History says one of these 7 teams should win the World Series

Who will win the 2026 World Series? That is a tough question, and the answer keeps changing. This baseball season has been full of surprises, with some of the best teams falling apart and some struggling teams suddenly playing great. To help figure out who has the best shot, experts looked at 13 different stats from past World Series champions.

The 2026 season has been a wild one. Teams like the Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Guardians, and New York Yankees started out strong but then slipped badly. At the same time, teams like the Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, and Philadelphia Phillies started playing much better. This back-and-forth makes it hard to know who is really good and who just got lucky.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, who have won the World Series two years in a row, are still the top favorites. But beyond the Dodgers, almost any team could make a run at the title. Experts looked at 13 stats to find patterns from World Series winners since 2002. They used those patterns to grade each team that has at least a small chance of winning.

The most important stat is called run differential, which measures how many more runs a team scores than it gives up. Almost all past World Series winners ranked in the top 14 teams in this stat by the All-Star break. The Dodgers ranked first, followed by the Brewers, Braves, Yankees, and Cubs. The Phillies and Blue Jays ranked much lower, which is a warning sign.

The second big stat is called Batting Win Probability Added, or WPA. This measures not just how well a team hits, but how well they hit at the most important moments in a game. Most World Series winners ranked in the top 19 teams in this stat. The Dodgers, Cubs, and Yankees all passed this test, but the Guardians and Red Sox did not.

After adding up all the scores, seven teams came out on top: the Yankees, Dodgers, Braves, Rays, Brewers, Cubs, and Mariners. These teams scored at least 80 percent on the full checklist. The Yankees passed every single test, and the Dodgers passed all but one. These seven teams look most like past World Series champions.

Three other teams — the Guardians, Phillies, and Blue Jays — failed more than 60 percent of the weighted tests. That is a lot of warning signs to overcome. Even so, baseball is full of surprises, and any team can get hot at the right time. In the end, history can narrow the field, but it cannot predict everything.