Despite jus tone weekend of the regular season in the books, we only have five undefeated teams remaining. That's right: Only five of the 15 opening series resulted in sweeps. Does this mean that the five teams that were able to finish sweeps are the best teams in the world? Well, not quite. Does poor play in the first weekend of the season mean much? Not really. Let's not completely overreact. Some of these teams are very dangerous, though.
Let's rank them, figuring out which teams we should be taking seriously.
5. Miami Marlins
No disrespect to the Miami Marlins, but does an opening series matter less when you're matched up against the Colorado Rockies? It would have been disappointing if the Marlins didn't sweep arguably the worst team in baseball.
With that being said, this Marlins team has the potential to be sneaky good. Both Sandy Alcantara and Eury Perez completed seven innings in their season debuts, and promising young outfielder Owen Caissie finished off the sweep by hitting a walk-off home run. Their starting pitching, assuming Alcantara is back to his ace form and Perez can stay healthy, is strong, and they even improved their bullpen by signing Pete Fairbanks. I have questions about the lineup, but maybe Caissie can live up to his high potential immediately and Kyle Stowers can have another great year when he's back healthy.
Miami won 79 games in 2025, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them be even better this season. I still think they're probably unlikely to make the playoffs, though, and if they do get in, it's hard to envision this team going on any sort of magical run.
4. Milwaukee Brewers
The Milwaukee Brewers were MLB's best team in the 2025 regular season, so I wish I could give them more respect after starting this season 3-0 (and with a league-leading +19 run differential), but two things must be taken into account. First, they played the Chicago White Sox; as fun as the White Sox can be this season, and as much as I think that team is on the right path, they are still a ways away from contending. Second, we've seen this movie many times before.
Milwaukee has made the postseason in seven of the last eight years, and they still managed to win 86 games the one time they missed out on October. They've been consistently awesome in the regular season, and then fall short time and time again when the chips are down. Sure enough: Despite having the league's best record in the 2025 regular season, they were swept in a very uncompetitive NLCS by the Los Angeles Dodgers. They haven't won a postseason game past the NLCS since 2018, and they haven't won a [ennant since 1982.
Maybe the Brewers are disrespected in the regular season, and we should expect them to get back to the postseason again in 2026. But does anyone really think this is the year they get over the hump? I mean, their roster looks worse than it did last season after trading Freddy Peralta. They deserve credit for finding ways to win despite the near-constant roster churn in recent years, but that never translates to October. I don't think this year will be any different in that regard.
3. Toronto Blue Jays
The Toronto Blue Jays won the AL pennant, had a huge offseason and then went out and swept the Athletics, a team many think could be a postseason dark horse. I might be disrespecting them by keeping them out of the top two, but I have a couple of concerns.
First and foremost, with the Jays two outs shy of an Opening Day win, Jeff Hoffman surrendered a game-tying home run to Shea Langeliers. Sure, Langeliers is an unbelievable player and could be in for a huge year, but Hoffman has a clear home run problem stretching back years now. He allowed 15 regular-season home runs in 2025 and then famously blew the save in Game 7 of the World Series by giving up a game-tying dinger to Miguel Rojas. Starting off this season by blowing a save via a home run is nothing short of brutal. Can he be trusted in the ninth inning?
Second, just how good is this lineup? Doubting them could backfire, but the Jays lost Bo Bichette and did not replace him with a proven star. Maybe Kazuma Okamoto can fill those shoes — he certainly looked good this weekend — but does Toronto have enough beyond George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to slug their way back to the World Series? I understand that Bichette missed much of the postseason as well, but he was instrumental in getting the Jays to that point to begin with.
2. New York Yankees
Not only did the New York Yankees sweep the San Francisco Giants on the road, but they did so while allowing a total of one run in three games — which didn't even come across to score until the third inning of the series finale. Oh yeah, and they did this while Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon and Clarke Schmidt are all on the Injured List.
A lot of Yankees fans are irate that Brian Cashman opted to run back a team that fell short in last year's ALDS, but they're forgetting the fact that their lineup led the Majors in runs scored and home runs by fairly wide margins in the regular season and scored enough runs to win in that Jays series, too. It was the pitching that simply wasn't good enough. One series against a shaky Giants lineup doesn't mean much, but the Yankees do have a lot of rotation talent to dream on.
A group featuring a healthy Cole, Max Fried, Cam Schlittler and Rodon is as good as it gets, and the bullpen, while it could use another arm, isn't bad, especially if Camilo Doval looks as good as he did this weekend moving forward. The Yankees have burned me in October before, and another cold October from Aaron Judge will be impossible to overcome, but assuming Judge is Judge and the pitching is as good as I think it'd be, why shouldn't New York be seen as AL favorites?
1. Los Angeles Dodgers
We can argue about which undefeated AL East team deserves to be No. 2 in these rankings, but what cannot be disputed is that the Los Angeles Dodgers are the best team in baseball. They did not play their best baseball this weekend by any means, yet it felt like they sleepwalked to a sweep over an Arizona Diamondbacks team that could be in the Wild Card hunt.
Their superstars — Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Tucker, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman — combined to go 8-for-42 with just three extra-base hits, yet they still swept anyway, and did so by pulling out close games. Their depth in all facets is just absurd.
And what sets this year's team apart from others is Edwin Diaz pitching the ninth inning. His new-look intro might not be great, but Diaz pitched two hitless innings and recorded two saves this weekend. The one true weakness the 2025 Dodgers had was the bullpen; now, they have arguably the best closer in the world locking down games for them.
No MLB team is truly unbeatable, but this Dodgers club is as good as it gets. It's going to take a lot to unseat them from the top of any power rankings.
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