MLB Picks: RotoWire Staff Picks for Divisions, World Series

2026 MLB Predictions: RotoWire Staff Picks for Divisions, World Series

To celebrate Opening Day, I asked everyone involved in our MLB coverage to give me their picks for this year's division winners, pennant winners, World Series winners and major awards winners. I've broken down our picks for each race below, and you can find all 19 sets of responses I received at the bottom of the article. This article contains our picks for the divisions, pennants and World Series, with our award winners following in another article tomorrow.

For some of the races, our spread of answers aligned quite well with the bookmakers' odds, which you can find at our MLB Futures and MLB Player Futures pages. For others, you'll find a fair amount of disagreement, starting right at the top with the American League East.

Get in on the MLB action at BetMGM this season using the BetMGM bonus code for a generous welcome offer.

AL East Picks

We'll kick things off with perhaps the most competitive division in baseball, and one which our experts see a bit differently than the books. While the RotoWire staff agrees with the bookies that four teams have a legitimate chance of winning this division, we have the Red Sox as the clear favorite, while the books have them in third. Boston made several key additions this winter, including Sonny Gray, Ranger Suarez and Willson Contreras, though they did lose Alex Bregman. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays and Yankees both won 94 games last season but could only manage four votes in this poll, just two more than the Orioles, who finished last in the division with a 75-87 record in 2025.

AL Central Picks

The Tigers wound up choking away a big lead in this division last year, finishing in a wild-card spot while the Guardians took the division crown by a single game. This season, our writers see the Tigers as the clear favorites, as Detroit earns 16 out of 19 votes after electing to keep Tarik Skubal and bring in reinforcements like Framber Valdez and Kenley Jansen, as well as adding RotoWire's No. 2 prospect Kevin McGonigle to the Opening Day roster. The books don't see the Royals and Guardians as too far behind, but Kansas City received just three votes in our poll while Cleveland received none, despite winning the division in both 2024 and 2025.

AL West Picks

Here we have another race which our experts have a clear favorite in despite the books seeing it as a fairly close three-team fight. The defending champion Mariners are favored for a repeat according to the odds, but while the bookies think the Astros and Rangers will be in the race, our writers have this as all but a lock for Seattle, despite a lack of big additions outside of Brendan Donovan. While the Astros are second-favorite according to the odds and had won seven of the last eight division titles prior to last season, not a single one of our experts was willing to pick them in this poll. Instead, the Rangers are seen as the preferred option for anyone looking to bet on an underdog.

NL East Picks

Over two thirds of our writers picked the Mets to win the National League East for the first time since 2015 despite the fact that the books have them only slightly ahead of the Phillies. The Mets had one of the busiest offseasons in baseball, with Bo Bichette, Marcus Semien, Luis Robert Jr., Jorge Polanco, Freddy Peralta and Devin Williams joining the team to replace the departing Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil and Edwin Diaz. Meanwhile, the aging Phillies picked up a respectable five straight votes as they look to win their third straight division title, while only one of our writers was brave enough to pick Atlanta, a team whose bad injury luck from last season appears to have carried over into 2026, with Spencer Strider (oblique), Spencer Schwellenbach (elbow) and Hurston Waldrep (elbow) all set to miss the start of the season.

NL Central Picks

It seems like every year that the Brewers are pegged for a mediocre record by the projections and then go on to win the division anyway. This year, just four of our experts think that will happen, with the majority of us picking the Cubs to win their first division title since 2020. This is one of the more wide-open divisions in baseball, though, so keep an eye on both the Pirates and Reds, who are live underdogs at +600 according to the books and who both earned at least one vote in our poll. Pittsburgh hasn't won a division title since 1992 (back when they played in the NL East) but managed to convince two of our writers that this is their year — though sending top prospect Konnor Griffin to the minors to start the season probably hasn't earned them any good karma.

NL West Picks

You probably saw this one coming. The Dodgers are back-to-back World Series champs and have won this division for 12 of the last 13 years. They took their foot off the gas a bit in last year's regular season and finished third in the National League with "just" 93 wins, a mere three games ahead of the Padres, but neither the odds nor our experts see much chance of that happening again. Apparently when you add Kyle Tucker and Edwin Diaz to the best team in baseball without losing any key contributors and get a full season of Shohei Ohtani as a two-way player, nobody is willing to bet against you.

AL Pennant Winner

Eight teams have odds of +1500 or better to win the AL Pennant — the six listed above as well as the Astros and Orioles (both +1000) — and most of those teams could find at least one supporter among our experts. While the odds give the Yankees the best shot, however, they were tied for second in our poll with just three votes, well behind the Mariners with nine. Fresh off a heartbreaking loss in Game 7 of the ALCS, Seattle is a popular pick among our writers to reach their first World Series in franchise history. Meanwhile, the defending AL champion Blue Jays received just one vote, the same number as the Rangers, who've had just one winning season in the last nine years.

NL Pennant Winner

It's hard to pick against a team that's won back-to-back NL pennants, though at least this poll wasn't a clean sweep for the Dodgers. The only other NL team to receive multiple votes was the Mets, who last reached the World Series in 2015. Meanwhile, the Cubs earned a single vote to get back to the World Series for the first time in a decade. The Phillies (+800), Braves (+1100) and Brewers (+1600), who had the best record in baseball last year, all have a reasonable chance at winning the pennant according to the National League Pennant odds, but none of them could find a single supporter among our experts.

World Series

Finally, a poll involving the Dodgers which doesn't see them finish as runaway favorites. While they earned more than twice as many votes as other team among the RotoWire MLB staff, over half of us think they will fail in their quest to repeat. The Mariners and Mets — who rank third and fourth, respectively, in the World Series odds — both earned multiple votes, though the Yankees, who have the second-best World Series odds and were picked by three of our writers to make the Fall Classic, didn't receive a single vote to win it all.

Dodgers-Mariners was easily the most common matchup in our poll, with seven of our writers picking those two West Coast clubs, four of whom predicted the Mariners to emerge victorious. Other matchups receiving multiple votes were Dodgers-Red Sox (three), Dodgers-Yankees (three) and Mets-Mariners (two).

Full Set of Picks