New-Look MLB Playoff Field Is Now Set

After a tumultuous final day of the 2026 regular season, MLB will enter the playoffs with a series of marquee teams, upstart small-market clubs, and the league’s worst postseason entrant. 

The Astros won the AL West on the season’s final day, edging out the Rangers with a 81–81 record. That mark represents MLB’s first-ever full-season playoff team without a winning record, and surpasses the 2005 Padres that reached the postseason with an 82–80 record. Even with that mediocre record, the Astros will host the White Sox in the Wild Card series. Chicago is back in the postseason after three straight 100-loss seasons and a 41–121 record in 2024 that is the worst in modern MLB history. 

The other of MLB’s 12 playoff spots clinched on Sunday went to the Phillies, who narrowly averted disaster following a September slide and were able to hold on to the NL’s final Wild Card slot and No. 6 seed. Philadelphia will head to Atlanta to face the Braves in a first-round matchup beginning Tuesday. 

The rest of the Wild Card series include:

• The Yankees will host the rival Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. New York and Boston will meet in the playoffs for the seventh time. A major question surrounding that series is the status of Yankees captain Aaron Judge, battling a calf strain. Last week, New York manager Aaron Boone said the club was planning on Judge not being involved in the Red Sox series, but the slugger says he is still aiming to play. 
  
• The Cubs will travel to Petco Park to face the Padres. The Padres are back in the postseason for the third straight season and fourth time in five years, but for the first time under new owners José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones, who are seeing immediate returns from their $3.9 billion purchase of the team. 

The Rays are the AL’s top seed, despite a $113.9 million luxury tax payroll that is the fourth lowest in the league, and have a bye to the Division Series. The Guardians, with MLB’s second-lowest spending at $92.5 million, also have a first-round bye as the No. 2 seed. The Rays, Yankees, and Red Sox—which have the AL’s three best records—are on the same side of MLB’s fixed postseason bracket. 

The Brewers, playing in MLB’s smallest media market, are the top team in the NL, while the two-time defending champion Dodgers are the No. 2 seed, and both will have first-round byes. 

NBC Sports and Peacock have exclusive rights to the entire Wild Card round as part of the network’s new MLB rights agreement. The Red Sox–Yankees and Cubs-Padres series hold the featured primetime slots. 

Weather Woes

The nor’easter storm that hit the Northeast over the weekend continued to wreak havoc on MLB’s schedule. 

The Cubs and Red Sox departed Boston to play the finale of a scheduled series at Fenway Park at the Rays’ Tropicana Field instead. That marked a rare move by MLB of a game to a neutral-site field, and culminated a week’s worth of concern surrounding that series. The contest ended up not mattering in playoff seeding, though, with the teams each having already clinched the No. 5 seeds in their respective brackets before Sunday.

A Sunday game in New York between the Orioles and Yankees, meanwhile, never happened amid steady rain in the area and won’t be rescheduled. Several other games, including ones in Philadelphia and Washington, also grappled with wet conditions throughout Sunday afternoon.