Silver linings for MLB's 2026 non-playoff teams - ESPN

So your team missed the playoffs. There are worse things, right? Their 2026 MLB season is ending in disappointment, but there are some positives, too. There always are, in every team's campaign, even if they might not always be readily apparent. Not everything has gone wrong.

As the proverb goes, every cloud has a silver lining, a 19th-century saying that has its roots in «Comus», a 1634 poem by John Milton, no relation to Eric. Little known fact, but Milton — the one who wrote «Paradise Lost» — wasn't much of a baseball guy.

Some baseball loyalists — we'll call them «Mets fans» — tend to fixate on the clouds. Others — we'll call them «Brooklyn Dodgers fans» — zero right in on the silver lining and start saying things like, «Wait till next year!»

For teams that have already crossed the mathematical elimination threshold in 2026, the wait for next year begins after the regular-season games are over Sunday. But even those teams head home buoyed by some kind of silver lining, one that hopefully will imbue the looming winter vigil with a hint of anticipation for the inevitable spring to come.

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Silver lining: Henry Bolte

After a promising start, the Athletics imploded under the dual pressures of injury and underperformance. All of this makes silver-lining hunting more difficult, especially if we don't want to play the «at least they're one year closer to Vegas» card.

Still, Bolte looks like a keeper. He's a walking toolkit with a range of raw skills that includes an MLB-leading sprint speed and 95th percentile bat speed. Despite a raw plate approach that features too much swing and miss, he has still managed a .272/.357/.396 line that for a 22-year-old is bursting with promise.

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