MLB Power Rankings: Who needs a salary cap? Why almost every team is still in playoff contention

As we all know, the Major League Baseball season is 162 games. Sixty-five of those games equals roughly 40% of the season and all 30 teams right now are in the vicinity of 65 games played. As such, it's safe to say we've seen just about 40% of the 2026 season and that isn't a small sample.

>Glancing around the league, we certainly have a good idea which teams are legitimate contenders and which look like non-contenders here for the long haul. If we look at the actual logistics of the situation, though, it's awfully difficult to find more than a handful of teams that are definitely not contenders.

>Take last season, for example. The Guardians were down 15 ½ games in the AL Central in July and won that division. That's an extreme example, obviously, and we can't always count on extreme. We have other examples of teams coming back that weren't extreme, though.

>We could keep going. Comebacks like this happen every year, especially nowadays with 12 of our 30 teams making the postseason.

>A cursory glance at the standings now, after establishing how seemingly easy it is for teams to come back from six or seven games out to make the playoffs, says that almost everyone is still a contender.

>Consider where things stand with some of these either greatly disappointing or just sub-par -- or even bad -- teams.

>There are only three teams in all of baseball farther out of a playoff spot than 5 ½ games: the Angels (7 ½ out), Giants (7 ½) and Rockies (10 ½).

>As far as I'm concerned, that still means we've got 27 teams with a realistic chance of winning the World Series here in 2026. Not too bad for a sport that is supposedly so unfair due to the lack of a salary cap, huh? And, sure, there are plenty of teams technically within shouting distance of the playoffs that I would say have basically no real shot to win it all, but I'm not gonna tell their fans to avoid hope. Our old, good friend Red once learned from Andy that hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.