Which Division Will Be the Best in Baseball This Season?

The 2025 MLB season is only a few days old. It’s far too soon to say with any certainty how any of the postseason races will play out.

We know the Dodgers will be hard to beat. We know the White Sox will be hard to watch. We know the NL East will be a thrilling three-team race, while the AL East is anyone’s to win.

But do we know which of MLB’s six divisions will be the cream of this year’s crop?

You know what? Before I can answer that question, I need to take a step back. Does anyone even know which division was the best in baseball in 2024?

That’s a difficult one. It depends on the criteria. I’m honestly not sure which barometer of success to use.

The NL West won the most collective games. The AL Central and NL East each had three teams make the playoffs. The NL Central was the only division in which every team won at least 75 games. The AL East had the highest run differential.

Truth be told, the only division I can’t make a case for is the AL West. Their five teams won the fewest collective games and finished with the worst run differential. Their only postseason representative was the Astros, whose 88 wins wouldn’t have even earned them a Wild Card berth in the NL.

All that to say, if there isn’t an easy way to identify the best division in baseball from last year, there isn’t going to be an easy way to predict the best division for 2025. Still, I think it’s a fun exercise, so I’m going to give it my best shot.

Which Division Will Win the Most Games?

This is the simplest yardstick we can use. It’s also a question that comes with a pretty straightforward answer: the AL East.

The AL East doesn’t have any basement-dwellers. It’s the only division in which all five teams could reasonably expect to finish above .500.

As I sit down to write this piece, the simulated standings from PECOTA have the five teams in the AL East combining to win about 420 games, seven more than any other division. Similarly, the projected standings at FanGraphs have the AL East teams winning about six more total games than the next-best division, the NL West.

Which Division Will Have the Most Contending Teams?

In 2024, the AL Central was the only division to have four teams finish above .500. It was also the only division to have four teams finish within five games of a postseason berth.

Which division could have the most postseason contenders in 2025?

Once again, the AL East is the clear choice. All five AL East clubs have a real shot to compete for a playoff spot. According to FanGraphs, the Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, Blue Jays, and Rays all have better than 1-in-3 odds of making the postseason. Similarly, all five of those clubs have better than 1-in-5 odds, per PECOTA.

The AL Central is the only other division that even has four teams that currently look like legitimate contenders.

Projected Wins for Top Four Teams

Alright, let’s try to find a way to pick a division that isn’t the AL East.

The reason AL East was the obvious answer to the first two questions I posed is that the AL East doesn’t have any rebuilding clubs. The best teams in the NL West and NL East are just as good (if not better!) than the best teams in the AL East, but their projected win totals are being dragged by the likes of the Rockies and Marlins.

So, I wondered: Which division is projected to win the most games if you remove the projected last-place finisher?

I ran the numbers using the odds from both FanGraphs and PECOTA. Either way, it wasn’t the close. The AL East’s advantage disappeared. The NL West came out on top.

Yet, once again, I’m faced with an outlier problem. The Dodgers project to be so much better than every other team in the sport that they’re skewing the data.

How much credit should the NL West get for having the one team that’s projected to be so much better than every other team in either league? It’s a question with no good answer.

Which Division Will Have the Most World Series Contenders?

Perhaps this is the best question to ask. It allows us to largely overlook the projected fifth-place finishers, but it doesn’t give the NL West too much credit for the Dodgers and their ridiculous win total projections.

You could make an argument for the AL East or the NL West as the answer here, but I think the NL East has the strongest case. All three of the Braves, Mets, and Phillies are bona fide World Series contenders. In fact, I think they might be the second, third, and fourth-best teams in the sport.

The NL West has a strong top three in the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Padres. The AL East should have a strong top three, too, though I’m honestly not yet sure which three it will be.

Still, the NL East is the only division where I’d argue it’s more likely than not that all of the top three teams make the playoffs. And once they’re there, I wouldn’t be surprised to see any of them go all the way.

Which Division Will Be the Best in Baseball?

I loved thinking about this question, even though there’s no good way to answer it. Before I started writing, my gut told me to pick the AL East. That’s definitely the easiest case to make.

However, now that I’ve spent some time considering it, I can see the arguments for the NL West or the NL East as well.

As for the other three divisions, well, they could certainly surprise us. After all, you could make a pretty strong case that AL Central was the most successful division in MLB in 2024. Who would have believed that at this time last year?

So, all we can do is wait and see what surprises 2025 has in store. And then, once the season has wrapped up, we can start this debate all over again.

All projected win totals and postseason odds were taken down prior to first pitch on March 31.