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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. Entering Week 26, the Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays had already clinched postseason berths, with the Phillies and Brewers already securing division titles and the Brewers a first-round playoff bye. The San Diego Padres have a magic number (total of their wins and nearest contender's losses needed to clinch) of one to advance to October. Every other playoff-hopeful team has a magic number of at least three, 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 or a first-round bye are the Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Guardians, Detroit Tigers, 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, but also two games back of the Blue Jays for the AL East title), Seattle Mariners (leading in the AL West and two games ahead for a first-round bye) and Blue Jays. Expanding that group to teams within three games brings the Cubs, Dodgers, Brewers (leading for the NL's No. 1 seed), Phillies (trailing the Brewers for the No. 1 seed), Padres and San Francisco Giants into the mix. 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 20 of 26 games since to narrow their standings gap to a single game. 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 85% odds of advancing to the postseason. The Tigers, Dodgers, Brewers and Padres all also face opponents with realistic chances to at least qualify as wild-card teams (minimum 6.4% playoff odds at publishing time). The Astros and Yankees are the only two (realistically) playoff-contending teams who play nothing but mathematically eliminated opponents.
Lineup lock timesScheduling quirks for Week 26Starting pitchers for Week 26Hitting charts for Week 26
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