The calendar has flipped to June, and the teams that are fighting for their place in the playoff picture are starting to get serious about addressing the flaws on their rosters.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re almost through the first two months of the season, and playoff races in both leagues are shaping up to be pretty entertaining this summer. All but three teams in the AL are within three games of a postseason berth, which makes for a very crowded field. The NL is a little more stratified, but there are four Wild Card hopefuls hanging four or five games back in the standings.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

All power rankings stats, including team records, are updated through Sunday’s games. The rest of the information below is current as of Tuesday morning. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds rotation has been an undeniable strength this season. The team’s starters are third in park- and league-adjusted ERA, and their collective peripherals mostly back it up; they’re 10th in park- and league-adjusted FIP. Hunter Greene has been phenomenal, Nick Lodolo has made some key command improvements, and Brady Singer has added a secret ingredient, though his ERA has ballooned to over 5.00 since Michael Baumann wrote about him last month. But the pitcher leading the team in ERA is Andrew Abbott, and before Baumann can write about his third Cincinnati starter this year, I’d like to take a stab at puzzling out what’s gone right for the 25-year-old lefty.

What if I told you that while Abbott’s fastball is coming in about a tick slower than normal and his arm slot is five degrees higher than usual, he has somehow managed to slightly improve the pitch’s Stuff+ score? You might be a bit confused, as the trend for many pitchers has been to try and lower their arm slot in an effort to flatten out their four-seamers. A flatter approach angle often leads to more swings and misses at the top of the zone and weaker contact, as batters have trouble squaring up a pitch that looks like it’s rising above their bat. Abbott has always had a high release point, but his 50 degree arm angle is now the 11th-highest arm slot among qualified left-handed pitchers.

Research into the relationship between a pitcher’s arm slot and the shape of their pitches has shown that as a pitcher’s arm slot rises, they’re able to generate more backspin. More backspin allows them to create more induced vertical break (IVB). Put simply, IVB is a function of arm angle. The other thing about a high arm angle is that purer backspin fastballs tend to cut less horizontally. Abbott has managed something somewhat tricky with his new arm slot:

Despite the higher release angle, Abbott hasn’t experienced a corresponding increase in the amount of carry on his heater. The other odd thing is that he’s been able to maintain the higher-than-normal horizontal break he generates with the pitch. Because he’s now throwing from a higher slot, the pitch has a much steeper approach angle, and the pitch’s cutter-esque shape provides a wider horizontal approach angle.

Abbott’s four-seamer now stands out both because it doesn’t carry as much and because it cuts more than you’d expect. A “dead zone” fastball describes a pitch with unspectacular movement traits — a fastball that moves as expected. Research has shown that a fastball’s dead zone is a function of the pitcher’s arm angle, leading to the concept of a dynamic dead zone (DDZ). Using Alex Chamberlain’s calculated DDZ deltas (based on work done by Max Bay), we can see just how much Abbott’s fastball falls outside of what the batter expects based on his arm slot:

Remember, magnitude is what matters when evaluating a pitcher’s DDZ, so Abbott’s negative vertical dead zone delta isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though his +2.8 horizontal dead zone delta is very much a good thing.

The results have been positive so far. His whiff rate on the pitch has improved from just over 19% during his first two seasons to 25.2% this year. The additional swings and misses are nice, but he’s also turned his heater into a contact-suppression monster. Just look at some of these key contact metrics from Statcast:

Abbott’s expected wOBA on contact when he throws his fastball is just .297, 17th among the 248 pitchers who have thrown at least 100 four-seamers this year. The hard-hit and barrel rates against the pitch are miniscule. The most impressive aspect of his contact management comes from Statcast’s new bat tracking data. Opposing batters produce the second-highest average bat speed in baseball against Abbott’s fastball, but they “square-up” the pitch at the third-lowest rate on a per swing basis and they produce a “blast” against his heater at the fourth-lowest rate in baseball. In other words, batters really gear up when they see Abbott’s fastball because their eyes are telling them that the pitch is very hittable, but they simply cannot make solid contact against it.

To connect this all back to the pitch’s shape, I expect that this contact suppression is all linked to the amount of horizontal break Abbott generates with his fastball. With his high arm slot, a batter expects to see a straight four-seamer with tons of carry. Instead, they’re presented with a cutting fastball that doesn’t have as much carry as you’d expect. Rather than swing completely under the pitch like they might if it had a ton of carry, they’ll often put it in play, but it’s weak contact because the pitch doesn’t come in where they expect it to horizontally. So much of the contact he generates with the pitch is off the end of the bat or in on the handle, leading to weak fly balls and popups.

Of course, location matters, too. In the first table above, I included average vertical location, because location is a critical component of vertical approach angle. Abbott is locating his fastball much lower in the strike zone this year, which, along with his higher arm slot, has contributed to his steeper approach angle. He’s also been very consistent with his location on the outer half of the plate to right-handed batters:

Because the horizontal break on the pitch causes it to tail away from righties, his location is perfect for inducing weak contact off the end of the bat while avoiding the barrel if it ends up over the heart of the plate.

In case you were worried about Abbott’s dip in velocity, I’m happy to report that his heater has had a bit more zip during his last few starts:

A shoulder injury last August cut short his 2024 season, and he entered spring training a little bit behind schedule because of it. I suspect that he was still ramping up during his first few starts of the season and that his velocity will be back to normal moving forward.

Beyond his fastball and the new arm slot, there’s one key change to the rest of Abbott’s repertoire that could be contributing to his success. He’s getting about three more inches of drop on his changeup while still maintaining the pitch’s above-average horizontal break. The whiff rate on that pitch has improved by about four points, and the expected wOBA against it is just .222. More importantly, the change in shape has allowed him to differentiate the pitch from his fastball a bit more:

Please excuse the color differences from year to year in the plots above. In Abbott’s pitch plot from 2024 on the left, his changeup (the black blob) somewhat overlaps with his fastball (the blue blob). In 2025, on the right, his offspeed pitch (the green blog) is wholly distinct from his heater (the blue blob).

Abbott briefly discussed the evolution of the pitch with Charlie Goldsmith of the Dayton Daily News in late April:

It’s come a long way. I talked with Nick Martinez and a bunch of the guys about how to throw it, grips and all of that stuff. It’s finally coming around. It’s not to where I think it can be yet, but it’s gotten a lot more consistent.

He has increased his use of his changeup from 16.3% last year to 21.3% this year, and it has proven to be a potent weapon against right-handed batters.

With a new arm slot, a deceptive fastball, and an improved changeup in hand, Abbott has truly elevated his arsenal. His walk rate is a little high right now, but his strikeout rate is 30.3%, and the contact suppression improvements he’s made to his heater have almost entirely negated those additional free passes. The top-line results certainly speak for themselves: Abbott has allowed more than one run in just one of his starts this year, and that happened to be the only start in which he’s allowed more than four hits. As long as batters are unable to square up his fastball, we could be seeing a significant step forward from the young lefty.

Thanks to a big upset during MLB’s inaugural Rivalry Weekend, the Dodgers are out of the top spot in these rankings. In their place? The Gritty Tigs.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now a quarter of the way through the regular season, and even though the playoff races have largely taken shape, there’s still plenty of time for some of the early disappointments to get things right. Last week, it was the Twins and Cardinals who caught fire with matching eight-game winning streaks.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

…

The Dodgers split a big four-game series against the Diamondbacks last weekend, and Friday night’s game was an especially wild affair. There were four lead changes, and Los Angeles won after scoring six runs in the ninth inning, a rally that was capped off by a go-ahead three-run bomb from Shohei Ohtani, his fourth home run of the week. Freddie Freeman also hit four homers last week and collected 10 other hits. The Dodgers’ roster was depleted even further when Teoscar Hernández and Evan Phillips hit the IL on Tuesday — they now have 15 players on the IL — but they’ve continued to prove they have enough talent to maintain their spot as the top team in baseball.

The Mets took two out of three games in both of their series last week, but the Phillies did them one better, going 5-1 on their roadtrip through Tampa Bay and Cleveland. Suddenly, the NL East looks very tight at the top. New York is still in first place, but its hold on the division is now just 1.5 games, down from five as recently as April 26. The good news for the Mets is that, even as that gap has narrowed, Juan Soto’s bat has woken up; he blasted three home runs last week, the same amount he hit in all of April, and he’s up to five dingers since the calendar flipped to May. The Mets have a big subway series against the Yankees lined up for this weekend as they try to cling to their division lead. Meanwhile, the Phillies return home to host the surging Cardinals before the Pirates come to Philly for an intrastate rivalry series over the weekend.

So far, the Cubs have faced the toughest schedule in the majors by a pretty significant margin, which makes their 23-18 record all the more impressive. Thankfully, they won’t face another opponent with a record over .500 until early June, as their series against the Marlins, White Sox, Reds, and Rockies will take them through the rest of the month. Chicago was already without Justin Steele and Javier Assad when Shota Imanaga landed on the IL with a hamstring strain early last week. In response, the team called up its top pitching prospect, Cade Horton, to make his major league debut over the weekend, using him as the bulk guy in Saturday’s 6-5 win over the Mets. The easier schedule should alleviate some of the pressure on the patchwork rotation, though the Cubs will definitely want to find some reinforcements before the dog days of summer set in.

The Yankees snapped the Padres’ six-game winning streak on Tuesday, though San Diego got back on track with two wins against the Rockies over the weekend, including a 21-0 drubbing on Saturday. As for New York, the offense carried the team through two series wins last week. Aaron Judge went hitless in two games early in the week but got his bat going again against the A’s in Sacramento. He blasted two home runs on Saturday and collected four hits on Sunday, pushing his batting average back over .400. He enters Monday’s series opener in Seattle slashing .409/.494/.779 with 14 home runs, a 254 wRC+ and 3.8 WAR.

Speaking of the Mariners, their streak of nine consecutive series wins was snapped over weekend when they were swept at home by the Blue Jays. They’re still leading the AL West, but they have two difficult series ahead of them this week: the aforementioned matchup with the Yankees, followed up a three-game set in San Diego.

Over in the AL Central, the Tigers continue to hold onto the best record in the AL, but they dropped their weekend series to the Rangers. The Royals entered their weekend series against the Red Sox on a seven-game winning streak with five straight series wins before Boston’s pitching slowed them down. Kansas City lost on Saturday and Sunday and was held to just one run in each game.

The Cardinals and Twins are the hottest teams in baseball right now, with each club carrying eight-game winning streaks into the new week after struggling over the first month of the season. Ten days ago, St. Louis was six games out of first place and five games under .500; now the club is just a game behind the Cubs in the NL Central. Pitching has led the way for the Cardinals during their ascent, as they allowed a total of seven runs last week. Matthew Liberatore’s long-awaited breakout is the big story; he outpitched Paul Skenes in a seven-inning gem on Tuesday, giving up one run while striking out eight.

Meanwhile in Minnesota, Royce Lewis and Willi Castro were both activated off the IL last week, giving the roster a much needed boost. Likewise, it’s the pitching that’s driving their success; the Twins held opponents to two or fewer runs in their first five games last week before Sunday’s 7-6 walk-off win over the Giants. The offense still hasn’t really clicked, but their excellent run prevention has allowed them to post a +19 run differential despite sitting just a game over .500. Unlike the Cardinals, though, the Twins are still in fourth place and five games out of first because the AL Central — featuring the Tigers, who have the best record in the AL, as well as the Royals and Guardians — is one of the most competitive divisions in baseball.

In the wake of Triston Casas’s season-ending knee injury, the Red Sox unnecessarily walked into another ugly spat with their franchise cornerstone last week, when chief baseball officer Craig Breslow asked Rafael Devers if he would be open to playing first base. It’s not an outrageous ask from a baseball perspective, but the problem is the lack of clear communication, both public and private, between Boston’s front office and its most important player. Thankfully, none of this has affected Devers at the plate; he collected 10 hits last week, including two home runs, and his season wRC+ is now up to 146.

The Astros placed Yordan Alvarez on the IL early last week with some inflammation in his hand. Then, on Saturday, Jose Altuve exited the game early with hamstring tightness. Neither injury is considered serious, but it’s just another hurdle Houston has to overcome this year. The Astros are virtually tied with the Athletics in the AL West standings, two games behind the Mariners and a game ahead of the Rangers. Both Texas teams went 3-3 last week, while the A’s dropped both their series against the Mariners and Yankees.

The Cardinals’ hot streak has pushed the Brewers and Reds down a notch in the NL Central standings. Jackson Chourio is clearly talented, but his hyper-aggressive approach this season has led to inconsistent results. He’s supposed to be leading Milwaukee’s offense, but no one is really hitting right now. The pitching has been good considering all the injuries the staff has had to overcome — Brandon Woodruff and Aaron Civale are both nearing their returns — but a team that can’t score runs consistently won’t go anywhere.

For Cincinnati, a rash of injuries has derailed any success the team might have enjoyed earlier in the season. Hunter Greene, Noelvi Marte, and Jake Fraley all hit the IL last week, though thankfully Austin Hays returned from his own injury on Friday. After the Reds had scored just 10 runs across their previous six games, they erupted for 13 runs against the Astros on Saturday. Of course, they were shut out a day later; their offensive woes won’t be solved that easily.

After getting swept by the Twins, the Orioles bounced back with a series win against the Angels last weekend. If you’re looking for signs of hope, Zach Eflin was activated off the IL on Sunday and looked pretty good in a five-inning outing. On the offensive side of things, Jackson Holliday is showing some signs of life; he’s collected a pair of home runs and nine hits this month.

Both the Pirates and Rockies fired their managers last week, though neither Derek Shelton nor Bud Black were to blame for the struggles of their respective teams. Instead, the two managers are just the latest scapegoats for two beleaguered franchises going nowhere. At least Pittsburgh has some excellent pitching to witness every few days, with some more exciting prospects on the way. The situation in Colorado is much more bleak. The Rockies allowed a whopping 66 runs last week. On Thursday, they lost both games of a doubleheader by a combined score of 21-3, and somehow things got worse from there — they needed only one game on Saturday against the Padres to surrender 21 more runs. Final score: 21-0. Ouch.

The calendar has flipped over to May, and a handful of teams have jumped out ahead in the standings. Behind them sit a huge mass of mediocre ballclubs all jostling for position but struggling to stand out in one way or another.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

…

The Dodgers had their seven-game win streak snapped on Sunday night, but that surge gave them the best record in baseball and a half-game lead over the Padres in the NL West. However, for as well as they’ve played this season, the Dodgers still have their issues, especially on the injury front. Last week began with Tyler Glasnow landing on the IL with shoulder inflammation — he was shut down from throwing for 10-14 days, and the Dodgers are expected to be cautious with him as he works his way back — and then Tommy Edman followed him a few days later after he hurt his right ankle on a slide. It’s the same ankle that Edman sprained last year while he was recovering from offseason wrist surgery and delayed his season debut until August; he did not sprain it this time around, and the Dodgers expect him to return as soon as he’s eligible to come off the IL on Saturday. The lineup hardly skipped a beat without the surprisingly powerful switch-hitter; Los Angeles put up double-digit runs in three games last week.

The Cubs won both of their series against the Pirates and Brewers last week, beating up on some division rivals and pushing their lead in the NL Central to three games, the largest in baseball. They could be facing some more injury trouble as Shota Imanaga exited his start on Sunday with a hamstring injury. Not to be outdone, the Padres completed a perfect week with five straight wins. That streak got San Diego back on track after a pretty poor end to April. On the flip side, the Mets lost both of their series last week.

The Mariners’ ascent has continued despite some choppy seas. Not only did they lose Logan Gilbert to a minor forearm injury, but Luke Raley and Dylan Moore joined him on the IL last week, sapping the lineup of two key contributors. No matter, because Jorge Polanco is doing his best Aaron Judge impression, Cal Raleigh is leading the league in home runs, and role player Leo Rivas is enjoying some surprising success (182 wRC+ in 15 games). More importantly, key setup man Matt Brash was just activated off the IL over the weekend after rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, and George Kirby made his first rehab start as he works his way back from a spring shoulder injury.

Javier Báez lives! The erstwhile shortstop made the transition from the infield to center field a few weeks ago and has suddenly thrived in the new role. He’s collected hits in every game he’s started at his new position. Last week, he clubbed home runs in three straight games and his resurgence is a big reason why the Tigers have maintained the best record in the AL.

The Phillies could use some bullpen help. On Tuesday, Orion Kerkering blew a save against the Nationals when he allowed four runs in the top of the ninth inning, though his offense picked him up with two runs in the home half to walk it off. Philadelphia wasn’t so lucky on Sunday. This time it was José Alvarado who gave up four runs — one in the ninth and three in the 10th — leading to an ugly extra-innings loss to the Diamondbacks. By league- and park-adjusted ERA, the Phillies have the sixth-worst relief corps in baseball right now. Even so, despite the bullpen woes, they’ve won six of their last eight games and enter this week just 2.5 games behind the Mets in the NL East standings.

The Giants are no longer in first place, though they’ve mostly kept pace with the surging Dodgers and Padres. San Francisco enters this week as the third-place team in the NL West, but the club is just 1.5 games out of first. That early-season success isn’t much of a mirage, either. The Giants’ actual record is just a game better than their Pythagorean record and two games better than their BaseRuns record. Meanwhile, it seems shortstop Willy Adames is finally heating up. Last week, he slashed .348/.483/.826 with three home runs and a 251 wRC+ in 29 plate appearances.

Last week was a bit of a mixed bag for the two NL teams in this tier, as both the Braves and Diamondbacks went 3-3 and maintained their places on the fringe of the playoff picture. Arizona salvaged its weekend series with a wild Sunday win over the Phillies to go along with a series win over the Mets. All eyes are on ace Corbin Burnes, who is skipping his start this week due to a sore shoulder. Atlanta, meanwhile, escaped Colorado with a series victory but lost two of three against the Dodgers over the weekend.

Aaron Judge can’t do it all. He extended his hitting streak to 14 games on Sunday — and on the season he has a ludicrous .423/.510/.777 slash line with 11 home runs, a 261 wRC+ and 3.4 WAR — but the Yankees lost both of their series last week to the Orioles and Rays. Luckily for New York, though, no one else in the AL East was able to take advantage of the hiccup; despite going 2-4 last week, the Yankees enter Monday’s series opener against the Padres with the same two-game lead that they held a week ago.

The Royals blasted seven home runs in their victory over the Orioles on Sunday; they had hit 18 total as a team heading into that contest. Following the barrage, they are now tied with the Pirates for the second-fewest homers in baseball. However, that lack of power hasn’t held them back over the last two weeks. Kansas City has won four straight series and is 11-2 during this stretch.

The Rangers fired offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker on Sunday, the second domino to fall after they demoted key offseason acquisition Jake Burger on Friday. Texas has lost five straight series and scored more than four runs just three times in its last 16 games, a truly miserable stretch. Meanwhile, the Athletics have become road warriors after going 5-2 on their latest trip — which included a huge series win over the Rangers — and pushing their record to 13-7 away from Sacramento. We’ll see if they can keep up their winning ways when they return home this week for series against the Mariners and Yankees.

The Blue Jays and Orioles each moved one game closer to the Yankees during New York’s skid last week, but the Red Sox and Rays failed to gain any ground after matching the AL East leader’s 2-4 record. Boston has to be a little worried about its mounting injury woes; as soon as the team welcomed back Lucas Giolito, it placed Walker Buehler on the IL with a shoulder injury. The bigger blow came on Friday, when first baseman Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon; he’s out for the season after undergoing surgery on Sunday.

The one saving grace for the Orioles last was the collective poor play from the rest of the AL East. They started the year with 48% odds to make the playoffs; they’re at 13.4% right now and time is growing shorter for them to turn things around. Baltimore’s series win over the Yankees at the beginning of last week could have been that turning point, but the O’s followed it up with a series loss to the Royals.

The Nationals have been on a quiet run of good play over the last few weeks. Despite going 3-3 last week, they’re 9-7 over their last 16 games. At the forefront are two guys they acquired in the big Juan Soto trade a few years ago. James Wood has pushed his wRC+ up to 157 after collecting eight hits last week, and MacKenzie Gore’s strikeout rate is now up to 36.4% on the season after striking out nine in another solid start on Sunday.

After starting the season with a promising 9-5 record, the Angels have won just four of their last 19 games. To make matters worse, Mike Trout landed on the IL with a bone bruise in his left knee. Prior to hurting his knee, Trout had been showing some good power — his nine home runs are tied for fourth in the AL — but his overall batting line (a 97 wRC+) left a lot to be desired.

A rain-shortened win over the Astros on Sunday gave the White Sox a rare series victory and their fifth win in their last 10 games. Amazingly enough, their run differential is just a single run worse than that of the Guardians, who are 10 games up on them in the standings. This little “hot” streak has pushed the South Siders ahead of their historically inept pace from last year, though they’re still tracking to lose well over 100 games this season.

The unpredictable nature of the early season has reared it’s head. You might have been able to guess that the Mets would have the best record in baseball after a month, but I doubt many would have foreseen the Tigers holding the AL’s best record entering the final week of April.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

…

Tyler Glasnow made an early exit from his start on Sunday after experiencing some shoulder discomfort. That leaves the Dodgers with three healthy starters and a lot of questions about how they’re going to fill out their rotation. Tony Gonsolin is on track to be activated from the IL to make his season debut this week, but it’s still troubling how quickly Los Angeles burned through its pitching depth.

The Mets completed a perfect seven-game homestand last week that culminated on Wednesday with a walk-off victory to seal a sweep over the Phillies. Jeff McNeil and Francisco Alvarez were activated off the IL on Friday, and the young catcher blasted his first home run of the season in Saturday’s 2-0 win. New York currently owns the best record in baseball, but the team had some trouble handling the Nationals over the weekend, coughing up two late leads on Friday and Sunday.

The growth of Pete Crow-Armstrong at the plate to go along with his elite defense and baserunning has been a huge difference maker for the Cubs. He nearly singlehandedly won a two-game set against the Dodgers last week, collecting six hits, two home runs, and two stolen bases. His evolution is one of many reasons why the Cubs have the best offense in baseball through the first month of the season.

The Tigers won their third straight series with a sweep of the Orioles as the exclamation point over the weekend. They’re currently the best team in the American League thanks to a pitching staff that’s allowed the fewest runs in the league. Unlike last year’s surprising playoff club, Detroit’s starting rotation has been a strength, posting the second lowest park- and league-adjusted ERA in baseball. Tarik Skubal has obviously been the headliner, but the Tigers have gotten strong contributions from all five starters this season.

The Yankees salvaged what had been a rough week with a doubleheader sweep of the Blue Jays on Sunday. With those two victories, they maintained their two-game lead over the Red Sox in the AL East. Aaron Judge has been hitting at an all-time-great pace, even as he has only two home runs over the last two weeks. He enters this week with a .406/.500/.717 slash line, eight home runs, a 247 wRC+, and 2.7 WAR. Unlike some recent seasons, Judge is far from the only offensive force in the lineup; Cody Bellinger is the only Yankee with at least 50 plate appearance and a wRC+ below 100. That high-powered offense has covered up some bullpen woes. Devin Williams has had a rough start to his Yankees tenure; another blown save on Friday shot his ERA up to 11.25, and he’s been removed from the closer role until he can get things back on track.

The Mariners may have dodged a bullet on Friday, when Logan Gilbert was removed from his start after pitching just three innings. He was diagnosed with a Grade 1 flexor strain rather than anything more serious. As it is, he’ll join George Kirby on the IL, and suddenly Seattle’s stellar starting rotation looks a lot thinner than it has in a long time. Thankfully, the bats have stepped up. With a 126 wRC+, the Mariners currently boast the second-best offense in baseball, and Cal Raleigh and his major league-leading 10 home runs are a big reason why.

Don’t look now, but the Braves have won three straight series and seven of their last nine games, putting them just three games under .500. It’s been quite a turnaround from their 0-7 start, though they’re not out of the woods yet. After making just one start this season, Spencer Strider returned to the IL last week with a hamstring strain. It should be about a month before Atlanta welcomes back both the ace and Ronald Acuña Jr., who is ramping up but has yet to begin a rehab assignment.

The Phillies snapped a five-game losing streak with a win on Saturday over the Cubs and backed it up with an extra-innings victory on Sunday night. There’s considerable daylight between them and the Mets atop the NL East — four games is the largest division lead in baseball — though it’s far too early to panic in Philadelphia. Encouragingly, Aaron Nola spun a seven-inning gem in his start on Sunday to snap out of his early-season funk.

The Rangers dropped their third straight series over the weekend in ugly fashion, losing Sunday’s rubber match with the Giants when Heliot Ramos led off the ninth and hit a walk-off dribbler back to the pitcher, courtesy of two throwing errors. It was their third walk-off loss of the week. Their vaunted offense has scored the fewest runs per game in the majors this season. The scorching starts of Wyatt Langford (215 wRC+) and Josh Smith (148) have been offset by the woes of Jake Burger (46 wRC+), Marcus Semien (25), and Joc Pederson (13). Making matters worse, Corey Seager (133 wRC+) landed on the IL last week with a right hamstring strain, though he’s not expected to miss much more time than the minimum 10 days.

The Rays bounced back nicely last week, winning a series in Arizona before sweeping the Padres in San Diego. Both of their victories against the Diamondbacks came in extra innings, and the pitching staff held the Friars to just three runs in three games. Maybe getting out of Tampa was exactly what they needed to give them a spark — that and Chandler Simpson running wild in center field and on the basepaths.

The Reds swept the Rockies over the weekend and now have a modest four-game winning streak going. The pitching has continued to impress and Elly De La Cruz is starting to heat up; he’s riding an 11-game hit streak. More importantly, he’s getting support from elsewhere in the lineup. Noelvi Marte collected 10 hits last week, including two home runs, and with a 221 wRC+ in 12 games (54 plate appearances), Austin Hays has provided a jolt to the offense since making his season debut on April 15.

The Orioles’ struggles have continued unabated. It’s not just their starting rotation, either. There was some hope that the offense would be able to carry the load until Zach Eflin or Grayson Rodriguez returned. Unfortunately, the lineup scored just 10 runs in six games last week, and key contributors like Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, and Jordan Westburg have gone cold. Cedric Mullins is essentially carrying the offense by himself. Baltimore has a critical three-game series against the Yankees this week, and it could be a bellwether for how the rest of this season is going to go.

The Marlins called up Agustín Ramírez on Monday and he promptly clubbed nine hits, three home runs, and four doubles during his first week in the big leagues. Miami’s offense as a whole hasn’t been all that bad, just a bit below league average. Rather, it’s the pitching that has let the team down. Max Meyer’s breakout has been great to see, but the rest of the starting rotation has been a mess, and the bullpen has been one of the worst units in baseball.

It’s probably too early to think about the Rockies “besting” the historically bad season the White Sox endured last year, but it’s the end of April and Colorado has won just four games. Things have been so bad that even when something exciting happens — like Jordan Beck’s five home runs in the span of two days last week — the team still finds a way to lose.

As we enter the third week of April, we’re getting to the point where the early-season mirages are beginning to fade. Some of the surprising hot starts are sputtering out and reality is setting in. I’m trying out a bit of a different format for power rankings today, with shorter blurbs for every team that are more focused on what happened over the past week.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

…

The Dodgers had a great week; they swept the Rockies at home and then took two of three from the Rangers on the road. They’re still dealing with a number of issues in their rotation — Tyler Glasnow left his start on Sunday early, though it sounds like he avoided a serious injury — but there’s good news on the horizon, too. Clayton Kershaw started a rehab assignment last week, Tony Gonsolin is nearing the end of his rehab, and Blake Snell threw a pain-free bullpen session over the weekend. And all those injury concerns can be glossed over a bit because Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been absolutely dominant; he’s allowed just four runs total across his first five starts.

The Mets swept the Cardinals in four games over the weekend and now find themselves leading the Phillies by two games in the NL East standings. Francisco Lindor’s dramatics and Pete Alonso’s hot bat have covered for a slowish start from Juan Soto — if you want to call a .359 wOBA “slow.” They have some issues to sort out in center field, but the impending return of Jeff McNeil should help provide some depth and versatility to the lineup.

The Padres managed to eke out a win against the Astros on Sunday night to avoid getting swept in their tightly contested weekend series. They’ll have to figure out how to keep their early-season hot streak going without several key players; Jake Cronenworth and Jackson Merrill have been out for about two weeks, and they were joined on the IL last week by outfielders Brandon Lockridge and Jason Heyward. Fortunately, it seems that Luis Arraez avoided a serious injury on Sunday night, when he had to be taken to the hospital after a scary collision with Mauricio Dubón at first base that initially had left the three-time batting champion motionless. He was released from the hospital after undergoing tests and is expected to rejoin the team on Monday, though it’s unclear how soon he’ll be cleared to play.

The Yankees jumped to the top of the AL East with a 6-1 week after sweeping the Royals and winning a four-game series over the Rays. Max Fried was brilliant in his no-hit bid that wasn’t on Sunday and has really stabilized a rotation that lost both Gerrit Cole and Luis Gil during the spring.

It was a ho-hum 3-3 week for the Cubs, but they received some bad news on the injury front: Justin Steele will miss the rest of the season after undergoing elbow surgery on Friday. They proved their resilience in an absolutely wild Friday night slugfest against the Diamondbacks at Wrigley Field, where 21 runs were scored after the sixth inning in an eventual 13-11 Chicago victory.

The Phillies went 4-3 last week and barely managed to keep pace with the Mets. Bryce Harper caught fire last week, when he posted a .320/.469/.760 slash line with three home runs and a 229 wRC+. Meanwhile, notorious slow starter Kyle Schwarber is slashing .269/.424/.577 with seven homers and a 176 wRC+ so far this season.

That wild 13-11 game in Chicago was a killer for the Diamondbacks, who somehow lost despite scoring 10 runs in the eighth inning to take an 11-7 lead. Arizona also dropped Saturday’s game before narrowly avoiding a sweep with an extra-innings win on Sunday.

The Rangers treated us to an incredibly competitive series against the Dodgers over the weekend, the highlight of which was the pitchers duel between Yamamoto and Jacob deGrom on Friday. Texas was shut out in both of its losses in the series, but the team should be encouraged that its pitching staff limited the potent Dodgers lineup to a total of seven runs across the three games.

The Mariners won their fourth straight series after going 4-2 against the Reds and Blue Jays last week. Two of those victories came in extra innings after some late heroics salvaged some shoddy relief pitching. Cal Raleigh is making a strong case as an early season MVP candidate; he dumped four home runs into the stands last week.

An unfortunate walk-off loss to the Angels on Sunday spoiled the Giants’ week. They’re still in the thick of the crowded NL West, but now a step behind the Dodgers and Padres. If you’re searching for signs that this early success is sustainable, look no further than Jung Hoo Lee; he’s been absolutely phenomenal to start the season, posting a 172 wRC+ so far. On the mound, Logan Webb has been just as good, and San Francisco even enjoyed a vintage start from Justin Verlander on Sunday. He went six innings and allowed one run while striking out six before closer Ryan Walker blew the save with four runs in the ninth inning.

After taking three of four from the Royals over the weekend, the Tigers look like the team to beat in the AL Central. They are the only one in the division with a positive run differential. Most encouraging is that Spencer Torkelson continues to rake, collecting another pair of home runs last week and pushing his wRC+ up to 193.

The Braves started the climb out of their early-season hole with a weekend sweep of the Twins. Alex Verdugo provided a spark at the top of the lineup after being called up on Friday; he went 5-for-14 with two doubles in the three-game series. In other good news, Spencer Strider made his first start of the season earlier in the week. He went five-plus innings with five strikeouts in a 3-1 loss to the Blue Jays, throwing 97 pitches and topping out at 97.9 mph.

The Blue Jays’ hold on the AL East lead was short lived after a 3-3 week, but they can’t feel too bad about their second-place position in the standings. Oh, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. finally hit his first home run of the season on Wednesday, lifting that one weird weight off his shoulders.

It’s been a slow start to the season for the Astros, but maybe their series win over the Padres is what they needed to turn things around. They probably need to look into whether or not first base is cursed in Houston; Christian Walker has really struggled to start the season, posting a 63 wRC+ so far with just a pair of home runs.

The Brewers ran out a thread-bare rotation to start the season, but they are suddenly about to be swimming in pitchers. Tobias Myers is scheduled to be activated from the IL this week and Brandon Woodruff shouldn’t be far behind. Milwaukee weathered that early-season storm and managed to keep pace just behind the Cubs in the NL Central.

After a bit of a slip two weeks ago, the Red Sox went 4-2 last week to get back on track. The most encouraging sight has been the early success of Trevor Story. Finally healthy, he’s posted a 146 wRC+ with five home runs and six stolen bases, and along with rookie Kristian Campbell (156 wRC+), he has stabilized Boston’s middle infield and lengthened the lineup.

I will admit to underrating the Guardians this year; they’ve won nine of their last 12 games and are just a half-game behind the Tigers in the AL Central. They swept the Pirates over the weekend to cap off what has been the softest schedule to start the season. Things will get a little harder this week as they start a long homestand against the Yankees, Red Sox, and Twins.

The Reds scored 24 runs in a massive beatdown against the Orioles on Sunday. With the starting pitching earning all of the early-season plaudits, it was nice to see the Cincinnati bats finally wake up.

The Orioles are feeling the ill effects of a neglected starting rotation. Yes, Zach Eflin and Grayson Rodriguez are both on the IL, but it’s not just a lack of depth that’s hurting the O’s. They are also lacking the frontline production that Corbin Burnes provided last season. Baltimore starters allowed 25 runs in six games last week, and it’s become glaringly clear that 41-year-old Charlie Morton isn’t the solution.

The Angels’ dream start to the season took a blow when the Rangers swept them in three games early last week. They rebounded a bit over the weekend to secure a series victory over the Giants in dramatic fashion, scoring four runs in the ninth inning for their first walk-off win of the season. Mike Trout smacked two more home runs over the weekend — both of which naturally came in the one game the Halos lost — and he now has eight on the season, second most in the majors. He’s slashing just .184/.289/.513, though much of that wonky line can be attributed to his ridiculously low .133 BABIP; his .277 xBA and .681 xSLG further suggest that he’s been incredibly unlucky this season. Just as he’s bound to get hot as the season goes on and the small-sample-size noise quiets down, it’s likely only a matter of time before the Angels’ good fortune runs out and the team slides down the standings for good.

The Rays’ temporary move to George M. Steinbrenner Field this season has caused some scheduling quirks. Because they are trying to fit as many home games in as possible while the weather is still pleasant in Florida, they’ve only played three road games thus far. That changes this week as they embark on their first big road trip of the season, which comes after they went 2-5 last week against the Red Sox and Yankees.

The Royals managed just a single win last week, a come-from-behind, extra-innings victory on Sunday to barely avoid a four-game sweep at the hands of the Tigers. What’s more concerning is that Bobby Witt Jr. and Maikel Garcia are the only two players on their roster with wOBAs over .300. At 2.91 runs per game, Kansas City has the worst offense in the majors.

One step forward, two steps back for the Cardinals last week; they won a series against the Astros but were then swept by the Mets in four games over the weekend. The resurgence of Lars Nootbaar and Nolan Arenado has offered St. Louis some hope, but the majority of this roster has been pretty lackluster.

I’ll give the Athletics credit, they know how to put some lopsided score lines together. They’ve played nine games decided by five or more runs, and have gone 4-5 in those games. Three of those blowouts came last week — with scores of 12-3, 8-0, and 14-1 — and the A’s won two of them. Tyler Soderstrom hit three more home runs, bringing his league-leading total to nine and his wRC+ to 191.

Since joining the Twins in 2022, Carlos Correa had never batted lower than fourth in the lineup until last week, when he was dropped to fifth during his ongoing slow start. He responded with four hits over the weekend including his first home run of the season. Minnesota lost all three games anyway.

The Marlins had gotten off to a better-than-expected start to the season until they ran into the Diamondbacks and Phillies last week. They emerged from those two series with just a single win, an extra-innings victory on Sunday. They did activate Jesús Sánchez and Connor Norby off the IL last week, so their lineup should be getting a little stronger.

The Pirates managed to win three of four from the Nationals last week, but their success was negated when they were swept by the Guardians over the weekend. Paul Skenes continues to dominate — a potential matchup against Yamamoto and the Dodgers on Friday promises to be must-see TV — and the rest of the pitching staff looks pretty good, though their offense remains a major issue. Only three Pirates are above league average at the plate: Oneil Cruz (125 wRC+), Joey Bart (129), and Enmanuel Valdez (115). Speaking of Cruz, his center field defense is still a work-in-progress.

James Wood has very quickly established himself as a future star with his hot start to the season. He blasted a pair of home runs last week and his wRC+ is now up to 139. The power he’s displaying is reminiscent of a young Juan Soto, and he looks like a strong foundation for the Nationals to build around.

It’s hard to imagine, but the White Sox are playing behind the pace of their historically inept 2024 team. They’ve won just five games so far. At least they’re giving some of their youngsters the opportunity to get experience in the big leagues. Catcher Edgar Quero was their latest call-up last week, and he collected his first hit on Friday.

There’s one team that’s been even worse than the White Sox: the Rockies. It was an eventful week in Colorado, as the Rockies placed Kris Bryant on the IL with a degenerative back injury, and there are real questions about whether or not he’ll ever play regularly again. They also fired their hitting coach and replaced him with Clint Hurdle, the former manager who led the franchise to its lone World Series appearance nearly two decades ago. Mercifully, on Sunday, the Rockies snapped their eight-game losing streak with a 3-1 win over the Nationals. It was Colorado’s fourth win of the season.

The wave of early season injuries has hit, and plenty of contenders are attempting to navigate through the first month of the season without some big name stars and key contributors.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

…

After starting off the season with seven straight wins, the Dodgers have dropped three straight series; they went 2-4 against the Nationals and Cubs last week. If you’re looking for positives, Freddie Freeman was activated off the IL on Friday, and Roki Sasaki made his best start of his young major league career against red hot Chicago on Saturday — even if the game ended in a 16-0 blowout. Miguel Rojas entertained us with impressions of the Dodgers pitching staff during that lopsided affair, though I’m sure Dodger fans would rather he never pitch again this season.

Following their series win over the Athletics and sweep of the Rockies, the Padres currently own the best record in baseball. It’s been their pitching staff that’s led the way; they didn’t allow a single run over the weekend and already have six shutouts this season. With Jackson Merrill and Jake Cronenworth on the IL for a bit, the Friars will need to continue to lean on their arms to carry the load.

The Cubs have had one of the tougher schedules to start the season, and not just because they began early in Japan. By the end of the month, they’ll have completed their season series against the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Padres while also squeezing in series against the Rangers and Phillies. That makes their 11-7 record partway through this gauntlet all the more impressive. Kyle Tucker has been absolutely crushing the ball as he leads baseball’s best offense so far. The 16-0 blowout on Saturday definitely helped, but Chicago is the only ballclub that has scored more than 100 runs this season.

Speaking of hot starts, Pete Alonso has been about as potent as Tucker, with a 202 wRC+ that’s one point below that of the Cubs right fielder. The Polar Bear’s hot start has helped the Mets take an early lead in the NL East division race. Both Jeff McNeil and Francisco Alvarez are nearing a return from their spring injuries, which should further bolster the lineup. More impressive has been the stability of the starting rotation. That group looked rather thin when the season opened, after a slew of spring injuries forced New York to dig deep into its depth, but guys like Tylor Megill and Griffin Canning have been solid so far.

The Diamondbacks followed up their dramatic ninth-inning victory on Saturday with another come-from-behind win on Sunday. They’re still only in fourth in their division, but their 9-7 record isn’t all that bad. Corbin Carroll is leading the second-best offense in the NL, a lineup that is making do without the injured Ketel Marte.

The 2025 Tigers are a good reminder that prospect development isn’t always linear. Their best hitter over these first few weeks of the season has been Spencer Torkelson; he blasted his fifth home run of the year on Sunday, pushing his wRC+ up to 206. On the mound, Casey Mize has looked excellent, though he was roughed up a bit in Sunday’s start. After spending a few years struggling to establish themselves in the big leagues, these guys finally look like key contributors on Detroit’s roster.

The Mariners may have just turned around their season with a 5-1 week against the Astros and Rangers. On the one hand, the one loss was a 2-1 extra-innings affair against Houston in which they went 1-for-19 with runners in scoring position. On the other, three of those wins came after scoring the winning run in the eighth inning or later. Seattle hasn’t sorted out all of its offensive woes, but the lineup has done just enough to support its excellent pitching staff.

After winning three of four against the Red Sox and splitting a rain-shortened series against the Orioles last week, the Blue Jays find themselves the surprise leaders in the AL East. Bo Bichette and George Springer have bounced back nicely after their down seasons last year, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has been solid since signing his massive extension a week ago, though he still hasn’t homered yet this season. If anything, the ups and downs in their division should remind us that the American League is wide open for the taking.

Speaking of the AL East, the Red Sox dropped an ugly series to the White Sox over the weekend; they made five errors in Friday’s 11-1 blowout and then lost in the ninth inning on Saturday. Garrett Crochet’s no-hit bid on Sunday was the only bright spot for Boston. Meanwhile, the Orioles have scuffled to start the season, and their already thin starting rotation grew thinner with Zach Eflin hitting the IL last week.

In last week’s power rankings, I called out the Reds and their offensive woes. Fast forward a week, and Cincinnati suddenly looks like it’s in a much better position thanks to some phenomenal pitching. The Reds cooled off the Giants with a series win in San Francisco and then swept the Pirates over the weekend. Hunter Greene contributed two scoreless starts during the week, and Brady Singer has looked dominant after joining the team in an offseason trade. Shockingly, the Reds are tied with the Mets for the major league lead in pitcher WAR and are second in park- and league-adjusted ERA and FIP.

There have been plenty of surprising hot starts in the NL, but the Angels hold that honor in the AL. They lost their first series of the season last weekend but are still tied with the Tigers for the best record in the AL. Mike Trout is healthy and blasting home runs — already six on the year — but the biggest surprise has been the emergence of Kyren Paris; he’s running a 266 wRC+ with five dingers.

The Twins’ bad start got even worse last week after they lost their series against the Royals and the Tigers. They showed some signs of life on Sunday in a fairly complete win over Detroit to salvage a single win in that three-game set, but that only pushed their record to 5-11. To make matters worse, Minnesota placed ace Pablo López on the IL with a hamstring injury on Wednesday. Thankfully, the Twins have enough starting pitching depth to weather his absence for a short period. More concerning are the slow starts from Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton, the two guys who are supposed to be driving the offense. A home run and a double from Buxton on Sunday pushed his season wRC+ up to 94, but Correa’s mark is still all the way down at 44.

It’s pretty clear already that Sutter Health Park in Sacramento is an offensive haven. Baseball Savant gives the Athletics’ new ballpark a 116 park factor in the early going. That means that 12 of the team’s 16 games have been played in extremely hitter-friendly environments — including a three-game series in Colorado between homestands — which possibly explains why its pitching staff has allowed 89 runs this season, the most in the majors. The A’s offense hasn’t yet benefited from the friendly confines of their new home, though Tyler Soderstrom is off to a hot start and Jacob Wilson has quickly established himself as a favorite for the AL Rookie of the Year award.

The White Sox have climbed out of the cellar and leaped ahead of the Rockies in these rankings thanks to a pair of wins against the Red Sox over the weekend. If you’re looking for a glimmer of hope on the South Side, look no further than Shane Smith. The Rule 5 pick is making the most of his opportunity in the rotation; he threw six innings of two-run ball in his start on Sunday and now has a 2.04 ERA and a 3.00 FIP.

As for the Rockies, they were completely shut out across their three games in San Diego; they have scored a pitiful 40 runs total so far this season. To their credit, they called up Chase Dollander and Zac Veen last week and Adael Amador on Sunday, so at least they’re getting their prospects valuable big league development time. It’s only mid-April, but Colorado is already looking toward the future.

The regular season has gotten underway and we’ve already seen a few teams get off to some surprising starts. The NL West looks like it’s shaping up to be the most competitive division in baseball. Meanwhile, the Braves inspired Michael Baumann to reference Biblical plagues in the headline of his piece on their woeful first week.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula. Read the rest of this entry »