The Athletic has live coverage of the MLB Wild Card Series.

The postseason begins with no clear favorite, as MLB finished the regular season with no 100-game winner for the first time since 2014. Every team seemingly has a path to a title, and every team also appears to have a flaw as big as the Death Star. So who will take home the trophy at the end of the playoff marathon? Our staff experts weigh in with their predictions:

Andy McCullough (Houston): They have the best starting rotation. They have a championship core. This is what the Astros do.

Will Sammon (Philadelphia): Their lineup remains as formidable as anyone’s. Their rotation features enough starters opposing teams do not want to see in any pivotal game. Oh, and they also created a bullpen loaded with variety, depth and talent.

Fabian Ardaya (Houston): I mean, they’ve made it this point. And once the Astros get let into the dance, they tend to go far.

C. Trent Rosecrans (Cleveland): They don’t have the sexiest team, but they just do everything right. They’re death by a thousand paper cuts. They’re a team that won’t make the big mistakes but will force their opponents to do so.

Eno Sarris (San Diego): Excellent starters, great relievers by the handful, a lineup that not only makes contact but does so with power: all things the Padres enjoy.

Andrew Baggarly (Philadelphia): My gut wants me to pick the Padres because they have starting pitchers capable of dominance, a deep and nasty bullpen, and a star-laden lineup. But the Phillies have all those things and maybe more of them — plus the best home-field advantage in the major leagues. Ring the bell.

Jen McCaffrey (Philadelphia): They’re deep and experienced. This feels like their year to finally pull it all together.

Keith Law (Philadelphia): They’re almost fully healthy and have the kind of top-end hitters and pitchers who make the difference in the postseason’s limited schedule.

Stephen J. Nesbitt (Philadelphia): There is no perfect team this postseason. But the Phillies come closer than anyone. They have a well-rounded lineup, a rotation led by Cy Young candidate Zack Wheeler, and a bullpen with some of the baddest stuff in the sport. They are capable of getting on the board quickly, and holding on.

Sam Blum (Cleveland): Bullpens win games in the playoffs. And there’s no better bullpen than Cleveland’s.

Chad Jennings (Philadelphia): If the Phillies aren’t going to win, then what’s their fatal flaw? For the Dodgers, it’s their banged-up rotation. For the Yankees, it’s a thin bullpen and uncertain bottom of the order. For the Astros, it’s injuries that have weakened their outfield and robbed them of multiple starting pitchers. But the Phillies don’t have a glaring weakness. Their pitching staff has a legitimate ace, a four-deep rotation, and an elite bullpen. Their lineup can run, hit home runs, and score in multiple ways from top to bottom. Manager Rob Thomson is a battle-tested veteran with a steady hand.

They’ve come close in the past two seasons. This is the year they win it all.

Chandler Rome (San Diego): The Padres are the most complete team in the sport.

Zack Meisel (San Diego): A.J. Preller’s maniacal wheeling and dealing finally pays off. The Padres have the pitching and just enough offense to get it done.

Kaitlyn McGrath (Philadelphia): At one point this season, it looked like the Phillies would cruise to the best record in baseball. That didn’t happen, but even within their uneven play, there was never a serious doubt that the Phillies wouldn’t figure it out. The Phillies have been a big presence in the postseason for a couple of years now, and it feels like this is finally the time that Bryce Harper leads them all the way.

David O’Brien (Philadelphia): It’s their time, with almost the same group of veterans having made several runs together at this thing.

Sahadev Sharma (San Diego): They look like the most balanced team. Defense isn’t great, but the rest is well above average.

Patrick Mooney (Philadelphia): A star-studded roster built for the postseason.

Noah Furtado (Los Angeles): They have Shohei Ohtani.

(Top photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)

Santa Monica officials say they are “very close” to reaching an agreement to host beach volleyball during the 2028 Summer Olympics, even though it might end up costing the city more than $12 million.

That worst-case scenario is outlined in a 36-page report issued Tuesday night, a week ahead of an Oct. 8 City Council meeting that will include the opportunity for public comment.

The report also notes that Santa Monica could recoup most or all of its costs if the Games are successful.

“We think we are very close to addressing all the outstanding issues,” city manager David White said. “That’s why we are very confident and feel that this is a good time to be in front of our council.”

If the city decides to sign a binding Games Agreement with LA28, the organizing committee would build a temporary 12,000-seat stadium on the sand north of Santa Monica’s famed pier.

The parties have been in sometimes-contentious negotiations for more than a year.

At the heart of the doping case against Jannik Sinner, the top-ranked men’s tennis player in the world, is an existential debate about the policing of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sport.

Are the primary goals to catch cheats and prevent athletes from gaining unfair advantages over their peers? What happens when the enforcers of the World Anti-Doping Code see violations but uniformly agree that an athlete didn’t gain or chase such an edge?

Numerous athletes have found themselves in the middle of this debate and now the two-time Grand Slam champion is having his turn, with one anti-doping agency taking another anti-doping agency to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

An apology to anyone with a sensitivity to the alphabet soup of sports bureaucracy.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed a ruling from an independent panel convened by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), which found that the 23-year-old bore “no fault or negligence” after twice testing positive for clostebol, an anabolic steroid on the WADA prohibited substances list. The panel still found that he had committed two anti-doping violations.

WADA said in a statement that it is not seeking for any of Sinner’s results to be disqualified, aside from his run to the semifinals at the BNP Paribas Open, held at Indian Wells, Calif. (Those results were already disqualified in the decision shared by the ITIA).

It is contesting the dismissal of any blame attributable to Sinner, which, it says, “was not correct under the applicable rules”.

WADA therefore accepts the final ruling that Sinner did not intentionally dope, but is still making a point about its own credibility by seeking to change the terms of that ruling.

Sinner, who recently won the U.S. Open, could be banned from tennis for between one and two years if WADA prevails.

Sinner was informed of his positive tests in late March. The ITIA said he tested positive for clostebol on March 10, at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and again on March 18, between that tournament and the Miami Open. The results carried mandatory provisional suspensions, which Sinner appealed.

At each appeal, and in a final hearing on Aug. 15, three separate independent tribunals convened by the ITIA and conducted by Sport Resolutions, an arbitration company, accepted the Italian world No. 1’s explanation for the positive tests. His physiotherapist, Umberto Ferrara, had brought Trofodermin, an over-the-counter healing spray containing clostebol, to Indian Wells. His physiotherapist, Giacomo Naldi, cut his hand and used the spray on that cut. Naldi then conducted massages on Sinner, which led to contamination with the substance on Naldi’s skin getting to Sinner’s skin.

GO DEEPER

Jannik Sinner built the team that made him world No. 1. Then he blew it up

Those tribunal decisions meant that Sinner first avoided the two provisional suspensions, and then, in the final hearing, a “period of ineligibility”, which would have been a dreaded, reputation-destroying ban. The first two successful appeals also meant that his case remained private until that final hearing, under ITIA protocol.

At the final hearing, the independent tribunal ruled that Sinner was not at fault for the positive tests. It said he received no advantage from clostebol, a notorious and antiquated anabolic steroid that East Germany used as part of state-sponsored doping programs in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Even if the administration had been intentional, the minute amounts likely to have been administered would not have had any relevant doping, or performance enhancing, effect upon the player,” said Professor David Cowan, a member of the tribunal who explained the ruling.

Still, since the clostebol was in his system, Sinner was found to have committed two anti-doping violations, for which the ITIA stripped him of his ranking points, prize money and results from Indian Wells. But it did not seek a suspension.

After six months of playing under a secret cloud, Sinner won the U.S. Open, the first tournament after the ITIA publicized the case and final ruling.

But three weeks later, on Saturday, WADA publicized its appeal against that ruling. The case now goes to CAS, generally the final arbiter of sports doping litigation.

Jannik Sinner is currently playing in Beijing, at the China Open. (Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)

Sinner is none too pleased. In a statement issued that Saturday, Sinner noted that there he had already gone through three separate hearings that confirmed he hadn’t intentionally broken the rules or competed unfairly.

“I understand these things need to be thoroughly investigated to maintain the integrity of the sport we all love,” he said. “However, it is difficult to see what will be gained by asking a different set of three judges to look at the same facts and documentation all over again.”

Sinner and WADA now find themselves in difficult territory. Ever since the ITIA’s announcement, Sinner has indirectly faced criticism — some of it more vituperative than verifiable — over perceptions of preferential treatment. Tennis is a sport of double standards, from better court allocations and higher appearance fees for higher-ranked players, to a keener ear from tennis authorities on the biggest issues in the sport. Sinner, as world No. 1, has more powerful and more readily available legal resources than most tennis players would in a similar situation.

While in other anti-doping cases, players have been provisionally suspended for many months while under investigation, it remains that the so-called silence over his case was not an element of preferential treatment, and instead adherence to the ITIA’s process for investigation.

Other Italian tennis players who have tested positive for the same substance as Sinner have been suspended and found at fault. Stefano Battaglino, another Italian tennis player, received a four-year ban in 2023. Battaglino failed to prove that his testing positive for clostebol was inadvertent after it was detected during a random drug test at an ITF event in Tunisia.

Jannik Sinner lost to Carlos Alcaraz in the semifinals at Indian Wells, where the first positive test was recorded. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

This is one of the most complicated factors. Italy has a widespread and readily acknowledged issue with athletes testing positive for clostebol, because it is freely sold in the country as an ingredient in healing products — including the Trofodermin that Ferrara brought to Indian Wells. WADA has stated that around half the cases of positive clostebol tests come from the country.

WADA, meanwhile, is dealing with the aftermath of its decision not to investigate 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the same heart drug seven months before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The swimmers were allowed to compete, and several of the athletes went on to win medals. In its statement on the case, issued in April 2024 after what it called, “Some misleading and potentially defamatory media coverage,” the agency said that it “was not in a position to disprove the possibility that contamination was the source” of the positive tests.

Travis Tygart, the leader of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and a key figure in the cases of Lance Armstrong in cycling and Alberto Salazar in track, on Saturday tied their situations to WADA’s decision on Sinner.

“It’s unimaginable that WADA leaders would appeal this case when the rules were clearly followed by tennis yet do nothing when China swept 23 positive tests under the carpet that indisputably violated the rules,” Tygart said.

“As athletes are held to high standards by anti-doping authorities, it’s high time for WADA decision makers to also be.”

WADA responded to that statement by criticizing Tygart. “It is strange for Mr. Tygart to comment on a case when he is not involved, has not reviewed the file and does not have all the facts to hand. It is equally strange he would then compare it to a completely unrelated case in which he was also not involved and does not have the facts to hand,” said James Fitzgerald, a WADA spokesperson. “It might be more productive for Mr. Tygart to spend his time working on the problems in U.S. anti-doping rather than constantly commenting on what is going on elsewhere in the world.”

WADA acknowledges that the detection of clostebol has been greatly enhanced in recent years by advances in technology that make it possible to detect lower concentrations.

That has helped catch some instances of doping, especially when it comes to hard-to-detect new substances. But it has also led to capturing innocent athletes who, judging by the levels of a given substance detected, are not doping — at least not with the substance that triggers a positive test.

WADA’s rules, in this case, appear to still be catching up with its testing advances, creating an imbalance between science and administration as athletes see their careers and reputations at stake.

(Top photo: Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)