10 storylines that will shape rest of 2026 MLB season
The hoopla of the MLB trade deadline has passed. The dog days of August have set in.
With only six teams essentially eliminated from the playoffs -- we're being generous here to the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals, but even dismissing them would leave us with 21 teams in the playoff chase -- it will be a hectic final quarter of the season.
Let's check in on 10 storylines to watch.
The race for the best overall record
The big, bad, unbeatable Los Angeles Dodgers with the gazillion-dollar payroll suddenly have fallen to third in the National League and fourth in the overall standings.
Not a big deal, right? After all, the Dodgers had to play in the wild-card series last year and beat the Reds. They didn't have home-field advantage against the Philadelphia Phillies or Milwaukee Brewers and beat them. They went back to Toronto for Games 6 and 7 of the World Series, needing to win both games on the road, and did just that.
Still ... finishing behind the Brewers and Atlanta Braves would hardly be an ideal scenario for the Dodgers, not when the No. 6 seed might be the Phillies, who could run out Cristopher Sanchez, Zack Wheeler and Jesus Luzardo in a three-game series, or maybe the San Diego Padres, who could ride their bullpen in a short series.
Other than the risky nature of the wild-card series, though, maybe home-field advantage isn't such a big deal anyway: Since 2000, home teams are 12-11 in Game 7s and 16-20 in Game 5s.
So maybe the question for the Dodgers isn't so much where they'll finish, but how they'll finish. They added Tarik Skubal to front the rotation, but still have some questions in key positions. Before winning their past two, they had lost eight of nine. Since the All-Star break, the Dodgers are 13th in OPS and 14th in runs per game. Prior to the break, they ranked first in OPS and third in runs per game. Their pitching was third in ERA before the break and 23rd since. It's not a concern yet, but the Dodgers have been sleepwalking for nearly a month now.
Meanwhile, the Brewers keep winning, 22-14 since the beginning of July, although with just a plus-5 run differential in that span. They're 4-0 in extra-inning games over that stretch (reliever Aaron Ashby picked up his 13th win on Saturday) and 10-3 in Jacob Misiorowski's last 13 starts. The concern remains their lack of power -- last in the majors in home runs this season -- but they're still fifth in runs per game. The Braves have also righted the ship after a losing month in June. The offense has matched Milwaukee's and, also like the Brewers, they have a strong late-game bullpen.
Ten critical games in the overall standings will take place from Aug. 13 through Aug. 27, when the Dodgers host the Brewers for four games, the Brewers host the Braves for three and then the Braves host the Dodgers for three.
The National League MVP race
Through June, Shohei Ohtani appeared to have already locked up his fifth MVP award and fourth in a row. Then he stopped pitching because of a knee issue and Pete Crow-Armstrong took off like an Apollo rocket. He hit .381 with 11 home runs in June. He hit .278 with an OPS over 1.000 in July. He's still red hot in August. Crow-Armstrong entered the week with 7.5 bWAR, which put him on pace for 10.2. Here's the list of center fielders with 10-WAR seasons:
Willie Mays (6)
Mickey Mantle (3)
Ty Cobb (3)
Aaron Judge (2)
Mike Trout (2)
Tris Speaker (2)
These are all inner-circle Hall of Famers or future inner-circle Hall of Famers. Note who isn't on this list: Ken Griffey Jr. (career high of 9.7), Joe DiMaggio, Duke Snider, Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones. Hank Aaron qualified two seasons as a center fielder and didn't get there. Fred Lynn and Willie McGee didn't get there in their MVP seasons.
Indeed, Crow-Armstrong should be viewed as the leader right now, with an edge over Ohtani in both bWAR (7.5 to 6.3) and fWAR (8.0 to 6.4). The race is probably closer than the differences in WAR indicate, especially since there's still time for Ohtani to get back on the mound.
Applying the basic runs-saved numbers compared with an average player used at Baseball Reference (and leaving out the positional adjustments), we get:
The NL hasn't had a close two-man race for MVP honors since 2019 (Cody Bellinger over Christian Yelich), but this looks like a great one.
Yordan Alvarez goes for the Triple Crown
Alvarez has been one of the most feared hitters in the majors since his debut in 2019 and has always been capable of a season like this. But there was always somebody better -- usually Aaron Judge.
Not this year. Alvarez is the clear favorite for American League MVP, although Dillon Dingler and Junior Caminero will have their supporters. It's Alvarez's chase for the Triple Crown that everyone will be watching. Since the live ball era began in 1920, only 10 players have won their league's Triple Crown, for a total of 12 times -- the last being Miguel Cabrera in 2012, the only player to win it since 1967.
The Houston Astros DH has a comfortable lead in the most difficult category, entering Wednesday with a 15-point advantage over Chandler Simpson of the Tampa Bay Rays in batting average. This can change more rapidly than people realize though. Entering Saturday, Alvarez had a 30-point lead over Simpson, but he went 0-for-8 in two games while Simpson went 6-for-9. Alvarez is tied with Caminero in home runs and has a seven-RBI lead over Dingler. Both categories are certainly in play.
Here's what makes Alvarez's season even more impressive: He's hitting .389/.579/.806 with runners in scoring position -- driving in 51 runs in 72 at-bats, since he has walked 37 times in those situations (including 20 intentional walks). Only two other players since division play began in 1969 have finished with a 1.400 OPS with runners in scoring position: Barry Bonds (three times, including 2004 when he had 111 walks and three strikeouts with RISP) and Mark McGwire in 1996.
How low can Jacob Misiorowski go?
By low, we're going with his ERA, which stands at 1.76 after allowing three runs in six innings Sunday, when he became the second-fastest pitcher in terms of innings to reach 200 strikeouts in a season (behind Spencer Strider in 2023).
Misiorowski's ERA was 1.34 after a dominant one-hit, 15-strikeout performance June 12 and still below 1.50 in early July. Since 1920, only Bob Gibson has posted an ERA under 1.50 in at least 162 innings. The Miz has been more hittable of late, with a 2.54 ERA since that complete game (including five unearned runs), with nine home runs allowed in 46 innings. Then there's the question of whether he'll even get to the 162 innings needed to qualify for the ERA title. It's going to be close, depending on how hard the Brewers push him down the stretch.
Among other records for starting pitchers that he's chasing: He has allowed a .147 average, 20 points lower than Pedro Martinez's .167 mark in 2000, and he has allowed a .456 OPS, just off Ed Walsh's .455 in a dead ball year of 1910 and a tad better than Gibson's .469 in 1968.
Even if the ERA has climbed a bit, Misiorowski is on track for a season to remember.
How high can the Boston Red Sox go?
On June 24, the Red Sox were stumbling along at 32-46. They had already fired manager Alex Cora. Only the Colorado Rockies had a worse record. Then everything turned around -- remarkably, with both Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony on the injured list.
Since then, they've gone 32-9, including 21-4 in July, one of the best months in franchise history. They've scored the third-most runs in the majors since June 25 and allowed the fewest runs per game.
They're winning with a patchwork middle infield of Andruw Monasterio, Anthony Seigler and Nick Sogard, a testament to Craig Breslow's depth building. (Monasterio and Seigler came over from Milwaukee in the Kyle Harrison trade with Caleb Durbin, and while Harrison has been excellent, the Red Sox have needed both players.) Oh, Durbin by the way, after a terrible start, has matched former Red Sox third baseman Alex Bregman in OPS and WAR.
Breslow swung big at the deadline, acquiring Adley Rutschman for three of the team's top prospects even though the three-time All-Star was still on the injured list. Lefty reliever Erik Miller came over from the San Francisco Giants for Marcelo Mayer. Rutschman and Miller (and Curtis Mead, another deadline acquisition) are all controllable beyond 2026, but this was a definite "all-in" series of moves.
The only problem: The Red Sox remain eight games behind the Rays in the AL East, as the Rays won their seventh in a row Monday. All this and Boston might end up in the wild-card series anyway.
Can the Chicago White Sox go from worst to first?
If the White Sox can go from 121 losses in 2024 to winning the AL Central, it would be an incredible sports story. Nobody expected this. The White Sox were 28th in our preseason power rankings, with a projected record of 61-101, one win better than last year's 60-102 mark. FanGraphs had the White Sox finishing last in the division at 67-95 with a less than 1% chance of winning it.
Yet here they are. The Cleveland Guardians are fading. The Detroit Tigers traded away Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize. The Minnesota Twins just don't appear as good as the White Sox (minus-34 run differential versus plus-36 for the White Sox). Now, the White Sox are hardly running away with this. They're around .500 since the beginning of June. The offense is 24th in OPS since the beginning of July. Luis Castillo might or might not be the answer for the rotation.
In 1991, the Braves and Twins both went from last place in 1990 to first place and then played one of the greatest World Series of all time. The 2007 Tampa Bay Devil Rays went 66-96, changed their name to the Rays and went 97-65, reaching the World Series. Other teams have also gone from last to first, but no team as bad as the White Sox has done something like this since the 101-loss Boston Braves of 1912 won the 1914 World Series.
The NL wild-card race
Essentially four teams are fighting for three spots -- the Phillies, Padres, Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks. The Cubs have a solid lead as the top wild card (and still harbor hopes of chasing down the Brewers; they still have seven games against Milwaukee), so maybe it's three teams for two spots, with the Pirates, Nationals, Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals one winning streak away from getting back into the race.
The team to watch here is the Padres, because the offense -- after ranking last in the majors in runs for much of the season -- has finally started to hit. Since the beginning of July, the Padres are sixth in OPS and ninth in runs per game. All three of their core players -- Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill -- have played better, while Ty France continues as one of the bigger surprises of the season.
The Phillies are facing a lot of pressure as an aging team trying to pull out a World Series to cap an era of exciting baseball in Philly. If they make the playoffs, nobody wants to face them, but you wonder if Dave Dombrowski's inability to trade for a starting pitcher at the deadline will haunt him.
The Diamondbacks? Yeah, this is hard to figure, with Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte and Geraldo Perdomo all having worse seasons than last year. They don't hit many home runs. The rotation has been iffy. Heck, they even just DFA'd closer Paul Sewald. Their only move at the deadline was a low-impact acquisition in Lars Nootbaar. FanGraphs still sees the Cubs (99% playoff odds) and Phillies (76%) as the clear favorites out of the wild-card teams, with the Diamondbacks and Padres close to even.
Mason Miller and the greatest relief season ever?
Speaking of the Padres, it helps to have Miller closing down the ninth inning. He's 4-1 with 30 saves in 31 chances -- his one blown save came when he entered in the eighth inning with the bases loaded and one out and allowed a game-tying hit (he got the win anyway) -- and a 0.89 ERA with a ridiculous 16.5 K's per nine. Batters are hitting .140 off him with two extra-base hits (both doubles). Is it the best relief season ever? Maybe not, but it's in the running, and he should pick up plenty of down-ballot MVP votes.
The AL Cy Young race
So many of the preseason favorites have battled injuries -- Crochet, Skubal, Hunter Brown, Max Fried -- that when Cam Schlittler roared out of the gate firing unhittable fastballs one after another, he jumped to the top of leaderboard, unchallenged. It's a long season, however, and while Schlittler has remained impressive, leading the AL in ERA (2.21), starts (25) and innings (146.2), Dylan Cease is now right there, tied with Schlittler in WAR with 4.9, a 2.40 ERA and a league-leading 191 strikeouts.
The big difference: Schlittler has made three more starts and pitched about 15 innings more than Cease. His efficiency has allowed him to go six-plus innings in 15 of his 25 starts. Cease has gone six innings in 11 of his 22 starts. Cease has the hot hand, with scoreless outings in four of his past seven starts.
Who wins the AL Worst?
No team has ever won a division title with a losing record. It almost happened in the strike-shortened season of 1994, when the Texas Rangers were leading the AL West at 52-62 when the strike hit in early August. It might happen in the AL West in 2026, with the Astros and Rangers hovering around .500 and the Seattle Mariners dropping like Wile E. Coyote off a cliff.
It probably won't happen. The Astros, for example, are already done playing the Rangers but have seven games against the A's, five against the Mariners and three against the Los Angeles Angels and Kansas City Royals. Do well in those games and the Astros should finish over .500. Oh, they also hold the tiebreaker against the Rangers, winning the season series 9-4.
Reporting from ESPN contributed to this story.
