NL Playoff Bracket: What the Mets World Series path looks like

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before we can start playing air trumpets no Narcos while celebrating the New York Mets in the NLDS, they have to get through the Milwaukee Brewers who manhandled them this year. Of course, the Brewers faced two completely different Mets teams. The first three games versus the three over this last weekend had much different personnel and a different attitude. Yet the result was pretty much the same. The Brewers caused trouble for the Mets. New York has their work cut out for them.

This won’t stop fans from looking ahead a series, or two, or even three. The NL Playoff Bracket is set. In case you haven’t checked it yet, let’s fill you in on how it looks.

The winner of Mets vs. Brewers will play the Phillies

For the first time in history we could get a series between the Mets and Philadelphia Phillies in the playoffs. The Mets and Atlanta Braves have played each other twice before. Never have the Mets and Phillies met up. In fact, the only year when the two teams even both went to the playoffs was in 2022. The Phillies zoomed through as the sixth seed (where the Mets are) while the Amazins dropped out in the first round.

The Phillies are the number two seed so they’ll draw the presumed number three seed with the Los Angeles Dodgers getting to play the winner of the Braves vs. San Diego Padres. With the Braves as the fifth seed and Padres at four, the assumption for the NL Playoff Bracket would be to give the Dodgers the best chance to advance by playing a Wild Card team rather than a division winner. The MLB standings doesn’t exactly work like this as a division winner often has fewer wins than a Wild Card team.

The Mets won’t play the Braves again until the NLCS at the earliest. Both clubs have the biggest challenge of all ahead of them. Not only are they on the road in a best of three to begin their playoff route, neither club gets a day off to rest.

Milwaukee is the only National League team the Mets faced that they didn’t win at least two games against. They finished 5-6 against both the Phillies and Braves. They finished 5-2 against the Padres and 2-4 versus the Dodgers. The playoffs are a different kind of beast. The 2015 Chicago Cubs were 7-0 against the Mets that year. We know how their NLCS matchup ended up.