MLB: The Most Underrated Teams Still Alive in the Playoff Race

Last Updated on agosto 27, 2026 5:08 pm by Erwin Noguera

Five days ago we wrote that Cleveland had suffered the largest collapse in the MLB: a 61-point fall in playoff probability across thirty days, on a team holding the easiest remaining schedule in the sport.

The Guardians have since gone on a run and now sit at 68-66, holding the third American League wild card.

That is a useful reminder before any of what follows. Five weeks remain; the wild-card race in both leagues is wide open, and the teams nobody is discussing are the ones most likely to decide it.

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Here are the teams doing real damage without the attention.

Chicago White Sox — 70-63, leading the AL Central

The most underrated team in baseball, and it is not close.

Chicago leads its division and is in position for a first-round bye, alongside Tampa Bay. A bye is the single largest structural advantage in the current postseason format; it removes an entire elimination series and hands you a rested rotation.

They also hold one of the easier remaining schedules in the league, which means the path is not just open but clear. Take care of the teams beneath them, and they arrive in October having skipped the most dangerous round.

Why they are underrated: the national conversation about the White Sox has not caught up to the standings. A franchise that spent recent seasons as a punchline is positioned to watch the wild-card round from home.

The concern: this is a young roster with no experience of leading a division in September. There is nothing on this team to lean on when the pressure arrives.

Tampa Bay Rays — the best team nobody talks about

The Rays own the best record in baseball by a wide margin and have pushed their division lead to six games over the Yankees.

They are also, as ever, discussed less than any team of comparable quality. Tampa Bay does not sign the players who generate coverage, and the roster is built from pieces most organisations would not have identified.

Drew Rasmussen has been pitching like a genuine ace since the All-Star break, and the Rays are among the teams that could clinch by mid-September.

Why they are underrated: being consistently excellent on a small budget has stopped being a story, which is exactly why it keeps working.

Cleveland Guardians — 68-66, third AL wild card

The most dramatic reversal of the month.

Cleveland went 4-10 through the middle of August and lost more playoff probability than any team in the sport. They have since climbed back into a wild-card place, and the schedule remains their greatest asset: the easiest remaining slate in baseball, with only a handful of games left against teams above .500.

Why they are underrated: everybody who wrote them off in mid-August, this site included, was reading a two-week sample rather than the calendar. The schedule was always going to give them a route back.

The concern: they have squandered this advantage once already. Doing it twice would be criminal.

Houston Astros — 66-67, leading the AL West

A team one game under .500 is leading a division, and the situation is stranger still than that sounds.

Houston went 3-6 on a homestand against the Mariners, Angels, and Athletics: two of those opponents long since eliminated, and remained in first place throughout. That is the AL West in 2026: nobody wants it, and Houston is winning it by default.

Their magic number sits at 30, identical to Cleveland’s and Texas’s, which tells you how tightly bunched the American League has become.

Why they are underrated: a sub-500 division leader is easy to dismiss. October does not ask how you got there.

The concern: everything. A team that loses six of nine to that opposition is not built for a series against Tampa Bay.

Toronto Blue Jays — 64-69, 3.5 games back

Toronto sold softly at the deadline and has spent August making that look like a mistake.

They sit three and a half games out of the final wild-card spot with five weeks to play, in a race where eight teams are competing for one spot and almost all of them are hovering around .500.

Why they are underrated: a team that did not buy in July is assumed to have given up. Toronto did not, and the standings have not eliminated them.

The concern: they need to pass five or six clubs rather than one. That is a lot of traffic in five weeks.

The One That Should Not Be Underrated

Milwaukee. The Brewers hold the best record in the National League and have done it with pitching: a 3.44 staff ERA, second only to the Yankees.

They are among the teams that could clinch by mid-September. If they are still being described as a surprise in October, the description is wrong. This is simply a very good baseball team that does not employ famous players.

What the Race Actually Looks Like

In the American League, the top is settled, and the bottom is chaos. The Yankees at 75-57 and Red Sox at 73-60 hold the first two wild cards comfortably. Behind them, roughly eight teams are fighting for one place: the Guardians, Blue Jays, Twins, Orioles, Mariners, and Tigers, with the Astros and Rangers involved in both the division and the wild card.

Nearly all of them are at or slightly below .500. Whoever gets hot for ten days takes it.

In the National League, the top is settled, and the middle is not. Atlanta hold a 6.5-game lead over Philadelphia and Milwaukee lead the league. Beneath them, the wild-card places remain genuinely open.

Three teams share a magic number of 30: Houston, Cleveland and Texas, which is the clearest single illustration of how little separates the American League’s middle class.

What to Watch

Whether Chicago holds the bye. It is more valuable than any individual result between now and the end of September, and the White Sox have never been in this position with this roster.

Cleveland’s schedule. They have the easiest run-in in baseball and have already wasted it once. The next fortnight decides whether the August collapse was a blip or the truth.

The AL West. Houston leads it at 66-67. Texas is right there. It may be the first division in years won by a team that finishes below .500, and whoever takes it gets a home series they have not earned.

September call-ups. Rosters expand on 1 September, and several of the teams above have prospects who could swing a tight race in either direction.

The most underrated team in baseball currently holds a division lead and a projected first-round bye, and you have heard almost nothing about them. That is usually how it goes until the bracket comes out.

Records and standings as of Wednesday, 26 August 2026.