MLB 2024 Playoff Predictions: Roundup of Expert Picks for the World Series Series | News, results, highlights, statistics and rumors

Major League Baseball's postseason is harder to predict in its current format.

In the last two seasons, only one top three seed made it to the World Series. The wild card round fueled the playoff push of three of the last four Fall Classic participants.

However, the 2024 postseason appears to be different because of the teams that are on top in the regular season.

The New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Guardians and Philadelphia Phillies are all well-equipped to win a championship, but will all have to wait a week to play their first postseason game.

ESPN's Jeff Passan believes one of these teams will win the Fall Classic in October.

Passan picked the Phillies to defeat the Houston Astros in the World Series. This matchup would buck the trend of the last two years but would continue Houston's success in the postseason.

The Astros made it to the World Series in 2021 and 2022. They lost to Atlanta in 2021 and beat the Phillies in 2022. They also advanced to the ALCS in 2023.

Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller is on the same wavelength as Passan when it comes to the National League. He predicted that the No. 1 and/or No. 2 seed would advance to the NLCS.

It's a bold prediction based on the results of the last two seasons in the Netherlands. The highest seed to reach the NLCS in the new format is No. 4.

The Dodgers and Phillies were the class of the NL for most of the regular season. The Phillies have been close to winning the World Series in recent years, while the Dodgers now have Shohei Ohtani in the lineup to avoid a third straight early exit.

In his bold postseason predictions, CBS Sports' Mike Axisa predicted that the first-round bye “will actually be a good thing.”

“The fact is, this is only the third year of this postseason format. The last two years are not nearly enough to say with certainty that missing a round hurts more than it helps,” Axisa wrote.

A two-year sample size is incredibly small and teams should, at least in theory, get smarter about how they handle the week-long break before the start of the ALDS and NLDS on Saturday.

The four rosters of the teams with first-round byes are full of top-notch talent, but only time will tell if they buck the trend or the wild card teams continue to reign supreme.