Latest Expert MLB Playoff Predictions and Picks for 2025 World Series Bracket
The stage is officially set.
With the 2025 MLB season coming to a close Sunday, the baseball world now knows exactly which 12 teams remain in pursuit of World Series glory. While there are a number of familiar faces in the bracket, five teams who weren't invited to last season's big dance earned their spots this time around.
The Cincinnati Reds snapped their long drought, earning their first playoff bid in a 162-game season since 2013. However, the Seattle Mariners (two years), Boston Red Sox (three) and Chicago Cubs (four) all broke out of multi-year funks of their own.
This looks like a fun playoff field, as there isn't some overwhelming favorite on the board. To get a better idea of what's ahead, we'll take a look at how experts see things playing out.
CBS Experts See a Clear Favorite
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Five experts from CBS Sports filled out full playoff brackets—and all five crowned a World Series champion from the National League. Moreover, four of the five picked the exact same World Series matchup and the same result in the championship round: The Philadelphia Phillies fending off the Seattle Mariners.
"The Phillies' rotation remains a pronounced strength even without Zack Wheeler, and the first-round bye will be a boon to Trea Turner's health at the top of the lineup," Dayn Perry wrote. "... In the World Series, the Phils will break through thanks to that rotation and the Kyle Schwarber-Bryce Harper combo against that all-righty Seattle rotation."
R.J. Anderson was the lone expert to predict a different outcome, calling for a second straight championship collision between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees. Anderson ultimately sided with the Dodgers to repeat, noting that their regular season numbers "understate how good this team is now that they have a healthy stable of starting pitchers."
Despite the general lack of disagreements, Matt Snyder may have summed things up the best. Snyder's seven-sentence, 115-word summary included the phrases "nothing here would surprise me" and "it's a toss-up," and it bookended with mentions of this being a "crapshoot."
Three Champions Crowned by Six Yahoo Experts
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Six experts from Yahoo Sports predicted the postseason, and their strongest hunch was no different than the CBS crew: Phillies over the Mariners in the final round. They did take things a step further and predicted World Series MVPs, pointing to three different winners for Philadelphia: Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber and Cristopher Sánchez.
One more expert picked the Phillies to make the final round, only to fall to the New York Yankees in six games. In a bit of a surprise, this prediction pegged Giancarlo Stanton as the World Series MVP. It'd be interesting to know, though, whether that pick had more to do with Stanton's play style or Aaron Judge's career struggles in the postseason (.205/.318/.450 slash line over 58 outings).
For the non-math majors in the audience, that leaves two predictions on the board, and they both featured the same champion: The Milwaukee Brewers. That feels more notable than it should for the Major League-leader in both wins (97) and run differential (plus-172), but this is a franchise that has only reached the World Series once and never won it.
The Brewers aren't built around household names, and the MVP predictions here reflect as much. One went with Brice Turang, a third-year player with a career .257/.325/.368 slash line. The other crowned Andrew Vaughn, a former top prospect who fizzled out with the Chicago White Sox and was traded to Milwaukee at midseason for journeyman starter Aaron Civale and cash.
ESPN Sees a Wide-Open Race
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While ESPN hasn't yet released playoff predictions, its postseason preview did feature World Series odds from Bradford Doolittle. Their resident numbers-cruncher gave four teams a double-digit percentage chance of winning it all.
The Brewers had the best chance at 19.8 percent, while the Phillies weren't far behind at 16.5. Rounding out the favorites, Doolittle saw the Blue Jays having an 11.4 percent chance of getting it done, and the Dodgers having a 10.7 percent chance of defending their crown.
As Doolittle's colleague, Jeff Passan, put it, the argument for the Brewers is simple: "They've been the best team in baseball over six months." Simplicity also came into play when Passan explained why the Dodgers might win it: "If every team plays its best, the Dodgers are better than all of them."
As for the Phillies, Passan cited their starters' ability to pitch deep into games, the back end of their bullpen and the fact they have "two of the best playoff performers of their generation" in Schwarber and Harper. And finally for the Blue Jays, Passan cited how they "don't strike out," "field as cleanly as any team in the postseason field" and "have droves of arms capable of excellence."
