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.

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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 »

It was an exciting weekend of baseball, with nine series ending in a sweep, but that was all overshadowed by the unexpected trade of Rafael Devers on Sunday night.

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 »

As June gets underway, the American League playoff picture is as muddy as ever — 12 teams are within 4 1/2 games of a playoff berth right now. Meanwhile, in the National League, there’s a pretty clear line between the haves and the have-nots, but even if the playoff picture isn’t as crowded, the races should provide plenty of drama this summer.

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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The Tigers and Cubs battled through a competitive and entertaining series last weekend, with Detroit taking two of the three games. It’s far too early to call this a World Series preview, but it’s certainly a possibility with the way these two teams are playing. The Tigers went 4-3 in their week of games against the two Chicago clubs, and their bullpen blew leads in all three of their losses. For now, this seems like more of a blip than a true concern — the Detroit bullpen ranks sixth in the majors with a 3.30 ERA and a 3.29 WPA, even if the peripherals (3.81 FIP, 3.71 SIERA) aren’t quite as strong — but it’s something to monitor as the season progresses.

The Mets split their NLCS rematch against the Dodgers in Los Angeles last week, with three of the four games being decided by one run, and then went to Colorado and swept the hapless Rockies. Pete Alonso was a one-man wrecking crew; he blasted five home runs and now has 17 on the season. New York has gone 12-3 since falling to three games out of first place with a loss on May 23, and as the Phillies continue to struggle, the Mets begin this week ahead 4 1/2 games in the NL East.

In their first matchup against the Red Sox this season, the Yankees lost two of the three games and allowed 27 runs in the series. Earlier in the week, New York placed closer Luke Weaver on the injured list with a hamstring strain, but the team did get back dynamic infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr.. After missing over a month with an oblique injury, Chisholm went 8-for-21 with two home runs and three stolen bases.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the Dodgers. They’re 10-12 over their last 22 games and neither their offense nor their pitching can find much consistency right now. Los Angeles collected 19 total hits in its first two games against the Cardinals last weekend but somehow managed to score just a single run, going 1-for-25 with runners in scoring position. The Dodgers salvaged the series with seven runs on Sunday in a 7-3 win, but their bats are still having a relatively rough go of things since their 18-run outburst against the Yankees the previous Saturday. The concerns about their lineup pale in comparison to the injury woes of their pitching staff, as Tony Gonsolin became the latest pitcher to go down with elbow discomfort. The good news is the Dodgers activated relievers Michael Kopech and Kirby Yates off the IL last weekend and spun an under-the-radar trade for former All-Star closer Alexis Díaz, whom the Reds optioned to Triple-A after a disastrous April. While the Dodgers are letting Díaz work things out in the minors before recalling him, the returns of Kopech and Yates should help to bolster the bullpen; the starting rotation, though, is still spread dangerously thin. Things won’t get any easier for the Dodgers this week, when they face the Padres and Giants for the first time this season. Both teams are just a game behind Los Angeles in the NL West standings.

The Astros have gotten hot at exactly the right moment. Their surge has coincided with a Mariners slide; Houston overtook Seattle in the AL West standings in late May and padded the lead last week. The Astros have gone 11-5 over their last 16 games, a stretch that began with taking three of four from Seattle, and are now 2 1/2 games up in the division. Jeremy Peña continues to lead the offense during this hot streak; he collected 10 hits last week and had a 13-game hit streak snapped on Sunday.

The Rays and Blue Jays continued their rise up the standings last week; Tampa Bay swept the Rangers and won two out of three against the Marlins, while Toronto took both of its series against the Phillies and Twins. In 16 games since May 23, Rays third baseman Junior Caminero is slashing .349/.388/.825 with seven home runs and a 242 wRC+. A resurgent George Springer, who smacked a game-winning home run on Saturday, has been the most consistent run producer in the Blue Jays lineup.

The Giants tallied two more walk-off victories last week, bringing their season total to eight. All seven games of their games last week were decided by one run, and they haven’t played a game that was settled by more than three runs since May 23. San Francisco is now 22-11 in home games this season, one of the best home records in baseball. After a 5-2 homestand, the Giants return to the road with a 38-28 overall record, which puts them just a game behind the first-place Dodgers in the NL West.

The Phillies are phree-phalling right now, with just one win in their last 10 games. That lone win came in their series opener against the Blue Jays last Tuesday, and then over the weekend they were swept by the last-place Pirates. The Philadelphia offense went especially cold, managing to score just one run in four of its last five games. To make matters worse, Bryce Harper was placed on the IL with a wrist injury over the weekend, though it sounds like it might be a minor issue.

Injuries have become an issue for the Twins again, only this time, it’s in their starting rotation. Both Pablo López and Zebby Matthews were placed on the IL last week with shoulder injuries; López is expected to miss at least two months, while it’s unclear as of this writing how long Matthews might be out. Thankfully, Royce Lewis is healthy and snapped an 0-for-28 stretch with a hit on Tuesday, and then notched six more after that.

The three teams in this tier all feature flawed lineups with no more than one or two superstars who are tasked with putting the rest of the offense on their backs. The Guardians couldn’t handle the Yankees and Astros last week, though José Ramírez continued to rake. He carries a 34-game on-base streak into Monday’s series opener against the Reds, and he has at least one hit in all but two of those games. Overall, he’s slashing .333/.392/.556 with 12 home runs, 18 stolen bases, and a 163 wRC+. Meanwhile, Bobby Witt Jr. is catching fire after a so-so month of May; though the Royals went just 3-3 last week, Witt brought his season wRC+ up to 126 after going 9-for-25 with two homers. Kansas City also called up top prospect Jac Caglianone last week to bolster what has been one of the worst offenses in baseball. Seattle had a rough week, getting swept by the Orioles and losing two of three against the Angels, but Cal Raleigh bashed three more home runs, extending his major league-leading total to 26.

It was the worst-case scenario for Corbin Burnes and the Diamondbacks. First, the ace left his June 1 start with an elbow injury, and then on Friday, Arizona announced he would undergo Tommy John surgery. He’ll miss the rest of the season and most likely all of 2026 as well. It’s a deflating blow to a club that’s been struggling to keep up in the extremely competitive NL West. The rotation has had its fair share of troubles this year, and Burnes’ injury is the biggest one yet.

In a wide open AL playoff picture, it’s not too late for the Rangers to get back into the race, especially if their offense starts to click. To that end, after an abysmal start to the season, Marcus Semien is 15-for-29 with three home runs and a 324 wRC+ over his last nine games. Let’s see if his teammates follow his lead and start mashing this week, when Texas visits Minnesota for three games before returning home to face the White Sox over the weekend.

However, it probably is too late for the Orioles to recover from their disappointing first two months, but at least they’re playing much better baseball recently. They lost their weekend series to the Athletics, but before that, they had gone 9-2 over their previous 11 games. They activated Colton Cowser off the IL last Monday and should be getting Jordan Westburg back from his hamstring injury any day now.

It might be time to admit that it’s just not the Braves’ year. They were swept by the Diamondbacks and the Giants last week, and their seven-game losing streak has dropped them to 14 games back in the NL East and 9.5 games back in the NL Wild Card standings. On Thursday, they blew a six-run against Arizona in the top of the ninth inning, and then lost back-to-back walk-offs against San Francisco on Friday and Saturday. More concerning has to be the ongoing struggles of Spencer Strider; he lost his two starts last week, both his ERA and FIP are up over five, and his Stuff+ is down about 20 points from his last healthy season in 2023.

The Athletics snapped out of a month-long tailspin with a series win over the Orioles last weekend. The A’s peaked on May 5 when they walked off Seattle and pushed their record to 20-16. After that, they lost 24 of their next 27 games before finally beating the Twins 14-3 on Thursday, exactly one month after the high point of their season. During that 3-24 stretch, they allowed 7.8 runs per game, by far the worst mark in the majors.

Not only did the Rockies finally win a series last week, they secured a three-game sweep of the Marlins! It was their first series win since September of last year and the first time they had won more than two games in a row this season. That winning streak was quickly snapped, when the Mets swept Colorado at home over the weekend. The Rockies are a truly terrible team, no matter how hard Davy Andrews tries to make them look good, but for the sake of all the loyal fans who somehow still show up to their games, hopefully last week’s series won’t be the only one they win in 2025.

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.