2024 MLB Playoff Predictions: Expert Selection for World Series Bracket | News, scores, highlights, stats and rumors

Major League Baseball’s postseason has become more difficult to predict in the current format.

Only one seed from the top three made the World Series the past two seasons. The wild card round provided the playoff push for three of the final four Fall Classic participants.

However, the 2024 postseason appears to be different because of the teams at the top of the regular season standings.

The New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Guardians and Philadelphia Phillies are all well equipped to win a championship, but they all have to wait a week to play their first postseason game.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan believes one of those teams will be the one to win the Fall Classic in October.

Passan picked the Phillies to beat the Houston Astros in the World Series. That matchup would break the trend of the past two years, but it would continue Houston’s success in the postseason.

The Astros made the World Series in 2021 and 2022. They lost to Atlanta in 2021 and defeated the Phillies in 2022. They also advanced to the ALCS in 2023.

Bleacher Report’s Kerry Miller is on the same page as Passan when it comes to the National League. He predicted that the No. 1 and/or No. 2 seeds would advance to the NLCS.

It’s a bold prediction based on the results of the past two seasons in the NL. The highest seed to reach the NLCS in the new format is No. 4.

The Dodgers and Phillies were the class of the NL for most of the regular season. The Phillies have come close to winning the World Series in recent years, while the Dodgers now have Shohei Ohtani in the lineup to avoid a third straight early exit.

CBS Sports’ Mike Axisa predicted in his bold postseason predictions that the first-round bye will be “actually a good thing.”

“The fact is, this is only the third year in this postseason format. The previous two years are not nearly enough to say with certainty that skipping a round hurts more than it helps,” Axisa wrote.

A two-year sample size is incredibly small and teams should, at least in theory, get smarter in how they handle the weeklong lull leading up to the Saturday start of the ALDS and NLDS.

There is a lot of high-end talent on the four rosters of the teams with first-round byes, but only time will tell if they buck the trend or if the wildcard teams continue to reign supreme.