Jerome Miron and Lexi Thompson-Imagn Images

Baseball is a team sport, but sometimes there’s only room for two faces on a poster.

Before every playoff series, the league, its broadcast partners, and anyone else with an interest in promoting the event will circulate something based on the poster for the 1997 John Woo film Face/Off.

Half Cage, half Travolta, all smoldering scene-chewing and cartoonish violence. If that doesn’t get your blood pumping I don’t want to know you. There’s more to each side of the matchup than just the one guy, but in baseball as in film you put the superstar’s mug on the promo material if you want to sell tickets.

Take this Fox promo from last year’s World Series.

On one side, you have Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer; on the other, Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. Vladito and Ohtani, respectively, are the biggest stars on each team by miles. Springer and Freeman are both former World Series MVPs. Every baseball fan in the country knows these faces.

And both of last year’s World Series participants — especially the Dodgers — had plenty of bench depth if you wanted to go for a bigger spread. But there are some peculiar effects of living in a world of 12 playoff berths and maybe 2 1/2 good teams in the entire American League. Not every team has this level of stardom to call on.

As I write on the morning of September 3, 17 clubs have at least a 10% chance of making the postseason, according to our Playoff Odds. I want to see who — by dint of fame and 2026 performance — would be in the mix for a spot on the Face/Off poster for each of those clubs.

When searching for World Series posters, I found a mock banner that portrayed Blue Jays-Dodgers as a battle between Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Jack Dreyer. There was also that mild kerfuffle in 2024 when ESPN’s Opening Day lead image included Justin Steele, because every star pitcher was hurt that spring.

Could we come by such an image honestly this postseason? Let’s find out.

The two-time defending champions are obviously pretty set for star power. Not featured on this list: Teoscar Hernández, Will Smith, Roki Sasaki, and Edwin Díaz (not that you’d put him on a poster after the season he’s had). Casual fans are probably more familiar with Enrique Hernández and Blake Treinen than anyone on a third of the teams in the league, just because they’ve been on TV every October. They’re the Millennial Mark Lemke and Mike Stanton, respectively.

The National League’s other perennial contender of the 2020s, the Braves are similarly full of household names. Sale has been a superstar for more than a decade. Olson has plus-plus power, three Gold Gloves, piercing blue eyes, and the game’s longest iron man streak. A few of these guys have been around since the World Series run in 2021. Baldwin was Rookie of the Year last year.

Spencer Strider is one of the sport’s most distinctive star players, but he’s unlikely to participate in any playoff action. You know who is, though? Ronald Acuña Jr., the actual face of the franchise and one of baseball’s most poster-worthy players. You can build a poster around Acuña and/or Sale and still have plenty of star power left over.

Company policy for the Rays — has been for about 15 years now — is they trade you right as you get famous. I thought that would present a challenge, but Caminero is a highly visible rising young star. Yandy Díaz has the biggest biceps in baseball, and he’s been wearing out the infield at the Trop since 2019. They’re not Ohtani and Mookie Betts, but they’re famous enough.

Beyond that, it’d be a stretch to call anyone on the Rays famous, but part of their value proposition as a playoff participant is that you get to learn a new cast of characters whenever they make a run. Rasmussen has earned that spotlight for sure with his play this year; otherwise you could introduce the mainstream audience to Baker, Jonathan Aranda, or Chandler Simpson.

This is the Aaron Judge show, obviously. Beyond him, the Yankees have more poster-worthy options than any AL team. Cole, Bellinger, Fried, and Chisholm are all household names. Schlittler and Rice are two of this year’s biggest rising stars. Paul Goldschmidt is on this team still, and everyone’s heard of him.

The Brewers are somewhat star-averse, almost by design. They, like the Rays, tend to cash in on their homegrown talent once it gets expensive. More than that, Milwaukee’s roster is very egalitarian. There isn’t really one guy who makes it go.

There is, however, one legit current superstar on the Brewers: Misiorowski. He’s not only the current NL Cy Young frontrunner, but he’s also the object of national fascination because he’s 11 feet tall and throws 200 miles per hour. He’d be on any Brewers poster, flanked by some combination of Contreras, Yelich (who’s still the face of the franchise despite a lackluster 2026), Turang, and Chourio.

I added the salary column for each team because it’s a proxy for fame and veteran tenure, but it means little to this team. If anyone reading this is a graphic designer at Fox or MLB: If you put Antonio Senzatela on a promo poster, I will buy you a beer and smooch you on the face.

I got the idea for this post when Marsh ended up on the promo materials for the Field of Dreams game. It struck me as funny, because Marsh seems like he’s pretty far down on the Phillies’ pecking order. At the same time, he was an All-Star starter this year, and (for good or ill, depending on how you feel about his coiffure) one of the game’s most recognizable players.

The Phillies are on course for their fifth straight playoff appearance, and they’ve barely changed the roster in all that time. There are probably baseball fans out there who’d recognize the faces on this roster more easily than they would their own grandparents.

The Cubs’ best player is the outspoken, photogenic, preposterously athletic NL MVP favorite. As long they last in this postseason, I would expect to see PCA featured in every promo image and before every commercial break. And the Cubs might be short on pitching, but they’re not short on big names: Bregman, Swanson, Suzuki. Hoerner and Happ are both plausibly famous enough to lead a promo image for a Wild Card team, even if neither’s modeling services are likely to be required.

I’d argue we’re a little lighter on star power than you’d expect from one of the American League’s glamor franchises. If Crochet returns to full power by October, he’s probably the biggest name on the team and should get top billing. But many of Boston’s best players this year are either up-and-coming talents (Tolle, Rafaela), very good supporting players (Suarez, Contreras, Gray), or brand new to the team (Rutschman).

The second-most famous Red Sox player might actually be Roman Anthony, who’s only played 34 games so far this year. Is that enough to vault him into poster territory? I don’t know. Regardless, this team might not be as star-studded as the Dodgers or Yankees, but putting someone like Rafaela or Tolle on a poster would be more in the vein of highlighting a player on the upswing than a “who the heck is this guy?” situation.

This is the halfway point, and for the first time I think we could be in for a real reach for a poster spot. Castillo and Benintendi are definitely familiar to most fans, but not for anything they’ve done this year with the White Sox. Murakami is probably Chicago’s biggest attraction, because everyone loves a foreign star with plus-plus power and a distinctive offensive game.

I think Vargas has earned some marketing credibility just based on what he’s achieved on the field this year. Montgomery is a former top prospect. But Meidroth, Burke, Peters, Davis Martin — that’s straddling the line between a player you ought to learn about and “well, we needed another face for the poster.”

The Astros aren’t very good this year, and while they’ve been consistent contenders since 2015, they’ve turned over almost the entire roster in that time. After they let Lance McCullers Jr. loose this summer, Altuve is the only Astro remaining from the 2017 World Series team who has never gone to a different organization. (Correa famously left and came back.) Forget 2017; only 10 of the 28 players on the Astros’ active roster have a ring from 2022.

Fortunately, one of those is Alvarez, the AL MVP favorite. Stick him on a poster flanked by Altuve and Correa and call it a day.

I snark on the Guardians’ anonymous lineup a lot, but this year they have lots of fun, exciting young players to sprinkle around Ramírez, the face of the franchise. Messick is about 10 good postseason innings from being every baseball sicko’s favorite pitcher, Bazzana is not only athletic and punchy, but he’s Australian to boot, and DeLauter is going to get a lot of attention because he followed up a postseason debut in 2025 with a solid rookie season. The Guardians aren’t on the Dodgers’ level for star power, but they’ve got more depth than at any point since they traded Francisco Lindor.

The Diamondbacks have one superstar they can highlight in Carroll, plus a couple middle infielders (Perdomo and Ketel Marte) who have been in and around the top 10 in MVP voting over the past few years. Kelly and Gallen were pillars of Arizona’s 2023 pennant run, so there’s some residual Q rating for both, but I don’t think you’d want to draw attention to either’s performance this year.

That leaves the likes of E-Rod, Moreno, Brandon Pfaadt — all good players but nobody who’s going to end up on a magazine cover anytime soon. Which is kind of what you’d expect from a team that’s hanging around the last NL Wild Card spot.

Here’s a fun fact that’ll give you a good idea of how the Padres’ season has gone: Three of their top four pitchers in WAR this year are relievers. San Diego is heavy on big-name players who aren’t having great seasons by their standards — Machado, Bogaerts, Ray, maybe even Merrill and Tatis if you want to be demanding — but you can print Machado and Tatis onto every poster until the Padres go out of business. Stick Miller on there for some extra kick, and you’ve got a set of marquee names that’d draw an audience as well as any trio in the NL.

The Rangers are under .500 and absolutely creaking into the playoff picture. I was convinced this would be the first team with a truly laughable set of poster candidates. Their best player this year, by a huge margin, is a career utilityman who’s having his first above-average big league campaign in the fifth season of his career.

But for the moment at least, Seager and deGrom are healthy. Those are two massive names; Seager in particular has some of the best postseason credentials of any active player, with three playoff series MVP awards, two for the World Series. One of those came just three years ago with these very Rangers. Put him on the poster, and you can throw Duran or Latz up there alongside him and no one will think twice.

What I said earlier about the Blue Jays having bench depth in star power is less true now than it was a year ago. Kevin Gausman, Jeff Hoffman, and Bo Bichette are gone. Max Scherzer and Shane Bieber have been nonfactors. Springer is getting old, Alejandro Kirk and Trey Yesavage haven’t been quite as exciting this year, and Vladito has been, I believe the word is “cheeks,” All-Star selection or no.

I still think a Guerrero-Cease-Kirk core can carry a promo campaign. You might get some awkward questions about how many home runs the franchise first baseman has hit in front of the home crowd, but it’d be weird not to include Guerrero on the poster.

But if you didn’t, we’re like one or two moves away from Varland being the Jays’ cover boy. I don’t know why that’s inherently funnier than other standout relievers like Miller and Baker, but it is for some reason.

I’d leave room here for an editor’s note so Meg can scream about the idea of this Mariners team backing into a playoff spot (apparently there’s still a decent chance of that happening), but she informs me that watching this much Weston Wilson broke her spirit weeks ago.

Part of the reason a Mariners playoff berth seems so farfetched is the fact that most of their big-name players — Raleigh, Rodríguez, Naylor, J.P. Crawford — have been awful this year. Arozarena has both the 2026 performance and name recognition to headline a poster, especially because he’s still best remembered for going berserk for the Rays during the 2020 postseason. You can launder in some of the other big names from there.

But if we were going on merit alone, Canzone would be in the conversation for a spot on the poster. Just as with the Astros and Rangers — that’s what happens when the AL West doesn’t have any good teams.

I think the Orioles are as surprised as anyone that they’re still in the playoff picture. They traded their third- and fourth-most productive position players at the deadline — Taylor Ward and Adley Rutschman, who was also Baltimore’s only All-Star — and their second-highest-paid player was a waiver deadline pickup.

Alonso’s having a good year; Henderson’s having a nightmare of a season by his standards but a decent one by most other people’s. Those two are huge names, so they go on the poster.

After that, it gets dicey. Guys like Bradish and Colton Cowser have plenty of local cachet but very little national name recognition. Do you bank on Rogers as the Game 1 starter against someone like Schlittler, deGrom, or Woo? Is Baz famous at all? How about Samuel Basallo?

I think this is the team with the highest likelihood of throwing a real curveball up on the promotional board. There are other mediocre teams with more veteran name recognition, even if the players in question are past their best.

And while the Brewers, Rays, and White Sox in particular have plenty of newcomers and nobodies, that’s the brand those teams have cultivated. These aren’t just any newcomers and nobodies, they’re newcomers and nobodies with panache.

But selling a playoff matchup is all in the delivery. “Bryce Harper and the Phillies host Pete Crow-Armstrong and the Cubs, followed by Ezequiel Duran and the Rangers versus Dylan Beavers and the Orioles. Only on NBC and Peacock, your exclusive home for the Wild Card series.”