebreaker even with a defeat. Jeff Passan called them the worst team ever to make the postseason.

Houston is not very good. Regular-season record doesn’t matter anymore, and doubting the Astros in October is a fool’s errand.

Jeff Passan, MLB writer

The previous full-season floor belonged to the 2005 Padres at 82-80, a club that was swept in the NLDS. The 2006 Cardinals won the World Series at 83-78, so a modest record is not an automatic exit. Houston still has Yordan Alvarez, the AL’s best hitter this year and a.294/.393/.551 force across 60 prior playoff games.

The rest of the roster is thinner. Passan flagged a rotation mess beyond Hunter Brown and a bullpen that is not much better. Tatsuya Imai, signed for three years and $54 million out of Japan, put up a 5.83 ERA in 15 starts, then a 2.12 ERA with 24 strikeouts in 17 relief innings. He will be asked to cover the innings the starters have not.

Chicago arrives as the No. 6 seed at 84-78, two years after a 41-121 season that set the modern record for losses. That is 43 more wins than 2024. Passan said the White Sox have the easiest path of any playoff club, first Houston and then, if they survive, the 85-77 Guardians. The rotation is the hitch. Luis Castillo, the deadline pickup, posted an 8.42 ERA in 31 innings and was moved to the bullpen.

Why a 100-Win Dodgers Club Still Looks Beatable

Los Angeles is trying to become the first National League team to win three straight World Series titles. The only clubs to three-peat are the Yankees, most recently from 1998 to 2000, and the Athletics from 1972 to 1974. The Dodgers beat the Yankees in five games in 2024 and the Blue Jays in seven in 2025, the first repeat since those Yankees, and they did it with 98 wins and then 93.

Milwaukee Finally Won 100

The Brewers went 103-59, the first 100-win season in franchise history, and locked a fourth straight NL Central title plus a bye. They have never won a World Series. Their only trip was 1982, when they still played in the American League, led the Cardinals three games to two, and lost in seven. Last October the Dodgers swept them in the NLCS. Milwaukee scored four runs in four games in that series.

They finished last in the majors in home runs after ranking 22nd with 166 a year ago. The answer, Passan wrote, is Jacob Misiorowski, Logan Henderson, and one of the two best bullpens in baseball, with at least four relievers touching 100 mph. Henderson went 11-3 with a 2.47 ERA, and his 0.84 WHIP was the lowest ever for a rookie with at least 15 starts, per Elias Sports Bureau. Doolittle, rating Milwaukee the team to ride if your own club is out, put it in bandwagon terms.

If your team isn’t in the bracket, this is the bandwagon on which to jump.

Bradford Doolittle, MLB writer

Los Angeles Will Not Have Ohtani on the Mound

Shohei Ohtani is not expected to pitch in October. The Dodgers still open a rotation of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tarik Skubal, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glasnow. They also have the oldest roster in the majors at 31.1 years, and a long injured-list scroll after the deadline, from Andy Pages’ hand to Edwin Díaz’s neck to Snell’s elbow. Rivals think that pile, plus two straight title runs, has left them vulnerable even after 100 wins, seven more than last season.

A 100-win Dodgers club has become an October warning in this era, not a promise. Arash Markazi noted they have never won a title after 100 wins, listing the 104-win 2017 World Series loss and the 100-win-plus exits of 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023. He still picked them to three-peat. The last two rings arrived at 98 and 93 wins. Kyle Tucker, on a four-year, $240 million deal, slumped for months and then hit in September, which is the profile David Schoenfield tagged as a World Series MVP path if Ohtani is limited and Freddie Freeman is not launching (one homer in the final two months).

Six AL Teams Hold 41.8% of the Title Odds

Add the six American League shares in Doolittle’s runs and you get 41.8%. The Dodgers and Brewers alone hold 43.3%. The entire AL is a smaller title pile than those two NL clubs, and the Rays, at 98-64, are the only AL team within shouting distance of 100 wins.

Tampa Bay does almost nothing poorly, Passan wrote. No team strikes out less (18.7% of plate appearances). They hit.283 with runners in scoring position, best in the majors, and they led the AL in stolen bases. Junior Caminero hit 42 of the club’s 168 homers; he, Jonathan Aranda (22), and Yandy Díaz (22) accounted for 86, more than half. Jorge Castillo’s warning is the flip side: if that trio goes quiet, the Rays do not have many other power threats, and October pitching makes singles rallies hard.

The Yankees are the other AL club with a real ceiling, and it still runs through Aaron Judge. He played 66 games, many of them after a rib fracture, and New York went 41-25 with him (5.1 runs per game,.764 OPS) and 52-43 without him (4.2 runs,.685 OPS). A calf strain on Sept. 19 kept him out of the last week. Heliot Ramos, the deadline outfielder from San Francisco, is the likely right-field answer against Boston’s left-handers, Payton Tolle and Ranger Suarez, in the Wild Card round. Cam Schlittler, Max Fried, Gerrit Cole, and Carlos Rodón give Aaron Boone a rotation that can shorten a series if Judge cannot go.

Boston was the hottest AL team from late June onward and then went 12-12 in September with the fewest runs in the majors. The pitching is the argument: Sonny Gray, Tolle, and the best bullpen ERA in baseball. Chad Tracy, no longer interim, is trying to become the 10th manager to take over midseason and reach a World Series. Only Bob Lemon with the 1978 Yankees and Jack McKeon with the 2003 Marlins won it all after that kind of handoff.

Cleveland is the No. 2 seed at 85-77 with a bye, which is a strange sentence next to Milwaukee’s 103. The Guardians have no 20-homer hitter and ranked 27th in homers. They went 27-22 in one-run games. Gavin Williams and Parker Messick front a staff whose relievers posted the highest strikeout rate in the majors, with closer Cade Smith at 41 saves and a 1.95 ERA. Jose Ramirez just had the worst full season of his career. They will not win slugfests.

Cleveland Has Waited 77 Seasons

The Guardians last won the World Series in 1948. That is baseball’s longest active title drought, 77 seasons, with Fall Classic losses in 1954, 1995, 1997, and 2016, when they blew a 3-1 lead to the Cubs. This is their third straight playoff trip.

TITLE DROUGHTS IN THIS FIELD

• Guardians: 77 seasons without a title, last won in 1948.
• Brewers: Never won, one World Series in 1982 as an AL club, lost 4-3 after leading 3-2.
• Padres: Never won, World Series losses in 1984 and 1998.
• Rays: Never won, World Series losses in 2008 and 2020.

Three of the five MLB clubs that have never won a title are in this bracket. San Diego is the hottest of the wild cards at 109°, with Mason Miller as the closer and 20-year-old catcher Ethan Salas likely behind the plate after he broke up Tyler Glasnow’s no-hitter on clinch night. The Cubs led the majors in runs and own, by the metrics, the best defense, with Pete Crow-Armstrong the NL MVP favorite after a 5-for-27, 12-strikeout playoff in 2025. Their 4.13 ERA was the highest among the six NL playoff staffs.

Atlanta hosts Philadelphia with Chris Sale (2.16 ERA in 162⅔ innings at 37) and Tyler Mahle, who cut a 5.13 ERA with the Giants to 1.28 in 49.1 innings after the deadline. The Phillies opened 9-19, fired Rob Thomson on April 28, and replaced him with Don Mattingly. They nearly became the first team since 1903, per Elias, to blow a four-game lead with five to play, lost four straight, then beat the Rays 7-3 on the final day behind Zack Wheeler (six innings, one run) and a four-pitch eighth from Jesús Luzardo, who had not faced hitters since Sept. 7 because of left shoulder inflammation.

Atlanta Hosts the First Pitch on Tuesday

All four Wild Card Series open Tuesday, Sept. 29, and run through Thursday if needed. Winners move into Division Series play that starts Oct. 3. The NLCS is slated for Oct. 11-19, the ALCS for Oct. 12-20, and the World Series for Oct. 23-31.

THE WILD CARD WINDOW

• Atlanta, 2 p.m. ET: Phillies (88-74) at Braves (94-68), NBC and Peacock.
• Houston, 5 p.m. ET: White Sox (84-78) at Astros (81-81), Peacock and NBCSN.
• Yankee Stadium, 8 p.m. ET: Red Sox (87-75) at Yankees (93-68), NBC and Peacock.
• San Diego, 10 p.m. ET: Cubs (89-73) at Padres (91-71), Peacock and NBCSN.

The No. 1 seeds then wait. Milwaukee draws the Padres-Cubs winner. Los Angeles draws the Braves-Phillies winner. Tampa Bay draws the Yankees-Red Sox winner. Cleveland draws the Astros-White Sox winner. There is no reseeding, which is how an 85-win Central champ can open the Division Series at home against a.500 West champ, and how a 103-win Brewers club can be made to wait while four wild-card series decide who gets to crash the party.

THE ROAD THROUGH OCTOBER

1. Sept. 29: Wild Card Game 1 in Atlanta, Houston, the Bronx, and San Diego.
2. Oct. 3: Division Series open, with the four bye teams finally playing.
3. Oct. 11: NLCS Game 1.
4. Oct. 12: ALCS Game 1.
5. Oct. 23: World Series Game 1.

The full picture of the 12-team postseason bracket is now locked. Atlanta gets the first pitch at 2 p.m. ET on Tuesday. Milwaukee and Los Angeles, half a point apart in the only model that ran 10,000 Octobers, still have to sit and watch.