2026 Positional Power Rankings: Summary

Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual season preview, ranking the league’s players by position and team based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained RosterResource playing time estimates courtesy of Jason Martinez and Jon Becker. If you happen to have missed any of those installments, you can use the navigation widget above to catch up.

Today, I’m going to summarize the results. We’ll look at some tables and pick out a few interesting tidbits in a moment, but first, as I do every year, I’ll remind you that this exercise captures a snapshot of how we project teams to perform now. Teams aren’t static. Since we began publishing our rankings, top prospects Kevin McGonigle (no. 5), JJ Wetherholt (no. 12), and Carson Benge (no. 21) made their respective Opening Day rosters, while no. 1 overall prospect Konnor Griffin was sent down to get a bit more seasoning in the minors. Nationals outfielder Dylan Crews, the second overall pick in the 2023 draft and a former top prospect, was optioned to Triple-A Rochester. And a number of notable pitchers hit the injured list, including Spencer Strider, whose strained oblique will no doubt complicate his efforts to regain his 2023 form.

This being baseball, players will tweak elbows and hamstrings, cede playing time to promising prospects, and get traded. That’s why we maintain a Team WAR Totals page, which lists projected positional WAR by team and updates throughout the season as we learn more about who is likely to take the field every day and what shape they’ll be in when they do. It’s important to note that the WAR numbers you see on that page may differ from those you’ve seen on the positional power rankings, mostly because those figures are aware of the injuries and transactions that have altered our playing time estimates since the rankings went live; the Z-Scores I’ll include later also use the WAR figures that power the Team WAR Totals page.

But before we get to the Z-Scores, let’s take note of some general trends and fun factoids. First, we’ll look at each team’s positional ranks as of Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. ET. There are 11 positions, with each team’s pitching, batting, and overall WAR rank included in the final three columns. This table is sortable, so feel free to poke around:

A few things jump out here.

The Mariners are the only team with multiple no. 1 position finishes (catcher and center field). The Dodgers have six top-five position finishes, while the Mets and Phillies each have four, and the Cubs, Padres, Rays, Red Sox, Tigers, and Yankees each have three. The Dodgers have eight positions that rank in the top 10, while the Braves have seven, and the Brewers, Cubs, Phillies, Orioles, and Yankees each have six.

The Cubs, Rangers, Red Sox, and Yankees rank in the top 10 across all three outfield spots, while the Giants and Orioles boast top-10 finishes at four of the five infield positions. Six teams — the Dodgers, Braves, Phillies, Mariners, Rays, and Red Sox — have a rotation and bullpen that both project in the top 10.

It’s interesting to look at the ways the teams in the top 10 by total WAR have gone about constructing their rosters. Like last year and the year before that, the Dodgers, who project for the best record in baseball at 99 wins, not only mostly avoid being bad — they only have one bottom-15 finish (second base) and none in the bottom 10 — but, as noted above, they’re frequently great. The Blue Jays only have two positions in the top five (first base and catcher), but only one in the bottom 15 (shortstop) and none in the bottom 10. The Phillies are far more stratified, with four top-five finishes, and six in the top 10, but five in the bottom 15; the Tigers are doing a version of this as well, with three top-five finishes, and five in the top 10, but four in the bottom 15 and one in the bottom 10.

The Red Sox and Braves each have three bottom-10 finishes, but boast five and seven top-five finishes, respectively. The Mariners concentrate a lot of value in a few spots — with catcher, center field, the bullpen, and the rotation all very good to excellent — while looking for competence elsewhere, with four positions ranked in the 14 to 16 range. The New York teams are doing the Spider-Man meme: one no. 1 finish apiece (right field for the Yankees, left field for the Mets), four top-five finishes in Queens and three in the Bronx, and nine positions each in the top 15. Lastly, the Orioles find themselves ranked 16th in both the rotation and the bullpen, an improvement for the starters, who last year ranked 23rd, but a marked decline for the relievers, who last year ranked second.

It isn’t all good news. This is an exercise in ranking, which means someone has to be last, and as often happens, a few unfortunate clubs are bringing up the rear at multiple positions. The Angels, Nationals, and Rockies each have two last-place finishes: catcher and second base for Los Angeles, third base and the bullpen for Washington, and first base and the rotation for Colorado. And while that constitutes an improvement of sorts for the Rockies, who last year had five last-place finishes, the state of second base (27th), third base (28th), right field (29th), DH (28th), and the bullpen (29th) shows that they still have a ways to go yet. Indeed, they and the Angels lead the way with nine bottom-10 finishes, while the Marlins, Nationals, Reds, and White Sox each have seven, and the Diamondbacks and Rays each have six. As you might have gleaned, all 11 positions are in the bottom 15 for Colorado, while the Angels, Marlins, Nationals, and White Sox each have 10, and the Reds have nine. Six teams – the Athletics, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, Giants, Nationals, and Rockies — place in the bottom 10 for both their rotation and bullpen. Good teams can still have weak positions, of course; the Braves rank 27th at shortstop and the Red Sox 26th, making them the worst positions among the teams in the top 10 by overall WAR; the Tigers’ center field (25th) and Mets’ right field (25th) spots aren’t far behind, though improved health for Parker Meadows and a breakout from Benge could go a long way toward boosting those marks.

Ordinal rankings do have their limitations, as some positions cluster tightly together. At many positions, fractions of wins are all that separate teams from each other. There’s a six-win difference between the top and the bottom of the DH rankings, while many of the league’s bullpens are closely bunched, especially as you get past the clubs at the top. As I mentioned in my introduction, it is important to look at the magnitude of the differences between the rankings, as well as the rankings themselves. Thinking about whether a team falls above or below the league average, and by how much, can be a more useful way of approaching things than obsessing over where your favorite team ranks. To that end, I calculated the Z-Scores of each team’s projected positional WAR (again, using the figures on Team WAR Totals page as of 1:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday) to show you the number of standard deviations away from league average that each team is at each spot:

This table is also sortable, which makes it easy to spot the outliers, good and bad. I won’t narrate the whole thing except to point out the top-five positions by Z-Score:

• 3.93, Dodgers designated hitter
• 3.79, Mets left field
• 2.97, Yankees right field
• 2.68, Mariners center field
• 2.63, Diamondbacks second base

As well as the bottom five:

• -2.12, Nationals bullpen
• -2.06, Angels second base
• -2.03, Rockies rotation
• -1.66, Nationals third base
• -1.65, Rockies bullpen

This season will no doubt contain surprises. Some teams will disappoint, and others will exceed expectations. Last year, the projections had the Yankees, Twins, Braves, and Cubs winning their divisions; none did, and the Twins and Braves missed the postseason entirely. We had the Blue Jays ticketed for fourth in the AL East, but they ended up winning the American League pennant. The Brewers projected for 81 wins, but they went on to win 97 games, the most in baseball and four clear of the Dodgers. The Rays and Athletics were playing in a minor league park. Baseball is different today than it was last March (well, the A’s are still playing in a minor league park), and it’ll be different tomorrow than it is today.

That always makes the positional power rankings something of a strange exercise, because for as precise as we try to make them, we’re always at least a little bit wrong. I’m inclined think that’s a feature, not a bug. The season would be pretty boring if we knew in advance exactly who would win and how. Only the Dodgers project to win 90 or more games, but with 17 clubs forecast for between 80 and 90 wins, it seems likely that someone will emerge to challenge the defending champs as they try to three-peat. A lot can change over the course of a season, with many teams a prospect breakout or a bad injury away from looking very different come October than they do now. And after an offseason marked by wonky contract structures and more Dodgers fretting, and a spring that saw a thrilling World Baseball Classic, the 2026 season is practically here. We get to spend the next seven months figuring out who is good and just how wrong we were here. The FanGraphs staff will be there for the whole thing, and I hope you’ll join us. I can’t wait.