How Many Wins Will Get You Into the 2026 MLB Playoffs?
Plus: Projected win distributions, the toughest divisions, team nemeses, and more "fun with MLB Elo simulation data".
Welcome to MLB’s 2026 Opening Day! Or at least, its Opening Night. (There’s one game on the docket, Yankees-Giants at 8:05 p.m. ET.) I’m pretty excited for baseball to be back — beyond just the fun preseason diversion that was the WBC — and I’m looking forward to writing my usual columns1 all season long.
But since we’re still technically in preseason mode for a few more hours, I figured it might be fun to dig into some more implications for the season from the 2026 preseason Elo simulations I ran the other day.
How many wins gets you that playoff spot?
One of the more interesting things you can pull out of a bunch of simulation data like this is the amount of wins it typically takes to get you into the playoffs. We know from recent history (since the wild card was last expanded in 2022) that the final playoff slot has tended to belong to a team with 84.75 wins on average. But what are your odds of making the playoffs at each particular win total? What will it take for a team to feel safe for the postseason?
