Even as teams have settled into their new normal following all the activity surrounding the trade deadline, the standings haven’t become any clearer with two months of the regular season left to play. There are still wide open division races and crowded Wild Card chases. For the teams already looking forward to next year, the stretch run is an opportunity to evaluate their rosters, and maybe play a little spoiler against those vying for the postseason.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 »

The dust has barely settled from a wild day of wheeling and dealing, but the season continues to chug along. The dog days of summer are just ahead, the playoff pictures in both leagues are a little clearer after a few teams on the fence decided to sell, and the stretch run looks like it’ll have plenty of drama as teams race toward the playoffs.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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.

Note: 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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The Red Sox might not have the best overall record in baseball, but they just swept the Dodgers over the weekend and have taken the top spot in these power rankings as a result. Boston has been the best team in baseball for about a month and a half now; the Sox are 31-8 record since the start of play on June 19. They also made one of the most surprising moves on Monday, acquiring Adley Rutschman to significantly improve their production from behind the plate. They gave up a serious haul for the three-time All-Star catcher, but the bold move signals that Boston believes this recent hot streak is more indicative of its true talent over the remainder of the regular season.

The Brewers didn’t land Tarik Skubal, instead opting to make a handful of moves around the margins of their roster. They added Dustin May, JoJo Romero, and Antonio Senzatela to provide a ton of necessary depth for the pitching staff. That trio should be solid enough, but none of them is the kind of impact addition that Skubal could have been. The Brewers currently have the best record in baseball, but even after they made the necessary moves to improve their roster for the stretch run, it still feels like a pretty disappointing trade deadline for them.

The Dodgers made their big move a few days before the trade deadline, acquiring Skubal from the Tigers on Saturday. This trade isn’t meant to shore up the roster ahead of a summer push in a tight playoff race; rather, it’s all about improving the team’s odds of winning a third World Series championship in a row. The Dodgers are in an odd place on the win curve, where a postseason berth is all but guaranteed but the randomness of the playoffs still looms. Nothing can fully eliminate that risk in October, but adding the two-time Cy Young winner to an already-stacked rotation goes a long way toward reducing the potential for an early-round upset. Alas, a sloppy series against the Red Sox this past weekend resulted in a sweep, and Los Angeles also lost the first game of a series against the Cubs on Monday. Skubal is slated to start on Tuesday, and he’ll be tasked with stopping this four-game slide.

The Braves had a pretty quiet trade deadline, choosing to add a few minor pieces in outfielder Lane Thomas, righty starter Tyler Mahle, and lefty reliever Brent Suter. Riding a five-game winning streak and a 12-5 record coming out of the All-Star break, Atlanta must mot have felt the need to act very aggressively. It’s a little surprising the team didn’t do more to improve the depth of the starting rotation, especially since Reynaldo López injured his knee last week, further depleting the group. The Braves have a bunch of young starters stashed in Triple-A they can cycle through if needed, and Spencer Schwellenbach is on track to return sometime before the end of the regular season, but their deadline inaction still feels like a missed opportunity.

The Rays added to a position of strength when they acquired right-handed starter Freddy Peralta from the Mets over the weekend. Their pitching staff has been solid all season long, but their position in the standings has forced them to think about what a deep postseason run might look like. All-Star righty Drew Rasmussen has been fantastic, and Shane McClanahan has been wonderful, though the lefty was placed on the IL last week with a minor back strain. Tampa Bay also has to be thinking about McClanahan’s workload after he missed all of the past two years due to injury. Peralta might not be the ace he was in Milwaukee, but he’s a veteran starter who should help the Rays make some noise in October. They also added Liam Hicks to solidify their production behind the plate and lengthen the lineup.

The Cubs did what they had to do at the trade deadline: add pitching. They acquired right-handed starter Kevin Gausman from the Blue Jays on Sunday, and then traded with the Mets for righty starter Clay Holmes, with the Marlins for lefty starter Braxton Garrett, and with the Angels for righty reliever Ryan Zeferjahn on Monday. While all those additions might not be enough to help Chicago chase down the Brewers in the NL Central, they do give the team a much stronger foundation for a deep postseason run.

With injuries decimating their lineup, the Yankees were focused on bulking up the offense at the deadline. They added first baseman/second baseman Luis García Jr. from the Nationals on Sunday, left fielder Heliot Ramos from the Giants on Monday, and are reportedly promoting top prospect George Lombard Jr. on Tuesday. Without a timeline for the returns of both Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, and a hamstring injury sidelining Cody Bellinger, the Yankees needed to act decisively to improve their standing in the AL playoff picture. With a fantastic pitching staff now supported by a strengthened lineup, this team should be a force to reckon with in October. The only lingering question is whether or not Judge will be healthy for that postseason run.

The Astros swept the Rangers this past weekend to claim first place in the AL West for the first time since early April, and they’ve now won 10 of their last 12 games. This hot streak has helped them leapfrog both Texas and Seattle in the standings, putting them in the driver’s seat in their division. They didn’t make any splashy moves at the trade deadline, only sending right-hander Spencer Arrighetti to the Blue Jays for Daulton Varsho to give them a much-needed center fielder. The pitching staff has seen the return of Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski from their respective injuries recently, but it feels like Houston will only go as far as Yordan Alvarez can carry it.

The White Sox fared well in their matchups with the Yankees and Rays last week, going 4-3 against two of the best teams in the AL. The two wins vs. New York were particularly dramatic; they were both walk-offs in extra innings to secure the series split. Now Chicago has to face the Red Sox and Guardians this week to complete its AL gauntlet. In a welcome show of faith in the progress the team has made this year, the White Sox acquired veteran right-hander Luis Castillo from the Mariners to hopefully improve the starting rotation, along with a bunch of depth pieces — catcher Joey Bart from the Braves, center fielder Brenton Doyle from the Rockies, and righty reliever Huascar Brazobán from the Mets — to reinforce the rest of the roster. It’s now up to the young core to lead the South Siders through this stretch run.

The Diamondbacks were in a really weird position ahead of the trade deadline. They had played their way into a Wild Card spot over the last few weeks — they’re 14-6 since July 9 — but they didn’t exactly act like a buyer on Monday. Perhaps it was because they’ve got a handful of injured pitchers — Corbin Burnes, Zac Gallen, Michael Soroka, and Justin Martinez are all in various stages of rehabbing from their respective injuries — who should help reinforce the pitching staff over the next few weeks. The one move they made, trading for lefty-hitting outfielder Lars Nootbaar, addresses one of the biggest holes in their lineup. Arizona started a critical four-game series against the Padres with a win on Monday.

The Twins were one of the surprising buyers at the deadline, adding righty reliever Jeff Hoffman from the Blue Jays, lefty reliever A.J. Minter from the Mets, and righty starter Dean Kremer to bolster the pitching staff. After losing the final two games of their weekend series against the Mariners in walk-off fashion, those bullpen reinforcements will be a huge help. The Twins are just a game behind the Guardians for the final Wild Card spot and four games back in the AL Central. Their roster looks pretty solid, but they’re currently missing the superstar who was carrying a lot of the offensive load, as Byron Buxton was placed back on the IL last week with the same hip injury that sidelined him for a few weeks earlier in July. Meanwhile, Cleveland added left-handed starter Foster Griffin, right-handed-hitting outfielder Jo Adell, and lefty-swinging first baseman Nathaniel Lowe to its roster on Monday. The three moves should add some juice to a team that’s been limping along with a 6-10 record since the All-Star break.

The Marlins snapped their 12-game losing streak last Monday and immediately rattled off six wins in seven games to jump right back into the thick of the NL Wild Card race. That perfectly timed hot streak wasn’t enough to prevent the team from soft-selling at the deadline. Trading away catcher/first baseman Liam Hicks won’t have too much of a long-term impact since Miami had a bit of a logjam at first base and designated hitter, and catcher Joe Mack has acclimated to the big leagues very well since being called up in May. The core that had carried the Fish into this position in the playoff picture is still very much intact.

After being swept by the Astros over the weekend, there was some speculation that the Rangers would sell despite sitting two games back in the AL Wild Card race. They wound up standing pat and will ride their current roster as far as it will take them. The same can’t be said for the Orioles and Tigers. Both of those teams are just a half game behind Texas in the standings, but they opted for pretty dramatic teardowns. Detroit moved Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize, while Baltimore traded away Adley Rutschman, Dean Kremer, Taylor Ward, and Tyler Wells. The AL standings have been wide open for the entire season, and instead of gambling on a chance at a playoff spot, these two teams have opted to punt for next year. That undoubtedly helps the Twins, Guardians, Rangers, and Mariners, all of whom are vying for that final Wild Card spot in addition to their respective divisional races.

The Blue Jays had a weird trade deadline. They dealt away Kevin Gausman and Daulton Varsho, two of their players on expiring contracts. They also went out and traded for right-handed starter José Soriano, giving up a significant prospect package to get the flamethrower from the Angels. Somehow, the Blue Jays successfully managed to straddle the line between selling and reloading for next year. Toronto’s follow-up season after coming so close to winning a championship has been incredibly disappointing, but the roster is built to win, World Series hangover be damned. Soriano and Arrighetti are two young starters who will definitely help the team in the years to come.

A five-game losing streak last week was a huge blow to the Nationals’ chances of staying in the NL Wild Card race down the stretch. They truly waived the white flag on competing this season when they traded Luis García Jr. to the Yankees on Sunday, then sent Foster Griffin to Cleveland on Monday. All is not lost in Washington, however. The offensive improvements seem like they’re for real, even if García Jr.’s power breakout was a big part of that jump forward. Now the Nats just need to figure out their pitching staff — and finding out if Cade Cavalli is the guy to lead the rotation is a big part of that.

The Angels had a surprisingly strong deadline, embracing their role as a seller and netting a ton of young talent to restock a barren farm system. Interim general manager John Mozeliak ripped the Band-Aid off the team’s resistance to tear things down and set the Halos on the path toward a full-scale rebuild. Overhauling their development pipeline to support these new prospects is the next priority, but these moves were a good first step.

The Athletics’ truly miserable stretch of play continued into August. They won just five games in July and started this month off getting swept by the Tigers. The team was leading the division on May 26 and had a .500 record as recently as June 19, and now it’s on the verge of dropping below the Angels for the worst record in baseball. To make things worse, Nick Kurtz is dealing with a hand issue after being hit by a pitch on the forearm on Wednesday. It’s unclear if he’ll need another IL stint so soon after returning from a thumb injury.

With the second half of the season well underway, the trade deadline is almost upon us. This week is a critical stretch for a number of teams sitting on the fence between buying and selling. A nice little winning streak could push them to act a little more aggressively on the trade market, while a bout of losing could be decisive enough to add another seller to the mix.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 the second half of the season gets under way this weekend, it’s the perfect time to take stock of where each team finds itself with less than three weeks to go until the trade deadline. Yesterday, I covered the teams ranked 18th to 30th according to our power rankings. Today, I’ll finish with the teams most likely to be vying for playoff spots this fall.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 »

With the MLB Draft and all the All-Star Week festivities in the rearview mirror, it’s the perfect time to take stock of where each team finds itself heading into the second half of the season. Today, I’ll cover the teams ranked 18th to 30th according to our power rankings, with the top-rated teams to follow tomorrow.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 »

Dylan Cease came within three outs of making history on Wednesday. Only one Blue Jays pitcher has successfully thrown a no-hitter: Dave Stieb on September 2, 1990. Many others have come close since then, but none of them has finished the job. You can add Cease’s name to that list. He held the Giants hitless for eight innings before allowing a single to the first batter in the ninth. His final line: 8+ innings, one hit, three walks, and 11 strikeouts.

The game started off with a bang — Kazuma Okamoto’s grand slam in the top of the first inning gave the Blue Jays a 5-0 lead before Cease even took the mound. Once he did, it was evident he had his best stuff going. He retired the first 14 batters in order, at one point striking out five in a row. A walk to Willy Adames with two outs in the fifth broke up the perfect game, and then Cease issued another walk in each of the next two innings. This no-hit bid even had its signature defensive play, when Daulton Varsho tracked down a deep fly ball off the bat of Bryce Eldridge in the eighth inning, slamming into the wall in left-center field after making the catch. Ultimately, Cease’s effort fell short. Heliot Ramos saw two pitches from the right-hander in the ninth inning before lining the third up the middle for a single.

That Cease was in a position to complete the feat was a bit of a surprise in the first place. He had thrown a career-high 115 pitches through eight innings, and with teams doing everything they can to protect their pitchers these days, there were real questions about whether Cease would be allowed to pitch the ninth. After the game, Blue Jays manager John Schneider explained his thinking: “I’m a fan of baseball. If a guy has a chance to throw a no-hitter, you let him do it, and I think you make the adjustments after that. Dylan, he’s done it before, and he’s really durable. He’s in the category where you can be pretty aggressive with it. It’s not very often you get to see that, so if I can let a player have that opportunity, I’m going to do it every single time.”

Cease joins a long line of Blue Jays pitchers who have thrown near-no-hitters.

Roy Halladay, Dustin McGowan, Brandon Morrow, and Bowden Francis all had no-hit bids ended in the ninth inning since Stieb’s feat 36 years ago. By game score, Cease’s effort falls in the middle of the pack, less impressive because he didn’t complete nine innings, but better than Francis’ two outings two years ago. Of course, Cease already has a no-hitter to his name, throwing one in 2024 with the Padres. The Blue Jays still have the second-longest no-hitter drought in baseball, ahead of only the Guardians.

As a quick aside, a true no-hitter feels like it could become an increasingly rare feat in the near future. The last no-hitter thrown by a single pitcher was Blake Snell’s back on August 2, 2024, and there were none in 2025. Two combined no-hitters have been completed since Snell’s — one by the Cubs on September 4, 2024 and one most recently by the Astros on May 25, 2026 — but the solo effort now requires both dominance and efficiency. Ballclubs are much more wary of overworking their starting pitchers, so to complete nine innings, they need to keep their pitch counts under control to go the distance. Cease’s durability has been a hallmark throughout his career, and that made Schneider’s decision to let him keep going despite a career-high pitch count justifiable.

Cease’s dominant outing dropped his season ERA to 2.56 and FIP to 2.20, and pushed his WAR up to 3.7, a hair ahead of Cam Schlittler’s mark for the AL lead among qualified pitchers. For most of the first half of the season, the young Yankees starter has been the frontrunner to win the AL Cy Young award. With Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, and Max Fried all dealing with various injuries, the field has been sapped of most of the preseason favorites.

While Schlittler still holds the advantage in the more traditional categories like wins and ERA, Cease leads the AL in strikeouts, FIP (among starters), and WAR — and that’s despite pitching two fewer games than Schlittler. A minor hamstring injury in late May sent Cease to the IL for just the second time in his major league career. Joe Ryan and Parker Messick are also making solid cases, and the traditionalists are bound to love Sonny Gray’s win count and low ERA. Still, it feels like, barring any big surprises, the Cy Young race will come down to Schlittler or Cease.

Getting a Cy Young-caliber season out of Cease immediately after signing him to a massive seven-year, $210 million contract is a triumph for the Blue Jays. One of the preeminent strikeout artists over the last five years, he’s pushed his strikeout rate up to 36.9% this year, a career high. His walk rate is also up slightly — he’s never had great command at any point in his career — but it’s higher than it’s been since 2020. Still, all those additional strikeouts have helped him navigate whatever traffic those free passes put on the basepaths.

While Cease technically has a six-pitch repertoire, he’s mostly known for his riding fastball and hard slider. Those two pitches made up more than 80% of his pitch mix over the previous five seasons. This year, he’s throwing those two pitches about two-thirds of the time. To make up the difference, he’s committed to throwing his changeup a lot more often to keep left-handed batters at bay. He had thrown a form of his changeup back when he debuted with the White Sox in 2019, but it quickly fell out of favor. He had used it almost like a trick pitch over the last few seasons, never throwing it more than 100 times in any given season since 2021.

He found a new changeup grip this offseason and decided to re-incorporate it into his arsenal to give him a reliable third pitch to keep batters off his fastball-slider combo.

The revamped changeup has worked wonderfully so far. He’s thrown it almost exclusively to lefties, but they simply can’t hit it. The pitch has a 60% whiff rate, the highest of any pitch thrown at least 100 times this season. If batters do make contact, it’s usually weakly hit in the air; opposing batters have only managed a .185 batting average and a .215 wOBA against it.

When you think of effective changeups, you might picture Devin Williams’s airbender, dropping and fading away from opposite-handed batters. Or perhaps Edward Cabrera’s power changeup, modeled after Félix Hernández’s cambio. Based on Harry Pavlidis’ research into what makes a changeup effective, we know that a large velocity differential is beneficial for inducing swings and misses. But he also found that changeups that have a wide separation in movement profiles from the pitcher’s fastball can also be effective, particularly at generating groundball contact. Cease’s changeup is unlike any other in baseball.

The velocity differential between his fastball and his changeup is the second highest in the majors, but the pitch’s movement profile is what makes it stand out. It doesn’t fall off the table like you might expect, and it doesn’t fade away from lefty batters either. It’s a straight change. I calculated z-scores for those three characteristics — velocity differential, induced vertical break, and horizontal movement — and summed them as a rough approximation of how unique a pitcher’s changeup is compared to league average. Cease’s has the highest combined score by far.

By this crude method, Cease’s changeup is the most unique offspeed pitch in baseball. It moves a lot like a fastball, except it comes in 14 miles per hour slower. No wonder opposing batters can’t touch it.

This odd movement profile is tied to Cease’s release. He’s a natural supinator — when he releases the ball, his hand is behind it, imparting more backspin on the pitch. Supinators have a very difficult time throwing pitches with the arm-side movement that you would expect a traditional changeup to have. Cease’s change possesses a significant amount of backspin — that’s the reason why it doesn’t tumble as much as you’d think — and its spin profile closely mirrors that of his fastball. Because his offspeed looks a lot like his fastball out of the hand, the effectiveness of his heater has improved, as well. His four-seamer is running a 30.7% whiff rate, a career high for that pitch.

While he may not have made history on Wednesday, Cease is in the middle of what is shaping up to be a career year. He was just named to his first All-Star roster, and he’s pitched his way into the AL Cy Young race. In his first season in Toronto, he’s made the right adjustments to thrive.

With just a week of play left before the All-Star break, the playoff pictures in both leagues still look crowded. That should make for a particularly interesting trade deadline. There aren’t many definite sellers, and the two weeks of games after the midseason break could have a huge impact on who is buying and who might be looking to reset for next year.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 if the Wild Card chases weren’t exciting enough, a bunch of the division races were also upended last week. The Rays and Rangers claimed first place in their respective divisions, the Phillies cut their deficit to three games in the NL East, and the Guardians and White Sox stayed tied atop the AL Central.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 »

Most teams hit the halfway mark in their seasons last week, and the standings are no closer to resolving themselves. It’s a wide open Wild Card field in both leagues, with surprise contenders like the Nationals and Marlins sticking around in the race.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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

…

After beginning the week with a three-game sweep of the Rays, the Dodgers dropped two of three to the Orioles over the weekend. Still, with the Padres floundering, Los Angeles has opened up the largest division lead in baseball, at nine games. Thanks to an excellent starting rotation and a potent lineup, the Dodgers shouldn’t have any trouble locking up their 13th division title in the last 14 years.

In what could be a postseason preview, the Brewers and Braves met over the weekend, with Milwaukee avoiding a sweep with a big win on Sunday. The Brewers lost a game that Jacob Misiorowski started for the first time since May 13 and a game that Kyle Harrison started for the first time since April 11. With Brandon Woodruff on the verge of returning from the IL, this team could have a formidable trio anchoring the rotation down the stretch this season.

As for the Braves, their worst stretch of their season continued into last week, with their two losses to the Giants in a rain-shortened series dropping them to 1-6 in their previous seven games. Atlanta got things back on track with that big series win over the Brewers this past weekend. Drake Baldwin was activated off the IL last week, providing some needed reinforcements for the injury-depleted roster.

The Yankees have fared well since placing Aaron Judge on the IL at the beginning of the month. They’re 10-7 without him and have wrestled control over the AL East away from the Rays. Even so, New York scored only three runs across the final two games of its weekend series against the Reds, both losses. Ben Rice has done his best to make up for the missing Judge; he blasted three home runs last week.

The lopsided nature of the Phillies lineup was on full display over the weekend against the Mets. Bryce Harper hit for the cycle on Saturday and added three more hits and a home run on Sunday, while Kyle Schwarber hit four home runs, three of them on Saturday. On the season, the non-Harper/Schwarber hitters on the Phillies have combined for an ugly .226/.279/.353 slash line, a 73 wRC+. Impact position players have to be high on Philadelphia’s wish list as the trade deadline approaches next month.

The Rays’ early-season success in one-run games has quickly turned sour; they went 1-4 in one-run contests last week alone, and have gone 2-7 in those close games since the beginning of June. Elsewhere in the AL East, the Blue Jays have looked a lot stronger recently. Toronto swept the Red Sox last week before splitting a rain-shortened series against the Cubs over the weekend. George Springer collected seven hits and two home runs last week, and the team is planning on activating Shane Bieber off the IL on Monday.

Over in the AL Central, the Guardians and White Sox meet for a huge series this week in Chicago. These two rivals will play each other seven times over the next two weeks, a massive opportunity for either of them to take control of the division. After playing so well against the Braves and Dodgers a few weeks ago, Chicago stumbled against the Yankees and Tigers last week, losing five of six. Meanwhile, the Guardians limped along without both José Ramírez, who underwent surgery on Tuesday for a fractured hamate bone, and Chase DeLauter, who landed on the injured list on Wednesday with a right side rib fracture, going 2-4 against the Brewers and Astros last week.

The Mariners activated Cal Raleigh and J.P. Crawford off the IL last week — and Randy Arozarena shouldn’t be too far behind them. Even with that duo’s return, Seattle scored no more than three runs in any of its games last week, but still wound up with a 3-3 record thanks to some strong pitching. Logan Gilbert had a pair of brilliant starts, tossing 13 1/3 innings with 18 strikeouts and just two runs allowed. The Mariners have managed to barely stay ahead in the AL West over these last few weeks, but they are also one of just three teams in the AL with a positive run differential. Eventually, the offense should start to click now that it’s mostly healthy.

The Twins have gone 8-3 over their last 11 games and are suddenly in the mix in the very crowded AL Wild Card picture. Byron Buxton has been crushing the ball recently. He’s up to a .317/.368/.698 slash line in June (189 wRC+) with seven home runs, and on the season, he’s now one homer behind Yordan Alvarez for the AL lead. It’s not just Buxton either; the entire offense is humming along, scoring 6.9 runs per game during this stretch. I’m not sure Minnesota has the pitching to stick around in the playoff race, but it’s certainly been a promising season so soon after the team’s big sell-off last summer.

The Cubs’ up-and-down season has sort of calmed down over the last three weeks; they’re 8-9 in June, and their longest winning or losing streak has been three games during this stretch. Pete Crow-Armstrong has been on fire this month, running a gaudy .437/.481/.930 slash line (281 wRC+) with nine home runs. He’s done his best to lead the offense, but the pitching staff is still dealing with a bunch of injuries. Last week, Daniel Palencia hit the IL for the second time this season, though Matthew Boyd is on a rehab assignment now and on track to return soon.

The Diamondbacks have managed to hang around in the NL Wild Card race, but their season took a turn for the worse last week when they placed Michael Soroka, Ryne Nelson, and Jordan Lawlar on the IL. It’s unfortunate timing for Lawlar, who had just returned from a wrist injury a week ago, but losing the pitchers — Soroka to a left glute strain and Nelson to a right elbow strain — is of greater concern. Soroka’s absence is the biggest blow; he has been the team’s best pitcher and one of the lone bright spots in a starting rotation that has been shaky all season long. With Corbin Burnes suffering a setback in his rehab from Tommy John surgery that pushes his recovery timeline back a couple of months, it doesn’t seem like reinforcements are arriving anytime soon for this beleaguered pitching staff.

It was two steps back, one step forward for the Rangers last week. They got swept by the Twins before turning around to win their weekend series against the Padres. Wyatt Langford has been excellent since being activated off the IL on June 5, collecting 19 hits and five home runs in 15 games. Still, with Corey Seager sidelined again and Jack Leiter placed on the IL with an ankle issue last week, Texas is struggling to gain ground in the AL West standings.

The Mets finished May with a 16-12 record that helped them climb to seven games under .500. They haven’t been able to make any progress past that point in June, and a 2-4 week against the Reds and Phillies certainly didn’t help. Juan Soto is trying to carry the team on his back — he’s slashing .415/.529/.780 (258 wRC+) with four home runs over the last two weeks — but the rest of the roster isn’t giving him much support. Francisco Lindor is on the mend and should be activated off the IL sometime this week, but it feels like it’s already too little, too late.

These next three weeks have the potential to define the Tigers’ season. With a sweep of the White Sox over the weekend providing some momentum, they’re entering a critical part of their schedule; they’ll face the Yankees, Astros, and Yankees again, followed by the Rangers, Athletics, and Phillies before heading into the All-Star break. If they can emerge from this gauntlet with a positive record, they could gain some ground in both the AL Central and Wild Card standings. Any further stumbles during this stretch, and they’re probably looking at selling at the trade deadline.

Even after a series win against the Cardinals over the weekend, it might be time to start looking toward next year for the Royals. Bobby Witt Jr. sprained his MCL on Thursday, and while he hasn’t been placed on the IL yet, he sat out the team’s last two games. Losing the AL MVP frontrunner for any amount of time would be devastating. Salvador Perez has limped to a 58 wRC+ in his age-36 season, and Maikel Garcia has struggled to replicate his breakout from last year. You can’t count anyone out in such a mediocre AL playoff field, but the Royals desperately need to turn things around soon if they want to make a run.

The Angels placed Mike Trout on the IL last week with a hamstring injury. He had slowed down just a bit after his torrid start to the season, but he was still the beating heart of this ball club and enjoying a bit of a renaissance year. It was obvious to everyone except the Angels, but this organization desperately needs to turn toward the future. That’s why it was encouraging to see Denzer Guzman, the team’s sixth-ranked prospect entering the season, blast home runs in three straight games over the weekend. He probably won’t be a star, but any positive developments from the pipeline have to be taken as wins at this point.

We’re coming up on the halfway point of the season, and the playoff picture in both leagues is still as muddy as ever. That should make for an interesting trade deadline, with a bunch of teams seemingly on the cusp of making a run and only a few true sellers.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 »