Grab a seat! 5 bandwagons to join this October

If your team makes the postseason, hey, congratulations! You are about to spend every night -- until your team is eliminated or wins the World Series -- screaming at your television, pacing a hole in your floor and pulling your hair out. This is what the baseball postseason is built to do. It’s all-encompassing. This is what you’ve been waiting for all year.

But that is, alas, only for fans of 12 MLB teams. Then there are the rest of us. The rest of us will be licking our wounds all offseason, looking for hope in 2025 and trying to find reasons to feel better about a postseason without our favorite team. The fans of those 18 teams are going to need someone to cheer for: They’re going to need to hop on a bandwagon.

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So allow me to recommend some teams. Maybe they’ve gone a long time without a championship; maybe they’ve had a breakthrough season; maybe they’re just an unusually likable group of guys. These are five teams I’m thinking about as the regular season enters its final weekend. (Not all five are guaranteed to make it to October, but if they do, their bandwagons will be appealing.)

1. Milwaukee Brewers
First off, there are going to be two teams in this postseason who have never won a World Series, so that’s a great argument for the Brewers right there. And like the other team -- which we’ll get to below -- the Brewers have enjoyed all their success this year right after losing two of their key components: manager Craig Counsell (left for the Cubs job) and ace Corbin Burnes (traded to the Orioles).

The Brewers responded in 2024 by winning the division even earlier than they did last year. This era has been the most successful in Brewers history -- they have made the playoffs six out of the last seven years after reaching the postseason only four times previously since their inception in 1969 -- for an ever-underrated fanbase that brings in nearly 3 million fans each year and absolutely adores this franchise. Talk to a Brewers fan about this year’s team, in particular, and their eyes light up, they get wistful, they believe this team is special. The playoffs will provide the ending to that particular tale, but if the Brewers make a run, they’re going to be impossible not to root for. And besides: Who wouldn’t be happy for the 90-year-old Bob Uecker?

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2. New York Mets
First off, Mets fans: There really just isn’t anything else quite like them in sports. The vibes on this team have been immaculate for weeks now, with unlikely heroes combining with young up-and-comers to make a second-half run that has mostly erased the memories of that nightmare 2023 season. These Mets are that rarest of New York City creations: A legitimate underdog story.

Citi Field has been roaring for every home game -- it was wild against the Phillies this past weekend -- and they have a real superstar having an MVP season in Francisco Lindor … whenever he can return to the field. (How about a Willis Reed moment?) The Mets could start spending a lot in the next few seasons, acting like a typical New York team, and that would inevitably lead to a backlash. But for now? This Mets team is insurgent, and there isn’t much more fun than an insurgent team peaking at the exact right time. And look: I made it to the end of this paragraph without mentioning Grimace so much as once.

3. San Diego Padres
And here’s the other team that has never won a World Series but has a real chance to do so this year. The best part about the Padres is that, like the Mets, this wasn’t supposed to be the year they made a run at a title. That was last year, when they had Juan Soto and Blake Snell, and a team coming off an NLCS appearance that was constructed to win right now. That turned out (like the Mets’ 2023 season) to be a disaster, thanks in large part to a truly atrocious record in one-run and extra-inning games.

All of that changed this year, as it tends to, and new manager Mike Shildt has kept the ship far steadier than it was in 2023. The Padres don’t have quite as many superstars as they did last year, but they still have a bunch: It’ll be awfully scary to see Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. or Xander Bogaerts come swaggering to the plate late in a game. And that’s ignoring rookie Jackson Merrill, who may be the most clutch hitter out of all of them. The Padres have always been a charming team playing in the shadow of their much bigger and more successful older Southern California brother. Though they toppled the Dodgers in the 2022 NLDS, they still haven’t fully emerged from that shadow. It could be this year.

4. Kansas City Royals
Here’s my favorite factoid about the Royals franchise: The last three times they qualified for the postseason (1985, 2014 and 2015), they reached the World Series, winning it twice. Now that’s an efficient turnaround rate! This year has been a wild surprise for the Royals and their fans, who have watched the team ride an MVP-caliber season from Bobby Witt Jr. and some terrific starting pitching all the way to the cusp of a Wild Card berth.

That they haven’t quite nailed down that postseason spot just yet isn’t a reason not to hop aboard: If they do get in, it’ll just make it that much more exciting that they nearly fell short. The Royals, like the Brewers, are a Midwestern franchise that plays in the shadow of a better-known, bigger, wealthier semi-rival (the Cubs for the Brewers, the Cardinals for the Royals) that has very much eclipsed that shadow this year. And their jerseys forever look great. (Ask Lorde.) Witt is the sort of transcendent player who deserves the largest possible stage. This postseason could give it to him. Heck: Maybe they’ll keep that crazy World Series factoid going.

5. Detroit Tigers
This is not a perfect analogy -- the Tigers are a lot younger and, presumably, have a much brighter future, but the run that Detroit has been on can’t help but remind you of the 2007 Rockies. In the middle of September, Colorado was slightly over .500 but seemingly out of the playoff hunt … and then they just went nuts, winning 11 in a row and 14 out of 15. But it didn’t stop there. They would then sweep the NLDS and the NLCS on the way to their first (and still only) World Series appearance, before getting swept themselves by the Red Sox.

They were like a cartoon character, running so fast they didn’t even realize there was no longer any ground under their feet until they looked down. The Tigers have been nearly as hot as that Rockies team, and they might just, after selling at the Trade Deadline, end up in the postseason. For a franchise that hasn’t even had a winning season since 2016, this is downright glorious. You never know: Maybe they just won’t look down at all.