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Congratulations on making the playoffs in your fantasy baseball league. If you’re in a rotisserie league, kudos on being in the thick of things at this late seasonal stage. Now comes the challenging part — the four-week mad dash to the finish line during which head-to-head play can be most unforgiving.
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Yes, it’s win-or-go-home time, where the stakes each day are amplified, you’ll demand the most from every facet of your roster and mistakes are simply unacceptable.
Being properly prepared for what lies ahead is paramount, and that’s where this column comes in. What follows is my “Playoff Playbook,” a comprehensive guide to head-to-head playoff and September baseball in general. It’s here to help speed your process at a time where things might feel exceedingly busy.
Look, we get it. It has been vacation season, and fantasy football draft preparation is increasingly stealing your attention — not to mention exhaustion! Wednesday, after all, represents the 154th day of Major League Baseball’s 186-day marathon season.
From schedule analysis, to the importance of motivation in your players’ matchups, to week-by-week analysis, to pitcher workload worries, we’ve got it all covered as you formulate your playoff and stretch-run strategy.
Away we go!
The shorter the span of season being examined, the greater the deviation in strength of matchups. Over 162 games, one team’s MLB schedule isn’t demonstrably different from any other, at least not to the extent that one should entirely draft from one team over another simply because of the schedules. However, over four weeks and 25 games — the average number remaining per team — the schedule absolutely could prove to be the deciding factor in a fantasy baseball playoff matchup.
For example, the following three teams have especially favorable hitting matchups over the remaining four-week span, meaning you should be prioritizing starting and/or adding their players off the waiver wire.
Cal Raleigh has rediscovered his power stroke, which bodes well for September stats. AP1. Seattle Mariners: If they manage to advance to the MLB playoffs, their super-soft remaining schedule will play a big part in it. The Mariners might play in one of baseball’s most pitcher-oriented environments, but consider that among their remaining 13 home games, 10 will be played against teams that rank among the bottom 10 in staff ERA — and all 13 are against teams with a worse-than-league-average ERA.
Among their 12 road games, three apiece will be played at Colorado’s Coors Field and Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, the majors’ two most hitter-friendly venues. Cal Raleigh had his first career three-HR game on Monday and has six homers in his past nine contests. He’s still on the waiver wire in 18.1% of leagues.
2. Detroit Tigers: They’ve been a better offense recently than you might think! Their 5.14 runs per game since the All-Star break rank third best and among their final 12 home games are nothing but matchups against teams that rank in the league’s bottom 10 in ERA. Another three games against the Minnesota Twins in Target Field to begin Week 22 also suits Tigers hitters Max Clark and Gleyber Torres well.
3. New York Mets: They have hardly been a throwaway offense of late, averaging a nearly-league-average 4.31 runs per game since the All-Star break. Plus, the outside chance that Juan Soto might return from his calf injury for a brief September stint beefs up the Mets’ overall offensive prospects.
Among their final 25 games are matchups with the San Francisco Giants (Sept. 4-6), Baltimore Orioles (Sept. 14-16) and Washington Nationals (Sept. 25-27). Additionally, the Mets always seem to bring their best to games against their Subway Series rivals the New York Yankees (Sept. 11-13). Hint, hint: Go get Monday’s recommended pickup, Carson Benge!
The following three teams have the toughest go of it, hitting-wise.
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1. Cincinnati Reds: Their September schedule is absolutely brutal. Sure, Great American Ball Park is an extremely hitter-friendly environment and the Reds do have 13 remaining games (among 25 total) there, but they all come against contending teams with better-than-league-average ERAs. Now listen to this road schedule: @LAD-3, @MIL-3, @ATL-3, @TOR-3. Yikes!
2. Philadelphia Phillies: No, don’t go dropping Kyle Schwarber outright. Still, the Phillies have one the tougher treks throughout our fantasy playoffs, with 13 games among their final 25 against top-10 teams in terms of ERA.
3. Miami Marlins: Besides playing in one of the most pitcher-friendly environments — LoanDepot Park, where they’ll play 12 of their final 25 games — the Marlins also have remaining trips to Arizona (Sept. 14-16), San Diego (Sept. 18-20) and Chicago to face the Cubs (Sept. 22-24).
Shifting our focus to the pitchers, the following three teams have the most favorable pitching matchups over the season’s final four weeks.
September’s schedule favors Jacob deGrom, a pitcher now with over 2,000 strikeouts under his belt. AP1. Texas Rangers: It helps that they’ll play 16 of their final 25 games at Globe Life Field, one of the most pitcher-friendly environments in baseball over the last three seasons, as well as another three in Seattle’s T-Mobile Park. As a team, the Rangers have a home ERA (3.62) far better than on the road (4.73) and they’re a playoff-hopeful squad that will surely lean on Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi (currently on the IL) as much as they possibly can. Incidentally, rotation fill-in Cal Quantrill has averaged 17.8 fantasy points across his last five starts.
2. Yankees: Their September schedule is especially soft — and more so on the pitching side, where they’ve achieved an MLB-leading 2.82 ERA since the All-Star break. Injuries to Max Fried (although he might return within the week) and Ryan Weathers have depleted the Yankees’ pitching depth, but they face an especially soft schedule over the first round of the ESPN playoffs (Weeks 22-23, Aug. 31-Sept. 13), when they face three teams that rank in the bottom 10 in runs scored per game as well as the Rockies at Yankee Stadium.
3. Chicago White Sox: Their surprisingly productive, widely available pitching staff has an especially strong championship-round span (Weeks 24-25, Sept. 14-27), during which time they have great matchups against the Cleveland Guardians, Kansas City Royals and Colorado Rockies (that series is in Chicago). The White Sox should also be in the MLB playoff race right up until the last days of the season.
Finally, here are the three pitching staffs with the toughest remaining matchups.
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1. Reds: Boy, if you thought their hitting matchups were rough … a solid 10 of those 13 matchups at hitter-friendly Great American Ball Park come against three of the four highest-scoring offenses (Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs), and they’ll also play nine of their 12 road games against top-eight scoring offenses (Dodgers, Brewers and Atlanta Braves). Ace Chase Burns faces a likely innings cap — we’ll expand on that in a bit — and the rest of the staff should be almost universally avoided.
2. Cubs: They don’t have it especially easy down the stretch, with seven games against the Brewers, three apiece against the Pittsburgh Pirates and Braves, and three on the road both at Great American Ball Park and at the Boston Red Sox. The Cubs’ pitching staff, particularly Matthew Boyd and Shota Imanaga, has leaned matchups-oriented for much of the year, and there are a dwindling number of good ones left.
3. Giants: Well, they’ve got that pitcher-friendly home ballpark, but three of their 12 remaining games there are against the Dodgers and another six are against playoff-hopeful San Diego Padres and Twins teams. The Giants also have three road games against the Dodgers, three road against the underrated Pirates offense and another at the Braves.
Just like in fantasy football, fantasy baseball’s head-to-head playoff structure has the disadvantage of aligning with the stage of the schedule where certain games have no real-life relevance. As MLB playoff spots begin to be clinched in mid-September, many teams that are locked into postseason seeding rest their stars and shuffle their rotations to line up for October series, while mathematically eliminated teams rest injured players and sometimes give unproven players more playing time.
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The 2026 season should see a majority of teams knowing their fates at least one week in advance of the regular season’s final day. As it is, the Dodgers, Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays each have magic numbers of 20 or less to clinch playoff spots. In fact, the Dodgers’ magic number to clinch the National League West title is 20, and the Brewers’ magic number to clinch the NL’s No. 1 seed is 29.
Only eight teams began play on Tuesday with between a 15% and 85% chance of making the playoffs: Arizona Diamondbacks, White Sox, Guardians, Houston Astros, Twins, Padres, Mariners, Rangers. These are the teams from which you most often want to draw your matchups, as they’re the most likely to roll out their regular lineups and be least restrictive of their starting pitchers’ workloads deep into the season.
From outside that group of eight teams, playoff motivation might have a major say in the finishes of the following fantasy-relevant players:
1. Shohei Ohtani‘s pitching regimen, as the Dodgers will almost assuredly design his schedule and ramp-up process to have him on the mound as a full-time starter as close to the time the team begins its first playoff series as possible.
2. The Yankees might well take it especially slowly with Aaron Judge‘s return from a rib injury if they lock into the American League’s top wild-card spot, waiting deep into September to activate him and giving him frequent days off.
3. The Pirates could choose to prematurely end Paul Skenes‘ season, recognizing both his diminished fastball velocity and his 4.42 ERA in seven second-half starts, which has caused his overall 2026 ERA to increase by more than one and three-quarters runs compared to 2025.
Getting to the championship round requires success in the opening weeks of the playoffs. Therefore, it’s beneficial to examine each week’s individual scheduling nuances, to maximize matchup opportunities over each playoff stage.
The Forecaster, of course, will keep these weekly matchups updated every Friday.
Week 22 (Aug. 31-Sept. 6): The AL is the busier of the two leagues, as 10 of the 14 teams scheduled for seven games during Week 22, hail from the Junior Circuit. The Astros (CWS-4, ARI-3) and Rays (NYM-3, @TEX-4) most stand out from that bunch. However, the highlight here is the NL’s Rockies, who play one of their few “entirely at Coors Field” weeks (BAL-3, STL-3). This far out, Peter Lambert and Troy Melton look like great two-start values.
Week 23 (Sept. 7-13): The Braves and Phillies are the only teams scheduled to play full seven-game weeks, but four of them will be played against each other and their other opponents are fellow playoff hopefuls (Braves vs. TB-3, Astros vs. HOU-3). The Blue Jays will matchup especially well on offense, with three games at Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park and three back home against the Orioles. Meanwhile, the Red Sox have a week of great pitching matchups (LAA-3, KC-3). The Padres also have a great all-around schedule (WSH-3, @SF-3).
Week 24 (Sept. 14-20): The Nationals draw the short end of the stick with a five-game week. This is one of the only two weeks all season in which the Rockies are scheduled for a full seven games at Coors Field, but it has them facing two of the tougher pitching staffs in the process (SD-4, SEA-3). The Padres (@COL-4, MIA-3) and Mariners (@LAA-3, @COL-3) get some of the best all-around hitting matchups as a result of their trips to Coors, while the St. Louis Cardinals have a dream week of pitching matchups at home (SF-3, WSH-3).
Week 25 (Sept. 21-27): The final week of the regular season sees the Rays and Yankees playing a Tuesday doubleheader, giving them the only seven-game weeks. On offense, the Braves could be facing teams that are “playing out the string” with their best starters shut down for the season (CIN-3, @MIA-3) — again, more on those in a moment. The White Sox also stand out on both sides of the ball (@KC-3, COL-3).
As alluded to earlier, teams prefer to keep their younger starters’ innings totals in check, with most trying to keep pitchers from exceeding their prior year’s (or professional high) total by no greater than 40 innings. Often, they do this by skipping starts, providing extra rest between outings or shutting pitchers down altogether before the season ends, all of which can dramatically impact the competitive field during the fantasy playoffs.
As soon as the Pirates run out of time to make the playoffs, expect Braxton Ashcraft to get shut down. Denis Poroy-Imagn ImagesAmong pitchers rostered in at least 25% of ESPN leagues, the following are at the greatest risk of an interruption to their pitching routines during September.1. Braxton Ashcraft, SP, Pirates (90.6% rostered): The A-number-one workload-worry pitcher, Ashcraft is on pace for throwing 70 innings more than his 2025 total. He has averaged 7.4% fewer strikeouts since the All-Star break than before it and his Pirates are 6.5 games back in the NL wild-card race. The Pirates will almost assuredly shut him down the moment they’re officially eliminated from contention.
2. Chase Burns, SP, Reds (98.3%): A top-12 scoring starting pitcher thus far, Burns, at 23 years old, finds himself on pace for 61 more innings than last year. His Reds are also even further back in the NL wild-card race (9.0 games).
3. Jacob Misiorowski, SP, Brewers (99.6%): Fantasy’s top-scoring pitcher, Misiorowski is 46 innings ahead of his 2025 pace with the playoffs effectively certain for the Brewers. He’s a high-effort hurler and we’ve already gotten hints of the fatigue factor with his skipping the All-Star Game, getting extended rest following the break, and pitching only four innings in his first second-half start. Misiorowski should remain excellent whenever he pitches, but expect it to be slightly less often down the stretch, either in terms of extra days between outings or being on pitch counts within them.
4. Cade Cavalli, SP, Nationals (67.9%): One of the hottest pitchers in baseball, Cavalli’s streak of nine consecutive quality starts has him on pace to throw 56 more innings than he has previously in any of his five prior professional seasons. His Nationals are also 9.5 games back in the NL wild-card race.
5. Payton Tolle, SP, Red Sox (75.9%): He’d be a tough pitcher for the Red Sox to shelve, being that he’s the team’s second-highest scorer in fantasy points. Still, he’s on pace for 57 innings more than his 2025 total with prospective playoff games for the Red Sox to consider. He might have to remain on that pace in order to guarantee October for his team, but fatigue could affect his September stats.
6. Cam Schlittler, SP, Yankees (99.2%): Another high-effort hurler and the No. 2 pitcher in fantasy points, Schlitter’s pace for 45 more innings than he amassed in 2025 isn’t outrageous until you consider prospective October frames. The Yankees, a near-lock for playoff baseball, could somewhat lighten his September load.
7. Kyle Leahy, RP/SP, Cardinals (34.7%): Baseball’s ERA leader (1.44, with a minimum of 10 starts) over the past two months, Leahy has already seen his workload begin to be reined in, as he threw only 63 pitches and lasted just four innings in his Sunday turn.
8. Parker Messick, SP, Guardians (95.0%): Another pitcher essential to his team’s playoff chances, Messick is on a pace for 50 innings more than his previous professional high as a 25-year-old. The Guardians’ deadline acquisition of Foster Griffin might have been a small step in their trying to ease the burden on pitchers like Messick.
9. Eury Perez, SP, Marlins (82.2%): He’s 23 and has a history of arm issues. He’s also on pace to end up 37 innings ahead of 2025. If the Marlins fall out of the race in advance of the season’s final week, here’s a high-probability pitcher to be shut down.
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