Who’s going to win the World Series? In 2026, that’s a complicated question.Every time we think we have a handle on this season, the landscape shifts. That was true from the early stages — when the standings bore greater resemblance to 2024 than 2025, a rarity compared with most of baseball history.And it continued to be true when the month leading up to the All-Star break completely flipped who was winning and losing — with some of the best teams from before June (Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Guardians, San Diego Padres, New York Yankees) suddenly falling apart, while previously struggling teams (Miami Marlins, Detroit Tigers, Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, Philadelphia Phillies) posted the best records in baseball.The question of who is — or is not — a legitimate contender is wide open. Yes, the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers are heavy betting favorites at +180. But beyond the Dodgers, it’s anybody’s guess.To help cut through the fog, we’ll revisit a concept from around this time last year, when we looked at statistical cutoffs that separate real contenders from the rest of the pack. The idea is to find a series of rules to match the patterns of previous champions.That’s still a useful approach — even if we were a bit rigid about requiring every team to check every box. This year, we’ll be more flexible.For each team with at least a 2 percent chance to win the World Series in BetMGM’s futures odds (after converting them to normalized probabilities), we’ll look at 13 major categories to see if they pass or fail various tests. These tests are based on where eventual World Series teams since 2002 (discarding 2020 and weighting more toward champions) have tended to show separation by the All-Star break. We’ll tier the categories by both their importance and how strongly they historically separated World Series teams from everyone else, then assign points and add up who passed the most tests.Simply put, these factors should help us identify the teams that can win it all.* All data is as of the 2026 All-Star break.Tier 1 testOverall quality (Runs/game differential): 18 pointsAverage weighted rank for WS teams: 6.1