Best 2026 MLB Futures Bet for the NL West

Welcome to the NL West, where the Dodgers are ruining baseball!

Just kidding. Or at least that’s not my actual opinion. They can certainly afford huge salaries. But we are looking for bets here and dare we say there are bearish bets on LA? And I have a few more ideas.

Anyway, here are my top future betting picks in the NL West.

Dodgers under 102.5 wins (+100 BetRivers)

Yes. The Dodgers have easily assembled the best team in MLB. Fangraphs estimates their wins at 99.4 wins. This is the highest number we have ever seen in the metric.

I can’t make any kind of talent or numbers-based case for them not reaching the numbers. This is strictly about motivation, not for lack of trying. Rather, it’s about priorities. If the franchise had set a goal of 120 wins, they could probably achieve that goal. But it’s clear they’re approaching the 162-race marathon as a warm-up to October, and their main goal is to get there as healthy as possible.

They use the IL liberally, especially on pitchers. They’ve already announced that Blake Snell will start the season slowly growing up. Tyler Glasnow rarely goes more than 120 innings, and often much less. They rode Yoshi Yamamoto for a total of 211 innings last year and it worked out great, but I expect them to really shorten that time so he can be fresh for the playoffs. Shohei isn’t under an extensive workload either. These are all aces, but that’s the point. The Dodgers don’t want to use too many bullets during the regular season.

Maybe I’m wrong and they can’t help but win 110 games, but I like them to be moderately overpowered.

Padres Under 85.5 Wins (-110 DraftKings)

Okay, in this case, this team isn’t that good anymore. I’ve really liked how they’ve come out of their mid-market woes and transformed into one of the best teams in the league over the past few years. They are one win away from eliminating the Dodgers from the 2024 playoffs!

But unfortunately, it feels like the window is closed. The Padres can no longer raise the salary and there is no possibility left of making a trade. What they’re left with is an extremely heavy lineup and thin rotation. The top four hitters, Xander Bogaerts, Jackson Merrill, Manny Machado, and Fernando Tatis Jr., were all expected to have WARs of 3.3 (Bogatz) to 5.4 (Tatis), but then fell off a cliff. Jake Cronenworth is a good, solid major leaguer, but he has no business finishing fifth on a playoff team. etc.

As for the rotation, Nick Pivetta has finally turned his always-outstanding metrics into actual production, posting a 19.4% K-BB%, 2.87 ERA, and 0.99 WHIP. However, he’s been a bit lucky, with a career-low BABIP of .235 and a HR/FB rate of 9.7%. His xERA was 3.97.

The only other top SPs are Joe Musgrove, who is back after missing all of 2025 recovering from TJ surgery, and Michael King, who re-signed and is ostensibly healthy after passing just 73.1 IP last year, so he’s the undisputed ace right now. It’s downright ugly behind those three as San Diego hopes they can turn a couple of Walker Buehler, Triston McKenzie, German Marquez, JP Sears and Randy Vasquez into something useful. It was all absolutely terrible last season.

Rockies over 53.5 wins (-110 DraftKings)

Yeah, I have nothing good to say about the Rockies. One thing; Now it looks like they will act like MLB franchises in 2026 and try to incorporate analytics. They hired Paul DePodesta of Moneyball fame.

No, He will not perform any miracle overnight. It probably will continue to be that way. But Colorado regressed in 2025 after a terrible 2025 with Brenton Doyle and SS Ezequiel Tovar showing great promise in 2024, and for Doyle it was a personal tragedy. I expect rebounding from both of them, and they’re a pretty solid top tier with C Hunter Goodman (.278/.323/.520), Mickey Moniak (.270/.306/.518), and Jordan Beck (.258/.317/.416).

They added Jake McCarthy, a plus defender who doesn’t hit all that well but has excellent range in the OF, which could really help the Coors. No, bad pitching doesn’t always turn into a bunch of aces. And new additions Michael Lorenzen, Jose Quintana and Tomoyuki Sugano are all back-end starters at this stage of their careers. But if you squint, maybe they can give the Rox some much-needed innings and play in more games. Yes, this team may still be terrible, but I’d like to see them improve to just “mediocre bad.”