By admin 
The New York Yankees are down to the final few games of the 2026 season, and there’s not much to play for with the AL East clinched by the Tampa Bay Rays and the No. 4 seed officially tied up, both on Tuesday.
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With five games in five days to go, the Yankees will want to finish strong just so they can go into next week’s wild-card series on a high note… but do they have to? What does recent history say about teams finishing strong?
Let’s break it down below, looking at teams who rode hot finishes to the World Series titles, teams whose poor play carried into October, teams who fizzled out despite hot stretch, etc.
Teams that rode hot finishes to World Series championships
2025 Los Angeles Dodgers (15-5 in last 20)
As much as the baseball world seemed to view the billion-dollar Los Angeles Dodgers as inevitable in 2025, they were actually quite mortal for much of the season, despite never being in danger of not winning the NL West due to the division’s lack of strength.
The Dodgers were 56-32 in early July, but stumbled to 22-32 in their ensuing 54 games to fall as low as just 14 games over .500 when they woke up on September 7 after their inexplicable loss to Baltimore, where Yoshinobu Yamamoto went from a no-hitter to the team losing via walk-off in the same inning.
That bewildering heartbreak sparked a fire. The incredibly stacked Dodgers finished 15-5, including a season-ending five-game winning streak. It wasn’t enough to get a first-round bye ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies or Milwaukee Brewers, but it gave them the energy they needed to run the table as the No. 3 seed.
2022 Houston Astros (23-9 in last 32)
The 2022 Houston Astros were, frankly, just an outstanding team. As the real last gasp of the AL’s premier team over the span of nearly a decade, it was consistent dominance from the 106-win ‘Stros, who never looked vulnerable.
They lost just four games in a row all season, which was in April. They closed the season just as hot as always, but gave themselves a sense of inevitability as the rest of the AL tried to convince themselves they had a chance. When the 99-win Yankees, who were .500 over the last 80 games, were the biggest challengers, that doesn’t say much.
2021 Atlanta Braves (12-2 in last 14)
This current edition of the Yankees could use a strong final week for morale, but they could also look toward the past to see a team that they might be able to mimic to win a World Series.
The 2021 Braves won it all despite their MVP-caliber talent, Ronald Acuña Jr., going down for the season with a torn ACL. Unlike the Yankees, they spent much of the summer not knowing if they’d even be a playoff team, hovering around .500 deep into August. As late as September 18, they were just 76-71 and a half-game up in a bad NL East.
However, they found the extra gear they were missing, which sparked the magical run that saw one of the most unlikely World Series champions finish 12-2 and comfortably in first place. The Yankees won’t have the pleasure of being division winners, but they’ll join the Braves in being forced to go on the road to win series without their best player.
Teams that carried poor play into October
2022 New York Mets (6-6 in last 12)
This one is a stretch, but the 2022 Mets are the personification of how vibes matter in the final week of the season.
The Mets won 101 games that year. Things were great all season long. They were coasting, taking a 10-game lead in the NL East in early June and maintaining it throughout the year. They never had a truly bad stretch, but the Braves played at an unbelievable level for the last few months of the season and closed the gap.
The Mets would’ve won the division if they had won that series in Atlanta in late September, and even could’ve if they hadn’t been swept, but that’s exactly what happened. They swept the Washington Nationals to end the season, but it didn’t matter. The vibes were ruined and put in the dirt for good by the San Diego Padres in the wild-card series.
2024 Philadelphia Phillies (4-7 in last 11)
Even if you clinch relatively early, it’s never a good idea to try and coast down the stretch; you want to keep the vibe of winning around as long as possible.
The Phillies were the class of the NL East in 2024, but they struggled in the season’s final few weeks, losing 7 of 11 games to end the campaign. After playoff success in the two prior seasons, they were confident they had a team of guys who could turn it on.
They didn’t. The power of the rising Grimace and Candelita Mets was too much to handle in the NLDS, leading to a shocking defeat that they still haven’t quite recovered from.
2025 Detroit Tigers (9-22 in last 31)
Of the three teams in this section, this is the only one that won a playoff series, but it was the same outcome: a loss in the ALDS. The Tigers were one of the best teams in baseball for much of 2025, holding a 59-34 record in early July and a 78-53 record in late August.
They completely unraveled after that. While they recovered from a terrible losing streak around the All-Star Break, there was no saving them down the stretch as they blew a 14-game division lead and only backdoored their way into the postseason via a tiebreaker against the Houston Astros.
The ultimate irony was that the team they blew it to, who hosted the Wild Card Series against them, lost to the Tigers, an ultimate example of how September does not always translate to October.
Teams that fizzled out despite hot stretch run
2021 San Francisco Giants (20-5 in last 25)
Every year, there seems to be a team that plays way above their standard for a singular season before crashing back to earth. We’ve seen that with the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays and 2023 Texas Rangers of late, but a slightly older example is the 107-win San Francisco Giants.
To beat out an incredible 106-win team like the Dodgers, you have to finish extremely strong, which they did. They won 20 of 25 and 23 of 29, barely outpacing their biggest rivals.
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Come October, however, the Giants’ magic ran out, losing to the Dodgers in five games in the NLCS in tragic fashion at home.
2022 Dodgers (21-10 in last 31)
The single best team by record in the 21st century didn’t even come close to winning the World Series. Between their titles in 2020 and 2024, the Dodgers won 100 games seemingly every year, but always fizzled out in the playoffs. It wasn’t even a strong finish, they were just that good when they won 111 games in 2022.
But as you’ve come to see, good teams can completely unravel in October for reasons that nobody really knows. The upstart Padres got revenge for 2020 and stunned L.A. in four games in the NLDS.
2025 Cleveland Guardians (20-8 in September)
The complete opposite of the Tigers’ meltdown, the Guardians rose from a dreadful 40-48 start in July to get back in contention, only to fall back to 64-66 in late August.
Sitting 12.5 games back with 130 games left, they went on the most improbable run in MLB history, winning 24 of 32 and catching the collapsing Tigers. Despite everything they went through to get to the playoffs, win the AL Central, and secure a home playoff series, they were beaten by the very smoldering corpse of a team they caught.
Teams that won a pennant despite miserable Septembers
2023 Texas Rangers (18-24 in last 42)
For any team that ends the season in misery, the Rangers are the gold standard. In 2023, they had a great summer, sitting at 72-48 on August 15. They were coasting to an AL West title with one of the best records in baseball.
Then, everything fell apart. Their deadline acquisitions, predominantly in the bullpen, imploded. They finished the season with a disastrous 18-24 record, including a 4-16 tailspin.
They blew the division and had to go on the road in the wild-card round, but went on a memorable run by beating the Rays, Baltimore Orioles, and Astros all on the road before running into the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks for their first World Series crown.
2022 Phillies (7-13 in last 20)
What’s funny here is that the Phillies are well known as the best recent case for a midseason managerial change working, as Rob Thomson put a charge into Philadelphia after canning Joe Girardi in May.
The Phillies went 59-33 in their first several months with Thomson, but stumbled down the stretch as his magic began to fade. This happens with a lot of these teams, including this year’s Red Sox, after a long stretch of success. They finished just 7-13, falling to the No. 6 seed and barely making the playoffs over Milwaukee.
That postseason would be one to remember for the Phils, as they’d shock the St. Louis Cardinals on the road before rolling over the Braves and Padres for the pennant.
2017 Dodgers (13-22 in last 35)
There might be no better example in the 21st century of a team being extremely good all season long, but ending up bafflingly bad. The Dodgers sat at 91-36 in late August, on pace to win a staggering 116 games.
They then completely fell apart. A team that spent three-quarters of the season proceeded to lose 16 of its next 17 games, and while nothing was ever in doubt for them, they remained a big question mark into October.
Those up-and-coming Dodgers did win their first pennant in nearly 30 years, however. They won six consecutive games to start the playoffs, rolling past Arizona and the Chicago Cubs before losing in seven games to the Astros in an instant classic of a World Series. If they won it all, that September collapse would be one of the most studied stretches in history.
What it means for the Yankees
All told, there’s no set formula for winning a World Series or going on a long playoff run.
Looking at recent Yankees teams, the 2021 team had good vibes down the stretch after sweeping the Red Sox in the final week of the year and going on a 13-game winning streak in August, but they were embarrassed at Fenway Park just a week later.
In 2025, the Yankees were the best team in baseball in September, nearly chasing down a Blue Jays team that never cooled off and finished with 94 wins. They snuck past Boston in the wild-card series before getting smoked by the Blue Jays in the ALDS.
There’s even a blueprint in franchise history of a team being quite underwhelming all season long, but figuring it out in October. The 2000 Yankees were 84-59 in mid-September, but won just three of their final 18 games, getting blown out each and every night in a way that tried to wash away the confidence of the back-to-back champions. It’s safe to say that didn’t happen.
What happens in this final week will not determine the Yankees’ playoff fate. However, this group should try to end on a high note and replicate the 2021 Braves. If the Yankees want to go on a run, they will have to conjure it.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/mlb/yankees/onsi as Does Finishing a Season Strong Matter for Postseason Success? (And What It Means for Yankees).
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This story was originally published September 23, 2026 at 12:00 PM.