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 »

The best teams in baseball continue to separate themselves from the huge morass of mediocre clubs in the middle of the standings. That means the division races might not as exciting, but both Wild Card chases should more than make up for that.

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 calendar turns to June, the playoff picture is tight in both leagues. There are 11 teams in the NL with records over .500, which should make for an exciting Wild Card race this summer. The AL is nearly as competitive, though for the opposite reason, as more than half of the clubs in the junior circuit have losing records.

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 »

A long time ago, Keibert Ruiz was one of the top catching prospects in baseball. He was so highly regarded that he was a significant piece of the Nationals’ return in the Max Scherzer and Trea Turner trade with the Dodgers in 2021. After a solid first full season in Washington the following year, he signed an eight-year extension worth $50 million in March 2023. Unfortunately, that’s when the bottom fell out. Over the last three years, Ruiz has been the worst qualified position player in baseball, “accumulating” -1.9 WAR.

When the Nationals acquired Harry Ford in a trade with the Mariners this offseason, it was fair to wonder if Ruiz’s days as the team’s primary backstop were numbered. He had been a disaster both at the plate and behind it. His 79 wRC+ over the last three years was a hair higher than Patrick Bailey’s 76 mark, but instead of offsetting that offensive futility with elite defense, Ruiz was the worst defensive catcher in baseball. It’s shocking, then, to see that he has so completely turned things around this year; he’s already accrued 0.8 WAR and has been the 11th-most valuable catcher in baseball in just 34 games.

Let’s tackle the most surprising development first: All of a sudden, Ruiz is providing positive value behind the plate. Among the 53 catchers who caught at least 1,000 innings over the last three years, Ruiz was the second-worst framer, the second worst at throwing out base stealers, and the sixth-worst blocker. This year, he’s added two runs via framing and has been a slightly above-average blocker. His throwing hasn’t improved all that much according to Statcast, but he also hasn’t been challenged very often, so that area of defense hasn’t really affected his overall defensive value.

Last year, Ruiz suffered two concussions within a few weeks of each other. The first came on June 23, when an errant foul ball hit him in the head while he was sitting in the dugout. The second came just a week and a half later — and just two days after he had been activated off the 7-day concussion IL — when a foul tip struck him in the mask. He attempted to return to play in September, but he was shut down from his rehab assignment after his concussion symptoms returned. In an effort to reduce his risk behind the plate, the Nationals had Ruiz adjust his stance so that he’s now crouching lower to the ground:

In the picture above, you can see that at the pitcher’s release, Ruiz’s back isn’t as upright and his head is a little lower to the ground. The team thought that a lower stance would allow more foul tips to fly over his head instead of into his mask. That might have been the intended goal of the new position, but the effect on Ruiz’s ability to receive pitches has transformed his defensive metrics. If we look at Statcast’s detailed framing data, over the last three years, Ruiz had really struggled to receive both low pitches and pitches to his right:

It’s reasonable to think that sitting lower in his stance has helped him to frame those low pitches much more effectively. What’s even more surprising is that the right-hand side of the plate is now his strongest framing zone. In addition to benefiting his receiving, a lower crouch has probably helped him block errant pitches that he might not have been able to get to previously.

Going from being one of the worst defensive catchers in baseball to an above-average one is a tremendous improvement on its own, but Ruiz has also taken a step forward as a hitter. Ruiz got off to a familiar slow start at the plate this year; though May 6, he was running a .182/.203/.303 slash line, with a hugely disappointing 37 wRC+. As Spencer Nusbaum of The Athletic reported on Thursday, Ruiz met with the Nationals coaching staff on May 7 to build a plan for improvement. That same day, he smacked a pair of doubles and a home run. Over his last 11 games, he’s collected 16 hits, seven doubles, and three home runs, raising his season line to .262/.277/.486 (109 wRC+). The plan seems to have worked.

Two things keyed this offensive outburst. First, Ruiz is being more selective when it comes to which pitches to swing at, and second, he’s swinging to do damage when he gets a good pitch to hit. Here’s how manager Blake Butera put it in an interview with Jessica Camerato of MLB.com:

“That’s the one thing with Keibert is, he can cover a lot of pitches but he can also hit the ball really hard. And it’s really hard to hit pitches hard when you’re swinging at everything and just making contact. So one thing we put on him was, shrink the zone a little bit, trust your hand-eye coordination, even if that means taking some borderline pitches that are strikes. Wait until you get a good pitch to hit. Then he’s doing the work from there.”

Throughout his career, Ruiz has displayed excellent bat-to-ball skills and a fantastic ability to cover the entire plate; it’s the reason his career strikeout rate is just 11.1%. But his aggressiveness and propensity to put the ball in play is also why his career walk rate is just 4.7%. With a new selective approach in mind, Ruiz has cut his overall swing rate to 47.5%, a five point drop from where it’s been in the recent past. He’s given up nearly all of those swings on pitches located in the zone; his chase rate is essentially unchanged, but his zone swing rate is down nearly 10 points.

Despite that increased selectivity, he’s still making contact just as often, only now that contact has a little more oomph behind it. Ruiz has significantly improved his contact quality, and most of the improvement has come as a right-handed hitter. Throughout his career, he’s run a neutral platoon split as a switch-hitter, but his underlying batted ball metrics were significantly worse from the right side despite the results indicating otherwise:

This year, Ruiz is doing a ton more damage against left-handed pitching. He’s increased his bat speed from the right side by more than two ticks and has seen huge improvements in every meaningful batted ball metric. He’s also seen a jump in batted ball quality from the left side, albeit a smaller one. That growth appears to stem from his intent at the plate. He’s seeking good pitches to hit and is looking to drive them in the air to the pull side. His pull rate is all the way up to 67.4%, the largest increase of any batter this year, and he’s elevating his contact a lot more often as well. The results over the last few weeks speak for themselves.

For now, Ruiz is still splitting time behind the plate with Drew Millas. He has started a little over half of the Nationals’ games this season and just 11 of the 20 games since the fateful meeting that set him on this course. Millas was a well-regarded catching prospect in his own right not too long ago, but he hasn’t exactly impressed during parts of four seasons in the big leagues. He’s currently running a 41 wRC+ with adequate defense behind the plate. And Ford isn’t knocking on the door of the big leagues, either; the young catcher has mustered just a 74 wRC+ in Triple-A this year. If Ruiz continues bashing the ball and is able to keep up the good work defensively, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him reclaim his role as the team’s everyday catcher in short order.

With their plan for improvement in place, the Nationals have to be thrilled to see such positive results so quickly from Ruiz. I’m sure there will be bumps in the future — we’re talking about just 43 plate appearances since he made these changes to his approach — but with the support of the coaching staff, Ruiz appears to have been set on a path to success.