After a thrilling conclusion to the regular season on Monday, the postseason is finally upon us. There are a couple of favorites in the National League in the Dodgers and Phillies, but the American League field looks pretty wide open, and both of the teams that played in last year’s World Series are home on the couch. Anything can happen in the playoffs, and underdogs can topple giants in this wild, month-long tournament. Here’s a look at the 12-team field and how they stack up against each other.

This season, we revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that Detroit’s magical run through the end of the regular season is complete, snapping a decade-long postseason drought, the Tigers have been rewarded with a first-round matchup against the formidable Astros. Not only will this be the first postseason meeting between these two franchises, it’ll be an October reunion of sorts between Detroit manager A.J. Hinch and the ballclub he led to two World Series appearances and one championship, before he was fired in the aftermath of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. Houston has been an October staple since 2015 and will be attempting to reach its eighth straight ALCS.

This isn’t a classic David and Goliath story, however. These two teams have been the best in the American League since the beginning of July, though the Tigers aren’t exactly structured like a traditional juggernaut, and the Astros aren’t as strong as they have been in recent seasons. Houston has plenty of postseason experience up and down its roster, but Detroit is young and essentially playing with house money after its surprising playoff berth.

The Tigers’ surge to the playoffs was almost entirely driven by their pitching staff. Since July 1, they’ve had the second-best run prevention unit in the majors, allowing just 3.58 runs per game. This is despite the fact that they traded away Jack Flaherty, their second-best starter over the first four months of the season, at the deadline, when they were 6.5 games out of the final Wild Card spot with 2.8% playoff odds. Over the two months since then, Detroit essentially has turned to a two-man rotation, with the other three slots being covered by a rotating cast of openers and bulk relievers. It’s been unorthodox to say the least, but you can’t argue with the results.

Of course, it helps that the Tigers have the odds-on favorite to win the AL Cy Young award leading their pitching staff. Tarik Skubal has ascended into the stratosphere this year, winning the pitching Triple Crown and leading all American League pitchers in WAR. The Tigers will hand the ball to Skubal in Game 1, which might be the only traditional start the Astros see in this series.

The pitching plan for Games 2 and 3 is a complete mystery, one that Hinch seems to be relishing. “I’m going to try to keep everybody guessing just as much as I have with you guys for the last two months,” Hinch told reporters over the weekend. Keider Montero was the other traditional starter the Tigers leaned on during the past two months, but he doesn’t fit the profile of a big-game starter. It’s possible they’ll turn to Reese Olson in one of these games, but he hasn’t pitched past the fourth inning in any of his three starts since returning from a shoulder injury a few weeks ago. That means it could come down to the same opener-bulk strategy that’s been so successful over the last few months, with unsung heroes Brant Hurter or Ty Madden getting an opportunity to make an impact on the biggest stage.

There’s also the question of how the Tigers are going to deploy Jackson Jobe, their top pitching prospect. They called him up during the final week of the regular season, and he made two appearances out of the bullpen, including a three-inning outing on Saturday. It’s unclear if they trust him enough to hand him an actual start during this series, but he should see some action at some point, even if it’s as a bulk reliever.

And then there’s the rest of the Detroit bullpen. Beyond the team’s gaggle of long relievers, there’s a ton of depth to cover the later innings. That’s a huge reason why the Tigers were so successful down the stretch. And it’s not like their bullpen is stacked with big names; instead, it’s guys like Jason Foley (3.15 ERA), Tyler Holton (2.19), Beau Brieske (3.59), and Will Vest (2.82) getting deployed interchangeably in high-leverage situations.

Offensively, the Tigers rely heavily on just a handful of key contributors and have had a couple of guys get hot over the last two months to help fuel their postseason run.

Since returning from the injured list in early August, Parker Meadows has been one of the best outfielders in baseball. He’s slashed .291/.333/.500 over the last two months and played great defense in center, helping him accumulate 2.1 WAR during that timeframe, the 18th best mark in all of baseball. Both Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene have been solid contributors throughout the season when they’ve been healthy, and both were activated off the IL in August to help Detroit’s playoff push. And Spencer Torkelson has finished the season strong after getting sent down to the minors in June. Since he was recalled in mid-August, Torkelson is batting .248/.338/.444 with six home runs and a 125 wRC+.

For the Astros, the biggest lingering question is the availability of Yordan Alvarez. He injured his knee sliding into second base on September 22 and has been sidelined since then. He’s expected to take some batting practice on Monday, which could be a good sign for his recovery, but his knees have given him trouble for much of his career, and I’d expect the Astros to be cautious with him.

Even without the big man anchoring their lineup, Houston has plenty of firepower to deploy, all coming from the usual suspects. Kyle Tucker missed a couple of months of the season due to a fractured shin, but he was in the middle of a career year before that injury and picked up right where he left off when he returned at the beginning of September. Jose Altuve is on the downswing of his career, but he’s still a potent table-setter atop the lineup, and Alex Bregman has rebounded nicely from a slow start to the season. Yainer Diaz has been fantastic in his first full season as Houston’s starting catcher, so much so that even on some of the days that he didn’t catch, the Astros used him at first base to keep his bat in the lineup regularly.

Unlike the Tigers, the Astros boast a traditional, playoff-tested rotation that they’ll need to lean into during this short series. Don’t mind their full-season stats listed in the table up top; since June 1, Houston starters have had the second-best ERA in the majors (3.31) and the fifth-best FIP (3.73). Framber Valdez will take the ball in Game 1; he had a 1.96 ERA across his 12 starts (78 innings) during the second half of the season. Next up will be Yusei Kikuchi Houston’s big trade deadline acquisition. He’s been absolutely phenomenal since switching teams thanks to some pitch mix adjustments and a honed attack plan for his slider. He’s struck out nearly a third of the batters he’s faced since joining the Astros while keeping his walk rate under control.

If the series goes to Game 3, Hunter Brown should get the call, something no one could have expected after he started off the year with a 9.78 ERA through his first six starts of the season. After adding a sinker to his repertoire in May, he lowered his ERA to 3.49 by the end of the year. Perhaps surprisingly, Justin Verlander isn’t an option to make a start during this series, though he could be called on in the Division Series should the Astros advance.

Houston’s bullpen has nearly as many high-quality options as Detroit’s does, but the top Astros relievers are far more battle tested. Josh Hader was the big offseason signing, and he’s been solid, if a little shaky, as the primary closer; a bout of homeritis drove his FIP higher than it’s ever been in a full season (excluding 2020). The former closer Ryan Pressly and flame-throwing Bryan Abreu make a formidable setup duo, and Héctor Neris, claimed off the garbage heap in August, gives Houston four high-leverage arms with plenty of playoff experience.

The final week of the regular season is upon us and most of the division races are pretty much decided, if not officially wrapped up. Thankfully, the two Wild Card races should provide plenty of drama over the next seven days.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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%.) 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 — I’ve taken some 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 Padres won five games last week to push three games ahead of the Diamondbacks and Mets for the first NL Wild Card spot and just three games back of the Dodgers in the NL West. San Diego and Los Angeles are set to face off three times at Dodger Stadium this week, beginning Tuesday. The Padres are the only second-place team with a greater than 1% chance to win the division. It won’t be easy, because even if the Friars take care of business against the Dodgers, they close out the regular season with a three-game set in Arizona over the weekend.

Shohei Ohtani just completed what could very well be the best week ever produced by a big leaguer; not only did he found the 50/50 club with an epic performance on Thursday, he added two more home runs and four more stolen bases over the weekend to bring his season totals to 53 homers and 55 steals. In total, he collected 16 hits, six home runs, 15 RBI, and seven stolen bases last week. After hosting San Diego for three games with their 11th division title in 12 years on the line, the Dodgers head to Coors Field this weekend for three games against the last-place Rockies.

The Diamondbacks blew an 8-0 lead on Sunday afternoon to lose to the Brewers, denying them a chance to mop the four-game series in Milwaukee. That loss meant they ended the week tied with the Mets in the Wild Card standings, which ratchets up the stakes for this final week of the season. Eugenio Suárez continues to rake and Ketel Marte launched home runs in three consecutive games over the weekend, but the Snakes will need all hands on deck to maintain their playoff position.

While it wasn’t the smoothest ascent to the top of the AL West, all the Astros need to do to clinch the division is win one of their three home games against the Mariners this week. Fortunately, Houston may have “dodged a bullet” after Yordan Alvarez injured his knee on Sunday, though his status is unclear as of this writing.

The Yankees survived their six-week slump this summer and now need to win just one of their final six games to clinch the AL East. After a bit of a slowdown earlier this month, the bats of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto woke up a bit last week. This team will go as deep in October as those two will carry it.

After sweeping the Nationals and winning three of four from the Phillies, the Mets are completely in control of their playoff destiny. They travel to Atlanta this week looking to completely bury the Braves in the standings and secure their surprise spot in the postseason.

It doesn’t bode well that the Phillies faced two playoff teams last week — the Brewers and Mets — and came away with just two wins in seven games. With the division all but locked up, perhaps they were just taking it easy before the postseason begins. After their hot start to the season, their up-and-down second half hasn’t bred a ton of confidence in their ability to cruise through the early rounds. Still, Philadelphia is filled with veterans who have engineered deep playoff runs two years in a row; the Phillies should be fine.

The Brewers became the first team in the majors to clinch their division last week, so I suppose you could excuse the series loss to the Diamondbacks over the weekend. The dramatic come-from-behind victory on Sunday was a nice way to show that they still have a lot of fire within them. They’ll need it as they seek their first postseason series victory since 2018.

The Guardians are in a weird spot: They’re not consistently good enough to fit in the second tier but they’re clearly above the fray of teams in the Wild Card race. Still, after their disappointing season last year with largely the same cast, they clinched the AL Central on Saturday, their fifth title in the last nine seasons.

If the AL Wild Card race hadn’t been so dramatic over the past few weeks, we’d probably be paying more attention to the Orioles’ fall down the standings. As recently as September 10, they were just a half game back in the AL East; now, they are one loss or one Yankees win away from having to settle for a Wild Card berth. Baltimore’s pitching staff has had plenty of issues during the second half of the season — things got so bad in the bullpen, they opted to release Craig Kimbrel instead of hoping to fix him before the playoffs. In more positive news, the O’s just activated Jordan Westburg off the IL on Sunday, they’ll hope he can provide a spark as they crawl their way into the playoffs.

If you’re looking for drama this final week of the season, look no further than the AL Wild Card race. Against all odds, the Tigers have surged into a playoff berth and are currently tied in the standings with the Royals and a game ahead of the Twins. They did it by sweeping the Royals last week and then taking two of three from the Orioles in Baltimore. That’s a pretty stiff challenge and shows just how good Detroit has been during this late-season hot streak. With three-game series at home against the Rays and White Sox, the Tigers have the weakest schedule of the four teams fighting over the last two Wild Card spots.

The Royals have now had two separate seven-game losing streaks over the past month. Sure, there was a 7-2 stretch sandwiched between those skids, but Kansas City is on the verge of tripping right as it reaches the finish line. The Royals have three games against the Nationals in Washington, followed by three weekend games in Atlanta that should be crucial for both teams. Buckle up.

After losing both games of their Sunday doubleheader against the Red Sox, the Twins are out of a playoff position for the first time since April. They’re barely hanging on, and their only saving grace has been the simultaneous collapse of the Royals. Luckily for Minnesota, it holds the tiebreaker over Kansas City, Detroit, and Seattle; this could definitely come into play in such a tight Wild Card race. The Twins host the Marlins and Orioles this week.

Don’t count out the Mariners just yet either, though some agonizing mistakes last week really hindered any progress they could have made in the standings. Sunday’s loss was perhaps the most glaring; leading the Rangers 5-0 after 5 1/2 innings, Seattle gave up four runs in the sixth and another in the seventh before ultimately losing on Marcus Semien’s walk-off single in the ninth. It was just the fifth time all season that the Mariners lost a game in which they scored five or more runs. For as bad as things have been since mid-July, when they squandered a 10-game divisional lead in record time, the Mariners enter this week just two games out of the final Wild Card berth and five games back in the AL West standings. Seattle faces long odds to reach the playoffs, let alone to retake the division, but it’s not impossible. The Mariners head to Houston for three games against the Astros before ending the season at home against the A’s.

Over in the National League, the banged-up Braves are still alive in the Wild Card race. They are two games out of the final spot with six to play, including three at home against the Mets, one of the two teams ahead of them in the Wild Card standings. Atlanta needs to take two of three from New York to hold the season-series advantage that would settle a potential tie, and it already holds the tiebreaker over Arizona. Things aren’t great for the Braves, but if they start winning again this week, they should find their way in.

The Reds surprisingly fired manager David Bell on Sunday night, less than a year after signing him to a contract extension that runs through 2026. They “felt a change was needed to move the Major League team forward,” said GM Nick Krall. “We have not achieved the success we expected.” Maybe a new voice in the clubhouse is needed, but the reality is that injuries and Noelvi Marte’s suspension played major parts in the team’s underperformance. Even so, things aren’t too bleak in Cincinnati, where Elly De La Cruz has continued his ascent and should receive down ballot MVP votes this season. Of course, the real sticking point is the amount of investment the Reds will receive to improve the rest of their roster. That’s not something a new manager will be able to solve.

The Giants succeeded in playing spoilers last week, winning two of three against the Orioles and then sweeping the Royals over the weekend. San Francisco has one last shot to reprise its role this week with a three-game series in Arizona, beginning Monday night.

Of all the teams in this huge tier, Toronto seems like the club that’s most likely to bounce back with a good season next year. The Blue Jays opted to hang onto all of their big stars at the deadline, and they did manage to play a little better during the second half of the season. Still, the roster isn’t without holes, and they’ll need a healthy season from Bo Bichette to reach their full potential.

The Rockies were so close to winning a pair of series against the Diamondbacks and Dodgers last week. Back-to-back home runs from Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts secured the walk-off victory on Sunday and forced Colorado to settle for a single win in that weekend series. The Rockies have another crack at Los Angeles next weekend.

While James Wood has adapted to major league pitching pretty quickly, Dylan Crews has taken a little longer to make the adjustment to the big leagues. The Nationals aren’t on the verge of breaking out of their rebuilding cycle just yet, which means Crews has some time to acclimate. Unfortunately, All-Star shortstop CJ Abrams, the other young member of their core, was optioned to the minors over the weekend reportedly after breaking curfew for an all-nighter at a casino before a day game in Chicago. Not a great look for someone who is supposed to be leading the team into its next contention window.

With their 120th loss of the year on Sunday, the White Sox tied the 1962 Mets for the most losses in a season since the founding of the American League in 1901. Barring a miraculous turn of events, they will go down as the worst team in modern MLB history. But hey, look on the bright side: Even if they lose their final six games, they still won’t lose as many games as the 1899 Cleveland Spiders!

With just two weeks left in the regular season, the two Wild Card races look like they’ll be the only source of drama down the stretch. Entering this week, the top team in the closest divisional race has an 87.8% chance to finish in first — that’s the most uncertain winner, according to our playoff odds.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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%). 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. Read the rest of this entry »

With three weeks left in the regular season, it looks like there’s just one true playoff chase remaining: the National League Wild Card race. That said, there’s the possibility that the American League Wild Card race could get a lot more interesting if the Twins keep faltering and any of the Tigers, Mariners, or Red Sox get hot. Still, at a time of year when fans are often obsessively scoreboard watching, the lack of tension is disappointing.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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. Read the rest of this entry »

As we enter the final month of the season, there are a handful of clubs on the edge of the playoff picture whose play of late has made a few of the postseason races fairly exciting as the 2024 campaign winds down.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re very quickly approaching the final month of the season and no team has really pulled away from the pack. Still, the playoff races are pretty settled, with just a handful of teams remaining on the fringes. The division races should provide all the drama down the stretch.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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. Read the rest of this entry »

If it’s parity you’re looking for, consider this: 10 of the top 11 teams in these rankings are separated by just 4.5 games in the major league standings, and the odd team out has been the hottest ballclub in baseball over the last two weeks. While no team is currently on pace to win 100 games, the bunching in the standings should make for some very exciting playoff races down the stretch.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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%). 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 — I’ve taken some 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 trade deadline behind us, we’ve entered the dog days of summer as the contending teams vie for position in the playoff races ahead of the September stretch run.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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%). 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. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is just a day away and there have already been plenty of moves. The Rays’ sell-off has shaken up the market, and a number of the teams on the fringe of the playoff race could join Tampa Bay as sellers. Meanwhile, the playoff field in the National League hasn’t thinned out much, and the American League Wild Card race should be just as exciting down the stretch.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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 — I’ve taken some 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 started off the second half of the season with a sweep of the Red Sox and a series win against the Giants before dropping two of three to the Astros last weekend. Thanks to the struggles of the other teams around them in these rankings, that was good enough to leap to the top of the pile. The Dodgers haven’t made a big move ahead of this week’s trade deadline yet, but they did just activate Clayton Kershaw off the IL. Even though they’re slowly getting healthier, they could use some additional depth to help reinforce a thin roster.

The Phillies have stumbled out of the gate following the All-Star break, losing three straight series to the Pirates, Twins, and Guardians. They’re still well ahead of the Braves and Mets in the NL East and still possess the best record in baseball, but they’re looking for ways to improve their roster for the stretch run and the postseason. That led them to acquire Austin Hays from the Orioles and Carlos Estévez from the Angels last week, providing their outfield and bullpen with a little more depth.

The Guardians have have the best record in the AL, a feat they’ve accomplished with the youngest roster in the majors. They just won a big series against the Phillies, showing they can hang with the best teams in baseball with their current roster, but they’re on the hunt for a few key additions to solidify their place as one of the top teams in the majors. Their starting rotation looks particularly thin and they could probably use one more bat, but it’s unclear how much of their shopping list they’ll be able to check off as they hurtle towards the deadline.

The Orioles were aggressive in bringing in reinforcements for their pitching staff, adding Zach Eflin and Seranthony Domínguez in a pair of deals. With such a deep farm system, they have the prospects to continue adding if they feel the need. After stumbling into the All-Star break, they haven’t really turned things around in the week and a half since the layoff, losing five of nine games. They’ll be fine in the long run and will most likely secure a postseason berth, but the real question is if they can maintain their grip on the AL East without additional reinforcements.

Finishing off a series win against their old rivals on Sunday may be just the spark the Yankees need to turn their season around. They also traded for Jazz Chisholm Jr. on Saturday to give Aaron Judge and Juan Soto some support. Chisholm’s flexibility gives New York some options. He could play center, alleviating the need to play Judge at the most important position in the outfield, or he could play second or even third to cover one of the holes on the infield. No matter where he ends up playing, there’s still plenty of work to do to fill the other gaps in New York’s lineup. The Yanks haven’t shied away from being aggressive in the recent past and they probably shouldn’t this year either.

The Brewers might have avoided the worst-case scenario when Christian Yelich said that he was going to try and work through his latest back injury with rest and rehab rather than season-ending surgery. They aren’t out of the woods yet, as that route holds no guarantees, but there’s at least a chance that he could return sometime this summer to anchor their lineup. As for their trade deadline plans, it seems like they’re more likely to add around the margins to deepen their roster. Their latest move — adding Nick Mears to their bullpen — follows that plan exactly. They also activated Devin Williams off the IL yesterday, hopefully giving their already solid relief corps another boost.

The Padres have started off the second half of the season on a hot streak, winning seven of their nine games, including a gem of a no-hitter from Dylan Cease last week. With the Diamondbacks hot on their heels in the standings and a big series against the Dodgers starting on Tuesday, they’re in position to continue making trades if they can find the right suitors. They already added Jason Adam to their bullpen and appear to be in the market for even more pitching.

The Padres are feeling the pressure because the Diamondbacks have been almost as hot to start the second half. The Snakes are 14-8 in July and haven’t lost a series since late June. Ketel Marte and Christian Walker have been carrying most of the load, but there are signs that Corbin Carroll might be breaking out of his season-long funk; he’s got a pair of home runs since the All-Star break to go along with the pair he hit on July 13.

For a very brief moment, the Mets actually surpassed the Braves in the standings after a pair of wins against Atlanta on Thursday and Friday. With Kodai Senga making his season debut in the second victory, things were looking up for New York. A pair of losses and a season-ending calf injury to Senga later, and it’s back to square one. The Mets did acquire Jesse Winker from the Nationals on Sunday, but their position in the NL Wild Card race feels pretty precarious if they don’t continue adding talent to their roster.

Atlanta’s two victories on Saturday and Sunday against the Mets snapped a six-game losing streak. With both Ozzie Albies and Max Fried sidelined by pretty serious injuries last week, the Braves have been unable to shake the bad injury luck that has followed them throughout the season.

With the Yankees and Twins holding the top two Wild Card spots in the AL, it seems likely the final spot will end up going to one of the Royals, Red Sox, or Mariners — or maybe the Astros if Seattle somehow retakes the top spot in the AL West. None of those four teams are playing all that well right now: Kansas City lost both of its series last week, Boston has won just twice since the All-Star break, and while Seattle just swept the White Sox, it came on the heels of getting swept by the Angels.

The M’s have been one of the most aggressive teams heading into the trade deadline, acquiring Randy Arozarena and Yimi García, and they’re not done yet. They have two potential paths to the playoffs, giving them more opportunities to find a way into the postseason, and the strength of their rotation gives them a big incentive to try and really go for it this year. Meanwhile, the Royals and Red Sox have made just a few moves on the margins of their rosters so far: Boston welcomed back James Paxton and added Danny Jansen, while Kansas City acquired Michael Lorenzen to help cover innings down the stretch.

Even though the Rays are two games over .500 and just a game and a half behind the Mariners in the Wild Card race, they’re busy tearing down their roster. The optics may look a little weird, but the math checks out: The Rays had a very narrow path to the postseason, and with so few true sellers, they’ve been able restock their farm system with a number of high-value prospects without significantly damaging their outlook in 2025 or ‘26. They’ve already moved Arozarena, Isaac Paredes, Eflin, and Adam, and there are likely more moves coming.

The rest of the teams in this tier still have a small chance of making a miracle run into the playoffs, but they might be better served by focusing on next year and taking a page out of the Rays’ playbook. If any of these clubs decide to tear things down, the trade market could really open up. None of these teams have had that much success in the week and a half since the All-Star break, either; the Giants mopped the Rockies and the Blue Jays swept the Rangers over the weekend to bring their second half records to 6-5 and 5-4, respectively, while Texas and Detroit have both gone 5-5.

The Cubs were the surprising winners of the Isaac Paredes sweepstakes, though they gave up a good amount to get him. Even though Paredes has the longer track record and Chicago seemed exasperated by Christopher Morel’s defensive miscues, it’s not immediately clear that the Cubs actually improved their roster with Paredes and they had to part with two prospects to boot. It’s an interesting move — it’s almost certainly one made with an eye towards the future, even though it looks and smells like a move that a buyer would make.

The Athletics have gone 14-8 in July, tied for the best record in baseball this month. Thanks to some scheduling weirdness, eight of those wins have come against the Angels. It also seems like Oakland won’t be a big seller at the deadline; Mason Miller hurt himself in the training room last week, and the A’s have indicated they might want to hold onto Brent Rooker too. They’ve got a bunch of secondary pieces they could part with, but those won’t really move the needle all that much.

Earlier this year, the White Sox lost 14 games in a row, breaking a franchise record. They’re now in the midst of their second 14-game losing streak, with a chance to break that franchise record for the second time in just a few months. They’ve won exactly 25% of their games and are back on pace to set the modern record for losses in a single season. Plus, their roster is about to get a lot worse as they ship out all their veterans ahead of the deadline.