At MLB's halfway point, only the most hopeless teams are out of playoff race

With most teams having played their 81st game, the 2025 Major League Baseball season is at its official halfway point. In what is probably an exciting development for the league, the overwhelming majority of teams are still in reasonable playoff contention.

As of Thursday evening, 23 of the league's 30 teams were within seven games of a playoff spot, with 19 of them as close as four games. 

At this point it's almost harder to be out of the playoff race than it is to be sticking around in it. It's a damning indictment of that small handful of franchises that are not actually still in it.

The Baltimore Orioles, the Athletics, Chicago White Sox, Miami Marlins, Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates and Colorado Rockies are the only teams that likely do not have a reasonable postseason hope this season.

Baltimore is easily the most disappointing out of that group because it was one of the best teams in baseball the past two years and has an outstanding core of young offensive talent. A lot of those bats have regressed this season, while the pitching staff has not been able to overcome the loss of Corbin Burnes in free agency. 

The other six teams represent baseball's most hopeless and most inept franchises, and all of them should be embarrassed that they are not even within striking distance of playoff contention by the end of June.

Four of those teams are on pace to lose at least 99 games, two of them are on pace to lose over 100 and one of them, the Rockies, is on pace to shatter the modern-era single-season loss record that was just set a year ago by the White Sox. 

There is a lot made about the economic imbalance in baseball where teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets can outspend everybody. But with Major League Baseball expanding the playoff field — again — to 12 teams, it is easier than ever to not only make the playoffs, but to also just even pretend to be a playoff contender. 

Beyond that, when teams do get into the playoffs the fact the wild-card round is now a best-of-three series, as opposed to the old one-game playoff, gives teams more margin for error and makes it so that just sneaking in with a couple of good pitchers can give you a chance to go on a serious run toward the World Series. 

Not every team has bottomless pits of money to spend, but it's not asking a lot or setting a high bar to expect teams to be able to stay close in this current Major League era. The overwhelming majority of the league has figured out how to do it with both large and small budgets.

The teams failing to do so this season are letting their fans down, and they have nobody to blame but themselves.