Ranking MLB's 6 biggest disappointments of 2026 regular season

Gabe Lacques, USA TODAYMon, September 14, 2026 at 9:15 PM UTC

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It’s no accident that a team with a losing record might reach the postseason for the first time in a full Major League Baseball season.

You have to have a lot of terrible play to pull that off. And, more specifically, a significant number of teams that greatly disappointed in 2026.

Oddly enough, many of them are still in playoff contention with roughly a dozen games remaining. That doesn’t mean they haven’t significantly underperformed, though, not unlike an NFL team canning its coach even if the bottom’s not falling out.

With that, we examine the six most disappointing teams this season – even if one or two still have a decent shot at the playoffs:

6. Toronto Blue Jays

Projected win totals (USA TODAY Sports, betting consensus): 91, 91.5

Record: 75-75

In a sense, the Blue Jays have played their way off this list, back at .500 and just a game out of the final American League wild-card spot. But they were expected to do much more than simply tread water.

Injuries have not helped, of course. They lost starter Cody Ponce for the season during his first start, waited three months for Shane Bieber to return from offseason arm woes and twice lost playoff hero Trey Yesavage to the injured list. Catcher Alejandro Kirk’s 63-week absence due to a left thumb fracture might have been the biggest blow, though somewhat amazingly, Toronto is 35-35 with Kirk in the lineup, 40-40 without him.

Still, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s mysterious power outage has been shadowing the team all season long. He finally hit his first homer of the year at Rogers Centre in the club’s 75th home game and still has just eight homers and a .700 OPS, nearly 10% below average.

There’s still time for Vlad and Co. to rewrite the script, particularly with the Blue Jays’ sell-but-upgrade maneuvering at the deadline that landed them starter José Soriano. But the window to prove they’re more than just a frustrating .500 team can’t narrow much more.

5. San Francisco Giants

Projected win totals: 82, 82.5

Record: 62-88

For all the furrowed brows and moderate takes regarding Tony Vitello’s leap from Tennessee to the Giants’ dugout, the season itself should have been relatively nondescript. All Vitello had to do was win between 79 and 81 games and the difference would have been virtually indistinguishable from predecessors Bob Melvin and Gabe Kapler.

Gentle reader, that’s not what happened.

It’s been a disaster by the Bay, most of the fingerprints on this crime scene belonging to club president Buster Posey but Vitello not exactly putting out the fire with his bullpen usage and lineup decisions. All of that’s to be expected from a first-year manager, but a franchise with a $200 million payroll was unwise to entrust such a steep learning curve to a coach conditioned for 70 games to be the entire season, not the 40% mark.

Now, thanks to injuries and trades, the Giants lineup looks largely like a Class AAA bunch, particularly now that Rafael Devers’ season was unfortunately halted due to a core injury as he closed in on a 40-homer campaign. Yet he’s proven he’ll be the lineup cornerstone the Giants envisioned when they dealt for him in June 2025.

Beyond that? Vitello will be back. Posey will be back. Bryce Eldridge, finally given runway at midseason, has an .814 OPS and looks like a potential star at 21. Yet a large portion of the rotation must be reconstructed and turnabouts in health and performance will be needed from veteran Posey signees Willy Adames and Matt Chapman.

The good news is the Giants won’t likely be on this list in 2027, simply because the expectations will be appropriately low.

4. New York Mets

Projected win totals: 87, 88.5

Record: 69-80

It’s easy to forget about these guys, given that it’s been nearly three months since the club mercifully fired manager Carlos Mendoza and some five months since a disastrous start that laid bare club president David Stearns’ questionable offseason.

Yeah, it’s true that he basically tried to replace Pete Alonso with Jorge Polanco, guaranteed Bo Bichette $42 million per year to switch leagues and positions and burned a decent chunk of prospect capital to acquire starter Freddy Peralta.

Nobody quibbled with that last move, because nobody expected Peralta’s hits per nine innings to soar by 51% from year-to-year, his ERA a ghastly 4.99. Peralta has been a little better after a trade to the Rays – posting a 0.97 WHIP in a much-smaller eight-start sample – though not so drastic that the water in Queens or the advanced info they shared with him somehow made him forget how to pitch.

On one hand, the 2026 outcome is a disaster relative to the $301 million invested in this roster. Perhaps the early injuries to Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto doomed them, though the confirmation that Brett Baty and Mark Vientos are below-league average hitters showcased that their organizational depth wasn’t what they thought it was.

Still, though, there were bright spots: Carson Benge is having a Rookie of the Year-caliber season. Fellow rookie A.J. Ewing’s speed and defense are useful in the outfield and on the basepaths. Soto is a machine, posting a 156 adjusted OPS and 25 homers in 98 games despite his calf and back woes. Jared Young, the 30-year-old first baseman, got to play more than 22 games for the first time in his career and flourished.

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And Nolan McLean more or less established himself as the ace, or at least a rotation fixture for years to come. Christian Scott’s late-season showing displayed he might be ready to join McLean in that group. The rest?

That’s up to Stearns, who must have a better winter (or spring, given the lockout) than he did the last time around.

3. Baltimore Orioles

Projected win totals: 85, 77.5

Record: 72-78

The thinking was that a young position-player nucleus simply needed to be supported by reliable starting pitching and a veteran slugger with clubhouse presence. Pete Alonso absolutely delivered on the latter. The pitching? Eh, Baltimore’s starter ERA dropped from 4.65, 24th in the majors, to 4.38 (20th) with the additions of Shane Baz and Chris Bassitt and the emergence of right-hander Brandon Young.

Yet that young nucleus continued an unsettling pattern of injury and regression and eventually was busted up after the startling Aug. 3 trade of catcher Adley Rutschman to the division rival Boston Red Sox. The club maintained the sheen of contention for the next month – until Rutschman came back to Baltimore, crushed two homers in his first game as a Camden Yards visitor and jump-started a four-game Red Sox sweep.

So now what?

You wonder if club president Mike Elias has the answers to that or is wondering the same thing himself. Is the club close enough to continue fortifying the core? Or is he eyeing the free-falling production of franchise shortstop Gunnar Henderson – whose weighted runs created plus has dropped from 154 in 2024 to 120 in 2025 to 100 this year – and thinking Henderson will get the Rutschman treatment at the deadline in 2027 or ’28?

Elias certainly seemed bent on getting something for Rutschman while he could. Henderson, a Scott Boras client, isn’t likely to agree to a club-friendly extension like teammates Samuel Basallo, Baz and Kyle Bradish did. And so what seemed like a limitless future when the club won 101 games in 2023 only brings more franchise inflection points.

Sure, the club’s failures this year aren’t too far off what some might have predicted. Yet the lackluster present and cloudy future makes this a decidedly disappointing campaign.

2. Detroit Tigers

Projected win totals: 90, 86.5

Record: 70-79

Much like the Mets, it’s easy to memory-hole how bright 2026 looked. And it’s easy to blame much of it on Tarik Skubal’s six-week absence to remove loose bodies from his left elbow. And to accept at face value that they “had” to deal him when they were just 2½ games out of a wild-card spot at the trade deadline.

But Skubal alone can’t account for the 13-26 record they posted while he was gone, nor the 23-24 mark while he was on the active roster. And all of that came with a Rookie of the Year effort from Kevin McGonigle, who’s banged out 151 hits and a .798 OPS.

It did not help that the large, go-for-it investment in lefty Framber Valdez was a mild disaster. Or that veteran Justin Verlander lasted just one start. And a lineup that had too many holes and punches out way too often (1,295 times, sixth in the AL) sputtered for much of the season.

Now, after World Series aspirations, the Tigers find themselves in the middle. The good news? McGonigle and rookie outfielder Max Clark are good enough to build around. All-Star Riley Greene still has two more seasons before free agency.

And perhaps the fruits of the Skubal deal – starter River Ryan, most notably – bubble up to Detroit in 2027. It still doesn’t seem right, though, that the Chicago White Sox are playing for the division title this week while the win-now Tigers are picking up the pieces.

1. Seattle Mariners

Projected win totals: 92, 90.5

Record: 70-80

The phrase “World Series hangover” gets tossed around pretty easily when it comes to the defending champion – and even the runner-up – in a given year. Yet it’s hard to recall a club’s LCS loss following it around like the Mariners’ seven-game elimination at the hands of Toronto a year ago.

George Springer didn’t just prevent the Mariners from their first World Series berth with a go-ahead three-run seventh-inning homer. The fallout has lingered, from the man who gave up the go-ahead shot (Eduardo Bazardo, who has a 4.04 ERA) to the manager pushing the buttons (Dan Wilson, beloved in Seattle yet seemingly exhausting fans’ patience).

Still, that doesn’t explain the travails of Cal Raleigh, who went from a 60-homer season to a .180 batting average and .660 OPS. Nor the weak production from Josh Naylor, a 2025 hero who re-signed for $92.5 million yet has 10 homers and a league-average OPS. Nor the enduring struggles of several members of the vaunted rotation, most notably Bryce Miller (4.56 FIP) and Bryan Woo, who has a 5.23 ERA in 16 road starts compared to 2.36 in 12 outings at home.

The Mariners have teased and frustrated plenty of times in recent years. Yet an underperformance this significant typically comes with consequences. Whether that’s simply a coaching staff shakeup or managerial or front office adjustments remains to be seen.

Amazingly, the Mariners aren’t totally out of it, entering play Monday, Sept. 14 five games out of the AL West lead with 14 to play. Yet they’d have to go 11-1 simply to get to .500 – an unlikely act from a club that’s been a big letdown all season.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ranking MLB's 6 biggest disappointments of 2026 regular season

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