The 2025 fantasy baseball season reaches its final act in Week 26.
Every team plays exactly six games -- 24 teams have Monday off and the other six have Thursday off -- and, as has become tradition in recent years, every game on Sunday begins between 3:05 p.m. ET and 3:20 p.m. ET. For fantasy managers, that heightens the excitement of league championship races, with titles potentially hinging upon a single pitch thrown on the final Sunday.
The final week often sees teams locked into playoff positioning resting players and/or shuffling pitching rotations in preparation of the Wild Card Series, which begin on Tuesday, Sept. 30. At publishing time, the Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs had already clinched postseason berths, with the Phillies already securing the National League East title, while the Brewers have a realistic chance at securing the NL Central title and the San Diego Padres a playoff spot before Week 26 begins. Every other playoff-hopeful team has a magic number of at least six, so most teams will be playing meaningful baseball at least during the early stages of the week.
Playoff-motivated teams are the ones you'll most want to draw from for your fantasy lineups. Among teams within two games in the standings of either a division title, wild-card spot or playoff positioning involving home-field advantage at publishing time are the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Guardians, Houston Astros, New York Mets, New York Yankees (leading in the American League wild-card race, where the top wild-card team hosts the Wild Card Series) and Seattle Mariners. Expanding that group to teams within three games brings the Detroit Tigers (leading for the AL's No. 2 seed, which brings with it a first-round playoff bye), Los Angeles Dodgers, Brewers (leading for the NL's No. 1 seed), Phillies (trailing the Brewers for the No. 1 seed), Padres, San Francisco Giants and Toronto Blue Jays.
In an interesting twist in the standings, the Guardians, 12 ½ games back of the Tigers in the AL Central as recently as the morning of Aug. 26, have won 17 of 22 games since to narrow their standings gap to 3 ½ games. Assuming that gap doesn't expand during the Sept. 19-21 weekend, the two teams meet for a critical three-game series from Tuesday through Thursday at Cleveland's Progressive Field.
The Diamondbacks and Red Sox, both of whom are fighting for wild-card spots, face nothing but opponents who have at least 96% odds of advancing to the postseason in Week 26. The Guardians, Tigers, Dodgers, Brewers and Padres all also face opponents with realistic chances to at least qualify as wild-card teams (minimum 4.7% playoff odds at publishing time). The Astros and Yankees are the only two (realistically) playoff-contending teams who play nothing but mathematically eliminated opponents.