⚾ Baseball Bytes: What’s Left to Be Settled in September
Let's go through the likely — and unlikely — ways the MLB regular season can conclude. Plus: The most improved players of 2025, by category, and an apoetical ode to Trevor Story's weird Pesky-Pole HR.
Welcome back to Baseball Bytes — a new, improved version1 of my baseball column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!
⚾ Any September Surprises Left?
It’s the first week of September, and that means the MLB regular season has just about four weeks left in it before the postseason gets underway.
With so little time left for huge moves, we might think much of the playoff picture is settled — but as we saw when I wrote this three weeks ago, all things baseball can descend into a chaotic mess in a hurry. The same goes for right now — some things are all but assured, but plenty else remains up in the air. So let’s go through the Elo playoff simulations (as of Monday noontime) to see what the next month might hold, in order of certainty.
Basically sure things:
The Tigers (AL Central), Brewers (NL Central) and Phillies (NL East) each went into play Monday with division odds in excess of 95 percent.
Nothing is ever certain until it’s been clinched, but it’s very unlikely either the Royals or Guardians can make up division deficits of roughly 10 games apiece on Detroit. Similarly, Milwaukee and Philly are in similar positions of being at least 6 games clear of their nearest foes (the Cubs and Mets, respectively) and carrying Elo ratings at least 20 points higher than them as well. Each case would require a substantially better team to collapse for those divisions to get truly interesting.
Beyond that trio that’s heavily likely to win their divisions, the AL East triad of the Blue Jays, Yankees and Red Sox are each above 95 percent to make the playoffs one way or another, with relatively even odds between: a) Toronto, or b) either New York and Boston, to be the division winner.
Furthermore, the Cubs — who are extremely likely to be a wild-card team — and the Dodgers and Padres are also above 95 percent to make the playoffs in some configuration or another.
It should also be noted that the AL East is also very likely to send 3+ teams to the playoffs, between Toronto, New York and Boston.
Less certainty:
