World Series 2025 Updated Bracket Predictions Before Blue Jays vs. Mariners Game 3
The Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Dodgers both find themselves just two wins away from securing their spot in the 2025 World Series.
Still, there's plenty to be played out in each League Championship Series, and therefore plenty of time left for the Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers to make things interesting yet.
Since Seattle swiped the first two games north of the border, though, it's set to host a pivotal Game 3 on Wednesday night. A 3-0 deficit isn't historically impossible to overcome, but since it's happened all of once in baseball history, it's clearly a hole no one wants to fall inside.
So, is a Mariners-Dodgers championship collision already inevitable? Or can the Blue Jays and Mariners recover after back-to-back losses on their home fields? We're breaking out the crystal ball to find out.
ALCS Prediction: Mariners Beat—But Don't Sweep—the Blue Jays
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Seattle has never booked a World Series trip in franchise history. Maybe that's because the Mariners have arguably never had a roster so brilliantly balanced.
Their lineup is loaded—and was further strengthened with the trade-deadline additions of Eugenio Suárez and Josh Naylor—their rotation is talented and deep and the bullpen has enough lock-down arms to make a victory hold. This is, in other words, a team capable of winning in every way possible.
That will prove too much to overcome for the Blue Jays, although Toronto's bats will awaken in time to stretch this series out to five or maybe six games.
In the end, though, the Mariners will push farther into the playoff bracket than they've ever been before.
NLCS Prediction: The Dodgers Complete the Sweep of the Brewers
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Los Angeles has built the best roster money can buy, and it shows in the team's ridiculous combination of star power and depth.
You might think that a lineup featuring the likes of Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts would be the Brewers' biggest worry. Instead, Milwaukee can't get anything going against L.A's pitching. After Blake Snell through eight blanks with 10 strikeouts in the opener, Yoshinobu Yamamoto followed with a three-hit, seven-strikeout complete game in Game 2.
With Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani slated to start Games 3 and 4, respectively, it's hard to tell where Milwaukee is even supposed to find its rhythm. The Brewers can cause havoc on the basepath, but that only matters if they can actually get on base. Glasnow has two scoreless appearances this postseason, and Ohtani tallied nine strikeouts against three hits in his lone start of the playoffs.
Oh, and even if the Brewers' hitters get on track, the Dodgers have enough power to mash their way to wins, anyway. L.A. looks like the best and hottest team in the playoffs (7-1 so far), and Milwaukee feels more like a footnote in the Dodgers' push back to the World Series.
World Series Prediction: Mariners in 6
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If the Dodgers make it back to the Fall Classic, the safe pick—and maybe the smart one—would be to have them pull off Major League Baseball's first successful championship defense in 25 years.
We're going a different direction, and no, we're not doing it just to be hot-take-throwing contrarians.
Seattle might have the only rotation that can go toe-to-toe with Los Angeles, plus it doesn't have the bullpen volatility that the Dodgers have encountered.
It's trickier to make the argument that the Mariners' lineup measures up, but it does have stars (like MVP candidate Cal Raleigh and dynamic outfielder Julio Rodríguez), plus a wicked combination of power and speed. While L.A. has played one more game this postseason, Seattle has matched it in homers (10 each) and surpassed it in steals (5-1).
This should be a series that has some length to it, and that's where Dodgers fans should worry about their bullpen issues spelling their demise. L.A. still doesn't know exactly where to turn late in games—which surely factored into the decision to have Yamamoto go the distance Tuesday—while Seattle routinely punctuates victories with the likes of Andrés Muñoz and Matt Brash, who have 13 strikeouts against a single hit allowed over their combined 12 innings this postseason.
If their starters pitch to their potential, and their lineup keeps mashing, the Mariners' first trip to the World Series will feature their first championship.
