If you’re looking for a team to make a surprise run to the playoffs, the final month of the season likely won’t be that exciting; there are just three teams on the fringe of the postseason picture, and none of them have playoff odds higher than 20%. But with 12 teams jockeying for their playoff position and a handful of division races left to be decided, there’s still potential for a good bit of intrigue between now and October.

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 »

After a week hiatus, these power rankings are back… and nothing much has changed in the playoff picture. The National League is particularly stratified, even if the NL West is a bit closer than it was two weeks ago, and although there are a few more longshots in the American League, the 12-team field looks pretty settled right now.

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.

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Well, the Brewers finally lost a game in the month of August. Their 14-game winning streak propelled their lead in the NL Central from one game ahead of the Cubs on July 31 to an eight-game gap, and they have the best record in the majors by six games. They’ve barely felt the impact of Jackson Chourio’s hamstring injury, which he suffered a few weeks ago, because nearly everyone else in their lineup is on fire. Seven of the eight Milwaukee players who have collected at least 50 plate appearances in August are running a 125 wRC+ or higher for the month. The Brew Crew will have an opportunity to truly bury the Cubs in the standings, as those two rivals have a five-game series on the schedule this week, beginning with a doubleheader on Monday at Wrigley Field.

The Blue Jays extended their lead in the AL East to five games by going 4-2 last week against the Cubs and Rangers. They might not be the most complete team in the AL, but as long as their superstars are producing, they look very hard to beat. To wit: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. blasted his sixth home run of the month on Sunday, Bo Bichette has returned to form after his terrible 2024 season, and George Springer was just activated off the IL on Saturday.

It took him a few weeks to acclimate to the big leagues, but beginning with a 3-for-6 showing on June 28, Roman Anthony has slashed .322/.433/.409 (a 158 wRC+) in 40 games. And he’ll be anchoring this lineup for a long time to come, as Boston signed him to a huge extension a few weeks ago. After treading water in the Wild Card race with a 3-3 record last week, the Red Sox have a huge four-game series against the Yankees looming this weekend in the Bronx.

The Dodgers and Padres entered last weekend’s series in Los Angeles on very different trajectories. After suffering a sweep at the hands of the Angels, the Dodgers dropped from first place in the NL West for the first time since late April. Meanwhile, San Diego had been surging, winners of five straight series with a 14-3 record over its previous 17 games. Then, naturally, Los Angeles won all three games to flip the momentum of both teams. The Dodgers once again lead the division, by two games entering this week, but this race is far from over, despite our playoff odds giving the Padres just a 16.1% shot at winning the West. We’ll see how those odds move after the two teams match up for three games in San Diego this weekend in their final meeting of the regular season.

The Phillies extended their lead in the NL East from half a game on August 4 to five games entering Monday, but they are now facing the prolonged absence of Zack Wheeler, who was placed on the IL on Sunday with a blood clot in his shoulder. The returns of both Aaron Nola and Alec Bohm from their respective injuries should soften the blow a bit, and Philadelphia should have the rotation depth to get by without Wheeler in the regular season. However, it’s quite possible the Phillies won’t have their best pitcher back for October. That’s a major concern in what should be a very competitive NL postseason field.

Even if the Cubs do well in their huge five-game set against the Brewers this week, it probably won’t be enough to disturb Milwaukee’s chances of winning the division. Instead, a good performance should allow Chicago to regain some of the momentum it has lost. When the Cubs took two out of three games from the Pirates over the weekend, it marked just the third time the North Siders have won a series in the four weeks since July 21, a span of eight series.

It looks like the Tigers have put their July swoon behind them. They couldn’t complete the four-game sweep of the Twins on Sunday, but they’ve now won three straight series and have gone 13-7 over their last 20 games. The Astros will visit Detroit this week in a showdown between two of the best teams in the AL.

The Mariners had an eight-game winning streak snapped on Wednesday, but their surge earned them a share of the AL West lead for a very brief moment. From there, though, Seattle faltered again, losing both of its series last week, against the Orioles and the Mets, and slipping to 1 1/2 games behind the Astros in the West. Even so, things are looking up for the Mariners: With Bryce Miller set to be activated off the IL on Tuesday, the M’s will have all five of their top starters active and healthy for the first time this season. Meanwhile, after a frigid three weeks coming out of the All-Star break, Cal Raleigh is on fire once again. Over his last nine games, Big Dumper is slashing .303/.395/.818 with five home runs and a 231 wRC+.

As for the Astros, you can chalk up another injury on their long ledger this season. This time it’s a shoulder injury to Josh Hader, which is expected to sideline him for the rest of the regular season, though the door is still slightly open for an October return if everything heals well. In better news, Yordan Alvarez is set to begin a minor league rehab assignment this week.

Since being activated from the IL on August 5, Aaron Judge has posted a very-mortal-though-still-solid .229/.426/.429 slash line (140 wRC+). No matter, the Yankees have gone 7-4 with Judge back in the lineup and have crawled back within a half game of the Red Sox and Mariners for the top Wild Card spot in the AL.

Things got pretty dicy for New York’s National League team, as the Mets slogged through a brutal 2-14 stretch and let the Reds close the gap considerably in the Wild Card standings. New York never let go of that final spot, and its back-to-back wins against the Mariners over the weekend provided a little bit of breathing room, but this is still a much tighter race than anyone in Queens would like. The good news for the Mets is that their two Franciscos in are heating up; Lindor tallied 14 hits and three home runs last week, and Alvarez has posted a .323/.408/.645 slash line (193 wRC+) since being recalled from Triple-A on July 21.

With the Mets stumbling, the Reds looked like they were poised to pull into a playoff position, especially after they won their series against the Phillies heading into last weekend. But Cincinnati ran into the Brewers at exactly the wrong time, losing the first two games before snapping Milwaukee’s 14-game winning streak in extra innings on Sunday. Unfortunately, as soon as the Reds activated Hunter Greene off the IL, Chase Burns switched places with him after suffering a flexor strain in his throwing elbow. For now, manager Terry Francona is hoping for the best-case scenario, that Burns can resume throwing soon and return before the end of August. However, Reds fans shouldn’t get too excited just yet, as the organization will surely be cautious with the 22-year-old’s rehab and almost certainly limit his workload the rest of the way.

The three teams in this tier are desperately trying to hang on in the AL Wild Card race. The Guardians fell to 3 1/2 games behind the Yankees for the final playoff spot after getting swept by the Braves at home over the weekend. It was Cleveland’s first series loss since late July. Even with those three losses, the Guards still have the AL’s best record since July 7 (23-12). Meanwhile, the Royals have been nearly as good over that same span (20-13). Following a three-game sweep of White Sox, Kansas City enters this week just a half-game behind Cleveland in the standings.

On the other side of the coin, the Rangers are in the middle of what could be season-crushing skid. On July 27, Texas reached a season-best six games over .500; since then, the team has gone 6-13 and slipped below .500 again. This week probably represents the last gasp of hope for the Rangers to return to the Wild Card race. They travel to Kansas City for four games before hosting the Guardians for a three-game set this weekend.

It was fun while it lasted, but you can probably stick a fork in any hope of a surprise Wild Card run from the Marlins. After sweeping the Yankees three weekends ago to reach .500, they’ve won just four of their last 14 and are now seven games behind the Mets for the final playoff spot. To make matters worse, Kyle Stowers, Miami’s best hitter this season, was just placed on the IL with an oblique strain. At least the Marlins can point to their competitive stretch in July and dream about returning to contention sooner rather than later.

It’s far too little, too late, but the Braves are finally on a roll. They swept the Guardians last weekend and are now 9-2 over their last 11 games. The key to this late-season surge has been the resurgence of Michael Harris II. After making some swing adjustments in early July, he’s slashing .386/.402/.719 (210 wRC+) since the All-Star break. If Atlanta doesn’t have to worry about Harris’ bat moving forward, it gives the organization one less thing to address in what has suddenly become a hugely important offseason.

Not to discount what Harris has done lately, but the two best hitters in baseball during the second half of the season both play for the Athletics. You probably know about the heater that Nick Kurtz is on, but Shea Langeliers has been almost as good over the last month. Both of those guys blasted home runs on Sunday — for Langeliers, it was his major league-leading 14th since the All-Star break. The A’s will need to figure out how to pitch in their temporary home in Sacramento, but their offense certainly looks like it’s for real.

The Twins’ expected post-deadline crash hasn’t exactly arrived. Sure, they went 2-5 against the Yankees and Tigers last week, but they are only a game below .500 since they sold nearly every spare part off their roster. The fantastic play of Luke Keaschall is a big reason why they’re still playing like a competitive team; he’s posted a 149 wRC+ since being activated off the IL on August 5. The biggest baseball news in Minnesota last week was the announcement that the Pohlad family will remain principal owners of the team after exploring a sale. The optics of this announcement stink. The Twins just traded away a huge chunk of the roster and dumped Carlos Correa off the payroll. To turn around and say this teardown was “part of the process” looks like an extension of the same penny pinching that led to these past two disappointing seasons. The hope established in 2023, when they won their first playoff series in two decades, feels like a long, long time ago.

With a pair of series wins over the Cardinals and Diamondbacks last week, the Rockies are now playing ahead of the historically bad pace of the 2024 White Sox. Colorado has to win just seven games before the end of the season to avoid tying Chicago’s record of futility. That certainly feels doable, even if the Rockies have one of the most difficult remaining schedules in baseball.

Have you caught your breath yet from that wild and busy trade deadline? Me neither, but it sure was a blast. And we also now have a better sense of where teams stand heading into the stretch run of the season.

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 Cubs approached the trade deadline with pitching as their top priority. They traded for Michael Soroka on Wednesday to shore up the starting rotation and added Andrew Kittredge to the bullpen later that night. That didn’t stop them from making a trade to improve their hitters: Getting in on the Twins’ Thursday fire sale, Chicago acquired utilityman Willi Castro for two pitching prospects, Ryan Gallagher and Sam Armstrong. And right before the buzzer, the Cubs also acquired left-handed reliever Taylor Rogers from the Pirates for outfield prospect Ivan Brethowr. This was the second swap Rogers was part of within a roughly 27-hour span, after he went from the Reds to the Pirates in Wednesday afternoon’s Ke’Bryan Hayes deal.

The Cubs have one of the best lineups in baseball. They lead the majors in runs scored and the National League in wRC+. So they didn’t necessarily need to upgrade their offense before the deadline. Castro’s calling card is his versatility, and that’s the primary reason they acquired him. Just this year, he’s played every position but catcher and first base. Defensively, he’s probably a little in over his head at either of the premium up-the-middle positions — his career FRV at shortstop is -3 and -2 in center field — but he’s perfectly acceptable as a second baseman (2 FRV) or in either outfield corner (5 in left, -2 in right). In previous years, he was also slightly above average at third (2 FRV) before taking a step back this season (-3), though small-sample caveats certainly apply for his defensive metrics at any specific position because of how much he’s moved around. Only once has he logged more than 500 innings at an individual position in a season, and that was back in 2021 when he played 713 2/3 innings at second base with the Tigers.

That said, he is way more than just a multi-positional backup. At the plate, Castro has been solidly above average since joining the Twins in 2023; during those first seasons in Minnesota, he posted a combined 107 wRC+ and accumulated 5.4 WAR. This season, his offensive production has been slightly better — .245/.335/.407, 109 wRC+ — than in recent years because he’s tapping into his power more. He’s already smacked 10 home runs in 344 plate appearances after hitting a career-high 12 last year across nearly 300 more trips to the plate. That he is a switch-hitter only adds to his flexibility. He has been platoon neutral for his career, but he’s hitting left-handed hurlers much better this year (131 wRC+) than he has righties (100). Castro has been worth 1.1 WAR this season, a step back from his last two years despite his offensive improvements because his defensive value has declined. Some of this is due to a dip in his defensive metrics — his only plus position this season by FRV is left field — but it also has to do with the positional adjustment, as he’s spent more innings this season at positions further down the defensive spectrum; after playing 465 2/3 innings at shortstop in 2024 and another 211 1/3 in center field, he’s logged just 26 at shortstop this year to go along with a one-inning cameo in center. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a few weeks since our last run of the power rankings, and a lot has happened since then. Teams we thought of as contenders are suddenly out of the playoff picture, and the buyers and sellers ahead of this week’s trade deadline are quickly sorting themselves out.

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 »

On any given pitch, a swing-and-miss is the best possible outcome for the pitcher. The ball isn’t put in play, the count advances in favor of the pitcher, and the batter may look a little foolish in the process. It stands to reason that pitchers who possess multiple pitches that run above-average whiff rates will likely have strong strikeout rates, too. Then there’s another, much smaller group of pitchers who have multiple pitches with elite whiff rates. Those rare hurlers will surely have the best strikeout rates in baseball, right? Among all starting pitchers this season, there are just eight who possess multiple pitches that generate a whiff more than 40% of the time.

MacKenzie Gore leads the way with three of these elite bat-missing weapons, followed by a few of the game’s best strikeout artists. At the bottom, though, are two pitchers whose strikeout rates are much lower than you’d expect given their ability to generate whiffs: groundball specialist José Soriano and rookie Cade Horton. (As an aside, Horton’s changeup has the third-highest whiff rate of any pitch thrown at least 100 times this year, yet his strikeout rate is an unimpressive 17.6%.)

What happens if you lower the threshold to pitches with whiff rates north of 30%? There are 18 starters with three or more of these less-effective-but-still-impressive pitches. Spoiler: Soriano shows up again. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last three weeks, we’ve had three different leaders atop these power rankings. The top of the standings have been volatile, as no one really has pulled away from the pack. On the other hand, the bottom half of the rankings have been stable, with a large group of mediocre teams stuck in the awkward zone between competing and retooling.

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 »

A bunch of interesting matchups with playoff implications dot the schedule this week. A hot streak heading into the All-Star break could be all that a fringe contender needs to decide to make a big push at the trade deadline later this month.

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.

…

Defying expectations, the Astros continue to put together win after win. Their list of players on the IL is currently longer than that of the Dodgers, but they completed a pretty comprehensive sweep of Los Angeles last weekend. Houston hasn’t lost a series since May 21 and has the best record in baseball by a pretty wide margin in that span. Meanwhile, the Dodgers were handed their first series loss since June 8. They have to be relieved that Max Muncy’s knee injury, which he suffered on Thursday, turned out to be much less serious than it initially looked. On the pitching side, Tyler Glasnow will likely be activated from the IL to start Wednesday’s game, giving the rotation some reinforcements at a critical juncture.

The Blue Jays! A nine-game winning streak has thrust the Jays into first place in the AL East, and they did it by sweeping the Yankees in a huge four-game series in Toronto, which included a joyous victory on Canada Day. The Jays followed that up with a weekend sweep of the Angels and yet another win Monday against the White Sox, extending their division lead to 3 1/2 games. With two more to play against Chicago and then a three-game set against the Athletics over the weekend, Toronto has a favorable schedule lined up before the All-Star break. If the Blue Jays manage to hang onto the AL East lead, they will start the second half of the season in first place for the first time since 2016.

The Tigers swept the Guardians last weekend to extend their record against divisional foes to 18-9. The rest of the AL Central has all sorts of problems right now, but Detroit’s ability to beat up its rivals is a big reason why it leads the division by a whopping 14 games.

The Cubs produced plenty of fireworks during their series win over the Cardinals last weekend; Chicago hit 11 home runs during the three-game set, producing two blowout victories on Friday and Sunday. Michael Busch hit four of them — three alone on Independence Day — and added 13 hits last week. After seeing the Brewers and Cardinals creep closer in the NL Central the last few weeks, the Cubs have jumped back out to a 3 1/2-game lead.

The Rays have now lost three straight series; they dropped two of three at home against the A’s to begin last week, followed by two walk-off losses in their three-game set against the Twins over the weekend. The big culprit has been the bullpen, which was responsible for all four losses last week. Across their last 10 games dating back to June 27, Tampa Bay relievers have a 7.96 ERA, the second-worst mark in the majors during that span. The Rays have a tough slate of games heading into the All-Star break: They lost the first game of their three-game series in Detroit on Monday, and then they finish off the first half with four games in Boston.

After a pretty rough patch to finish the month of June, the Mets got back on track with series wins over the Brewers and Yankees last week. Brandon Nimmo blasted a pair of grand slams and added a solo shot for good measure. New York is also expected to activate Kodai Senga and Sean Manaea from the IL during the final series of the first half, against the Royals in Kansas City, which should alleviate some of the team’s recent pitching issues.

As for Milwaukee, the Brewers finally activated Brandon Woodruff off the IL after multiple setbacks during his rehab this year; he was excellent in his first major league start since 2023, allowing just a single run across six innings against the Marlins while striking out eight. The Brew Crew started off this week with an impressive win over the Dodgers on Monday.

The Mariners held the Pirates scoreless across three games this weekend. It was the first time in franchise history that Seattle has shut out an opponent for an entire series. Over the last two weeks, Mariners starters have a 2.44 ERA, second best in baseball. It took George Kirby a little while to shake off the rust after missing the first eight weeks of the season with a shoulder injury, but he’s allowed just two runs across his last three starts; in seven starts since the beginning of June, he has a 2.68 ERA and a 2.74 FIP. On the offensive side of things, Randy Arozarena blasted six home runs last week, and Cal Raleigh collected his seventh multi-homer game of the season — the most in baseball — on Friday, extending his league-leading home run total to 35. Though Seattle remains 6 1/2 games behind the Astros in the AL West, it is two games up on the Red Sox for the final Wild Card spot. Only a game separates the Mariners and the Yankees, who hold the top Wild Card position; the two teams begin a three-game series in the Bronx on Tuesday.

Speaking of the Yankees, they just endured a nightmare of a week. Not only did they get swept in their four-game series with the Blue Jays, who knocked them out of first place, but they also dropped their weekend series against the Mets. If that wasn’t bad enough, Clarke Schmidt suffered a torn UCL and will likely need Tommy John surgery. While the offense that slumped for much of June has started to come around, the bullpen allowed a whopping 28 runs in 24 innings last week. This week’s series against the Mariners suddenly has some pretty major Wild Card implications, and then the first-place Cubs come to town to wrap up the first half.

The Giants and Padres entered play Monday tied for the final NL Wild Card spot, but their situations could change by the time this week is over. Both teams have a pretty difficult stretch of games ahead of the All-Star break, with each of them set to host the Phillies. San Francisco won the first game of its series against Philadelphia on Monday to pull a game ahead in the standings, as San Diego lost the opener of its four-game set against the Diamondbacks. After the Phillies leave town to play the Padres, the Giants will welcome the Dodgers for three games over the weekend. Meanwhile, despite losing both series last week, the Cardinals begin their final homestand of the first half trailing the Giants by just 1 1/2 games, and they have the bottom two teams in the NL East, the Nationals and Braves, on tap this week. Like St. Louis, the Reds also dropped their two series last week and have a fairly soft schedule coming up at home, against the Marlins and Rockies. After Monday’s loss to Miami, Cincinnati is 3 1/2 games behind San Francisco. Even Arizona, which is not in this tier, is within five games of the Giants. There isn’t much separating these five teams, so even if the standings flip some this week, the battle for that last Wild Card spot should last all the way through the summer.

Let’s play good news/bad news with a quartet of players from the Rangers and Angels. Good news: Since going 4-for-4 with a home run on May 30, Marcus Semien has posted a 167 wRC+, raising his season line all the way up to 91. Bad news: The Rangers demoted Josh Jung to Triple-A last week after he slumped to a 19 wRC+ in June. Good news: Jo Adell smashed 11 home runs in June and currently has a 129 wRC+ on the season. Bad news: Mike Trout is posting his lowest slugging percentage (.444) since his 2011 cup of coffee. We can caveat the Trout bad news some because his underlying batted ball metrics look pretty good, and despite his relative woes, he’s still running a 120 wRC+. On Monday, the Angels eked out a walk-off victory in the first game of a four-game set against the Rangers.

Regression has come hard for the Guardians. On June 1, they were 31-26 and held the second Wild Card spot, though their run differential was -18. Since then, they have the worst record in the AL, a stretch that included a 10-game losing streak that was finally snapped on Monday. Even after the losing streak, Cleveland’s actual record is three wins ahead of its run differential and four wins ahead of where BaseRuns thinks the team should be. There could be more room to fall this summer.

The Pirates are coming off an absolute yo-yo of a week. They did not allow a run in their three-game sweep of the Cardinals, and then they didn’t score a run when they were swept in three games by the Mariners. It was the first time in major league history that a team won three straight shutouts and then lost three straight shutouts. Pittsburgh had actually been playing pretty well ahead of that series in Seattle; the Bucs had scored 30 runs in their sweep of the Mets two weekends ago and scored 13 against the Cardinals. The Pirates finally scored again — three times, in fact — in their series opener against the Royals on Monday, but they allowed Kansas City to score nine runs.

Injuries to the Braves pitching staff have continued to pile up: Last week, Spencer Schwellenbach hit the IL with a fractured elbow. Making matters worse, a few key contributors have been stuck in season-long slumps: Ozzie Albies has been a shell of himself this season, entering Tuesday with a 72 wRC+, and Michael Harris II has been even worse, at 48. If fans want a silver lining, Atlanta activated Jurickson Profar off the restricted list on Wednesday after his 80-game PED suspension, and he hit home runs in his first two games back.

On May 31, the Nationals were 28-30 and looked like they could be making a sneaky run for the final NL Wild Card spot. They’ve gone 9-23 since then, and after their miserable June and rough start to July, they fired manager Dave Martinez and president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo on Sunday night. It’s a massive change for the organization — Rizzo was promoted to GM ahead of the 2009 season, and Martinez had been in his position since 2018, and both navigated the franchise to its only World Series championship in 2019 — and it also throws a bit of chaos into the near future. Washington holds the first overall pick in this year’s draft, exactly one week after the firing, and the trade deadline is less than a month away. That’s a lot for interim general manager Mike DeBartolo to tackle.

As the calendar turns to July, the AL is a bit of a mess. The six teams that currently hold playoff berths are the only ones with winning records. The opposite is true in the NL, where there are nine teams over .500. That landscape should make for a very interesting trade deadline.

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.

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After wrapping up a 5-1 week with a series win over the Royals, the Dodgers have now won 15 of their last 20 games. That little swoon they toiled through toward the end of May is firmly in the rearview mirror. No one in the lineup is hotter than Max Muncy, who finished June with a .333/.459/.654 slash line, seven home runs and a 205 wRC+. The real turning point for Muncy came on April 30, when he started wearing glasses. Since then, he has a 178 wRC+ across 51 games, after posting a woeful wRC+ of 58 through his first 28 games of the season.

The Astros also went 5-1 last week, though they did it against two of NL’s top teams, the Phillies and the Cubs. Since Yordan Alvarez injured his hand on May 2, Houston has the best record in baseball, 34-19, and has built a huge 6 1/2-game lead in the AL West. The Astros can thank three guys for carrying the load for the offense while Alvarez has been sidelined: Jeremy Peña (162 wRC+ since May 2), Isaac Paredes (151), and Cam Smith (145). As for Alvarez, he’s ramping up his rehab and will begin to face live pitching this week.

The Tigers won their weekend series against the Twins with two emphatic wins on Saturday and Sunday. In their 10-5 victory on Saturday, Riley Greene and Zach McKinstry were the standouts, each collecting a home run and three hits. Tarik Skubal took center stage on Sunday, firing seven shutout innings with 13 punchouts while allowing just two baserunners.

The Rays had a wild weekend in Baltimore; they were on the wrong end of a 22-8 blowout on Friday, turned things around with an 11-3 victory on Saturday, and finally lost the series with a relatively tame 5-1 loss on Sunday. Despite the small setback, Tampa Bay still leads the AL Wild Card race and has closed the gap in the AL East to just 1 1/2 games.

Although the Cubs have led the NL Central for nearly the entire season, a .500 record in June has thrown the door open for the Brewers and Cardinals to make it true three-team race for the division. Chicago was 6 1/2 games ahead as recently as June 17, but that lead has now dwindled to two games. Milwaukee and St. Louis deserve credit for taking advantage of this month-long slump from the Cubs. Before a frustrating extra-innings loss on Sunday, the Brew Crew had won 22 of their previous 30 games, while the Cards are in the midst of an 11-4 stretch.

Last week, the Phillies were swept in Houston despite allowing just five runs during the three-game series because they scored just one of their own. They enjoyed a 13-run outburst in Atlanta on Friday, but then combined for three runs during the final two games of the series. That was enough to take two of three from the Braves thanks to another phenomenal outing from Ranger Suárez on Sunday, who tossed seven innings of one-run ball while striking out eight. He’s allowed a total of 10 runs across his last 10 starts. The good news is Bryce Harper is on track to return from the IL at some point this week when Philadelphia returns home to face the Padres and Reds.

The Yankees earned a much-needed weekend series win over the Athletics to bring their June record to 13-13, a stretch that has seriously loosened their grip on the AL East. After leading by as many as 6 1/2 games during the first week of this month, they enter the final day of June with just a 1 1/2-game cushion over the Rays. New York’s bats have gone cold as the weather has warmed up. Since June 1, the Yankees are running a 103 wRC+, down from their best-in-baseball 128 wRC+ over the first two months of the season. They begin this week with a huge four-game set on the road against the third-place Blue Jays, who are 19-11 over their last 30 games and just three games behind New York in the standings.

The Mets are in a full tailspin after their nightmarish weekend in Pittsburgh, where they were swept by the putrid Pirates and allowed 30 runs across the three-game set. With a 12-1 drubbing on Sunday, New York has now dropped 13 of its last 16 games. The starting rotation was already down three members when Griffin Canning ruptured his Achilles’ tendon on Thursday. The lone bright spot for the Mets this month has been Juan Soto’s continued resurgence; he blasted three home runs last week to bring his June total up to 11.

Ignore the Reds at your own peril. Chase Burns made his debut last week, striking out eight Yankees and flashing the electric stuff that made him Cincinnati’s top prospect. Then, on Sunday, Elly De La Cruz sparked an exciting ninth-inning comeback to secure a huge series win over the Padres and continue his scorcher of a month; he’s slashing .348/.429/.674 for a 195 wRC+ with one more game to play in June. The Reds are lurking in both the NL Central (five games back) and in the NL Wild Card race (2 1/2 games back), and all that young talent looks like it’s finally driving some success at the big league level.

The Rafael Devers trade hasn’t sparked a turnaround for the Giants offense. Quite the opposite, in fact; they’re 4-8 since acquiring him two weeks ago, and he’s slashing .217/.333/.391 with his new team. Last week was especially brutal, as San Francisco went 1-5 against the Marlins and White Sox to fall to 1 1/2 games out in the NL Wild Card standings. The Giants enter this week with a four-game series against the Diamondbacks in Arizona.

The Mariners took two of three from the Rangers in Texas this weekend, with every game going into extra innings — the first time that’s happened in any three-game series since 2015. Seattle hosts the Royals and Pirates this week before closing out the first half on the road against the Yankees and Tigers. Meanwhile, despite boasting the best pitching staff in baseball, the Rangers are fourth in the AL West standings because their lineup has continued to struggle. On the bright side, Corey Seager is showing some signs of life. The Texas shortstop bashed three home runs against the Mariners and has a 163 wRC+ over his last 14 games.

Prior to their 15-run outburst on Saturday, the Red Sox had scored just 2.8 runs per game in the 10 games since trading away Rafael Devers. Neither Roman Anthony (87 wRC+) nor Marcelo Mayer (84 wRC+) has had much success against big league pitching thus far, and the lineup looks particularly punchless without Devers anchoring it. Masataka Yoshida is expected to begin a rehab assignment this week and Alex Bregman ramped up his baseball activities over the weekend, but those reinforcements likely won’t return until after the All-Star break. By then it could be too late for them to make a significant impact on Boston’s plans ahead of the trade deadline.

The injuries just keep coming for the Diamondbacks, most recently last Monday when they placed Corbin Carroll on the IL with a fractured wrist. They had been managing to stay afloat despite losing Corbin Burnes at the start of the month, but it might be too much to do so while also being without Carroll. The Snakes slipped back below .500 after getting swept by the Marlins last weekend. Eight of Arizona’s final 14 games before the All-Star break come against the Giants and Padres.

The Marlins are riding a seven-game winning streak — their longest since 2022 — into this week after sweeping both the Giants and Diamondbacks and taking their series finale against the Braves to cap the week before. It’s been an up-and-down season for Miami, but the offense has been clicking during this hot streak. Otto Lopez (10-game hitting streak), Agustín Ramírez (11 hits last week), and Kyle Stowers (three home runs during the winning streak) have been the standouts, and they’re getting clutch hits in all the big spots. On Sunday, Lopez hit the go-ahead two-run single in the eighth inning, and Stowers followed up with a three-run double to seal the victory.

With their impressive series win over the Rays last weekend, the Orioles have compiled a 15-11 record in June. That’s much better than their abysmal first two months of the season but not good enough to get them back into the playoff race. To make matters worse, injuries have continued to plague the roster; Adley Rutschman hit the IL for the first time in his career with an oblique injury, and Zach Eflin left his start Saturday after just a single inning. It’s probably time to throw in the towel and start looking forward to 2026 and beyond.

The Royals snapped a six-game losing streak with a win on Saturday — their first win at home since May 31. They are in the midst of a 6-15 stretch that’s dropped them from three games over .500 to six below. The pitching staff is doing its job; Kansas City has allowed more than five runs just four times in the past 21 games and the second-fewest total in the AL during that span. The lineup remains the problem, as the Royals have the fourth-worst offense (83 wRC+) in the majors this season.

The White Sox have a 19-24 record at home following their series win over the Giants last weekend. That’s respectable — especially after their historically bad season last year. Unfortunately, they are 9-32 on the road, which is where they’ll be again this week when they travel to play the Dodgers and Rockies. Amazingly enough, the Rockies have won fewer home games than the White Sox have won on the road. It’ll be a battle between the two worst ballclubs in baseball in the launching pad of Coors Field. Sounds fun!

As we approach the midpoint of the season, the playoff races in both leagues are as muddy as ever. With July just around the corner and the trade deadline looming, the teams on the fringes of the postseason picture need to figure out if they’re truly contenders or if they need to start looking toward the future.

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 »