Baseball’s middle class is pretty large this year. Just 10 teams have records over .500 right now, while nine teams are within three games of a playoff berth — and that doesn’t include the four teams that are currently tied for the final National League Wild Card spot. Because the standings are so compressed, especially in the NL, one team going on a hot streak can up-end the status quo very quickly, as the Reds showed us last week.

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 »

We’re now two months into the season, and the differences between the haves and the have-nots are becoming a little clearer with each week. That’s especially true in the American League, where a four-game gap separates the Mariners and the Red Sox, the sixth and seventh teams in the league standings. Meanwhile, in the National League, a pretty sizable group of teams is chasing the last two Wild Card spots, with eight or nine teams potentially vying for those playoff berths as the season continues.

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 »

Several preseason favorites are sliding down these rankings as we barrel toward the third month of the season, while other clubs — most notably the Guardians — are continuing their surprisingly strong starts.

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.

All power rankings stats, including team records, are updated through Sunday’s games. The information included in the comments are current as of Tuesday morning. Read the rest of this entry »

The various division races are starting to shape up now that we’ve passed the quarter pole in the regular season. The Astros finally woke up from their early season slumber, reminding us that it’s still not too late for some of these disappointing teams to make a run into the playoff picture.

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 Yankees leapt to the top of these rankings with sweeps of the Twins and White Sox last week. They’ve now won seven straight and 13 of their last 15. Juan Soto and Aaron Judge are powering the offense as expected — along with a resurgent Giancarlo Stanton — but the most impressive part of this hot streak has been their pitching staff. During this stretch, New York has allowed just 2.4 runs per game and gave up a total of six runs last week. The entire starting rotation has stepped up in Gerrit Cole’s absence, with Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil representing the two biggest surprises.

The Phillies stretched their division lead over the Braves to five games with a wild series win against the Mets and a sweep of the Nationals last week. It’s true Philadelphia has played the weakest schedule of any team thus far — it faced the Braves in the first series of the season and hasn’t met a team with a record over .500 since then — but the Phillies are banking enough wins now that it might not matter if they come back down to earth once the schedule toughens up.

While Elly De La Cruz may have stolen the spotlight on Thursday in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won the final three games of their series against the Reds to take the series and held De La Cruz hitless over the weekend. They own the largest division lead and best run differential in baseball.

Max Fried slipped up on Friday after a long stretch of dominant starts, allowing three runs on nine hits against the Padres. After a rainout on Saturday, the Braves lost a stinker on Sunday and are lined up for a doubleheader today. They can still be counted among the upper echelons in baseball, but it’s clear they’re not firing on all cylinders yet.

Both the Royals and Guardians swept their weekend series, though Cleveland’s wins against the Twins are much more impactful than the three wins Kansas City racked up against the A’s. The Guardians still lead the AL Central and knocked Minnesota down a notch, but the Royals are on pace for their second best season in franchise history if they can keep this up.

The Mariners went 3-3 against two of the other teams in this tier last week, which is pretty much what you’d expect from their solid but flawed roster. They still haven’t solved their run scoring issues and Julio Rodríguez’s power outage to start the season is starting to become a little concerning. Meanwhile, the Orioles are trying to keep up with the high-flying Yankees; Baltimore’s series win over Seattle certainly helps in that regard.

A lot of ups and downs in this tier last week. The Twins’ hot streak flamed out after they were swept by the Yankees and Guardians; the Cubs didn’t do much better, losing both of their series to the Braves and Pirates. On the other end of the spectrum, the Rays went 5-2 against the Red Sox and Blue Jays, banking two key series wins against some division rivals.

Here come the Astros. With two wins against the Brewers over the weekend, Houston has now won three series in a row and nine of its last 11 games. Alex Bregman’s bat has suddenly awoken as he raised his wRC+ from 58 to 87 over the last week. The Astros have a huge four-game series in Seattle looming in a week and they’ll hope to continue their momentum ahead of that showdown.

A bunch of the teams in this tier continued their early season struggles and have fallen even further behind in the playoff picture. The Giants and Tigers were the only two among these teams to win a series last week.

San Francisco emphatically swept the Rockies over the weekend, though that’s a small consolation considering the bad news it received about Jung Hoo Lee’s shoulder injury; the Giants’ center fielder will be out for the season after dislocating his shoulder last Sunday. Blake Snell is on the mend and should be activated off the IL soon, but there are still far too many role players sidelined currently, forcing the Giants to turn to their shallow depth. Thankfully, Luis Matos has made an immediate impact, collecting 16 RBIs and recording hits in five of the seven games since being recalled to cover for Lee.

The Cardinals, Pirates, Angels, and Marlins all showed some pluck last week, earning series wins over some high profile opponents. St. Louis won both of its series against the Angels and Red Sox and can’t be counted out of the NL playoff picture just yet; Pittsburgh took three of four from the Cubs over the weekend, a series highlighted by a dominant start from Paul Skenes; and the Marlins picked up series wins over the Tigers and Mets.

With Mike Trout sidelined for the foreseeable future, the Angels have had very few reasons for optimism recently. Thankfully, Jo Adell’s long-awaited breakout is something they can build upon. It’s not a franchise-altering development, but it’s a positive note for an organization that has desperately needed one this year.

After reaching .500 with a 20-4 win over the Marlins on May 4, the A’s have won exactly twice in the 15 games since then. Their nosedive has coincided with a particularly tough stretch in their schedule, with series against the Rangers, Mariners, Astros, and Royals bringing them back down to Earth. Mason Miller has gotten all of the attention as the standout on this roster, but there are a few other breakouts that could become valuable trade bait later on this summer.

The Rockies put together a nice little seven-game win streak with sweeps of the Rangers and Padres before getting swept by the Giants last weekend. Ezequiel Tovar has rewarded the organization’s trust in him with a fantastic start to the season. Nolan Jones should be activated off the IL this week and hopefully he can start pounding the ball again so that Colorado can properly play spoiler to the rest of the teams in the NL West.

There wasn’t much movement in the power rankings this week, as teams have sort of settled into their tiers now that we’re about a quarter of the way through the regular season.

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 »

There were a ton of fascinating matchups last week — Dodgers-Braves, Brewers-Cubs, and Orioles-Yankees — and the victors of those series set the tone for what could be very interesting playoff races over the next few months.

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 some of the 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.

All power rankings stats, including team records, are updated through Sunday’s games. The information included in the comments are current as of Tuesday morning. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re nearly a month through the season and there’s still a jumble of teams sitting around .500 who could wind up in the playoff picture with one hot streak. That’s exactly what happened with the Twins last week. Of course, the opposite is true, too, with the Rays learning that lesson while getting swept by the White Sox.

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 Braves continue to run roughshod over the rest of baseball, sweeping the Marlins and winning a dramatic weekend series against the Guardians. They’re doing it all despite slow starts from Ronald Acuña Jr. (111 wRC+), Austin Riley (95), and Matt Olson (101). They did just get Ozzie Albies back from his toe injury earlier than expected and Marcell Ozuna continues to power the offense.

The four teams in this tier have been playing some excellent baseball recently and are separating themselves from the morass of teams below them. The Guardians still have the best record in the AL despite losing two of three to the Braves, and the Phillies have won 13 of their last 15 games, including a sweep of the Padres over the weekend.

The Dodgers had their six-game win streak snapped Sunday, but their sweep of the Nationals and series win over the Blue Jays helped put their early-season struggles behind them. A trio of rookies — Andy Pages in the outfield and Landon Knack and Gavin Stone in the rotation — have helped sure up some of the roster’s question marks. Of course, it’s hard to be worried about Los Angeles when Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani are driving the offense with MVP caliber seasons.

The Yankees split a four-game series against the surprisingly tough A’s, but then beat up on the Brewers by scoring 30 runs on Saturday and Sunday. Aaron Judge, who had been slumping to start the season, homered twice this weekend and it looks like all the adjustments that Anthony Volpe has made have helped him take a big step forward this year. New York heads into this week with a huge four-game series against the Orioles on the docket.

The Orioles had a forgettable weekend, starting with the demotion of Jackson Holliday and ending with a series loss at home to the A’s that included two Craig Kimbrel meltdowns. Meanwhile, the Mariners’ starting rotation carried them to the top of the AL West; their starters have allowed just 20 runs over their last 16 games.

The Cubs looked great in their dominant sweep of the Astros before faltering against the Red Sox, getting blown out 17-0 on Saturday and losing a heartbreaker in the ninth on Sunday night. The Brewers didn’t fare much better, splitting a four-game series with the Pirates before getting trounced by the Yankees. Still, these two teams — and the generally good play of the rest of the teams in the division — have made the NL Central one of the more compelling storylines to start the season. Chicago is hanging around despite missing Cody Bellinger, Seiya Suzuki, and a handful of pitchers, all suffering from a variety of maladies. Milwaukee has had plenty of injury issues too, and it’s enjoying a surprising breakout from Brice Turang, but its pitching staff is running pretty thin — allowing 30 runs across the last two days is evidence enough of that. These two teams will face off this weekend in a three-games series that could set the tone for how this rivalry will shape up this year.

All the teams in this huge tier are hovering around .500, sitting on the knife’s edge between competing and retooling for next year. A hot streak or a cold snap could propel them one way or the other very quickly.

The Twins are a perfect example of how quickly a team’s fortunes can change. They’ve won seven straight and have now climbed a game over .500. They’re still pretty far behind the Guardians and Royals for the division lead, but they’re now firmly in the conversation after being left in the dust over the first three weeks of the season. It helps that they faced the White Sox and Angels and have another series against the South Siders lined up this week. If they can take this momentum and start winning games against tougher opposition, they could make the AL Central race a lot more interesting.

The Royals and Tigers, who both sit above Minnesota in the AL Central standings, just battled it out over the weekend, with Detroit emerging victorious in two of the three games. It’s the pitching that’s been the most impressive for the Tigers and Royals, though they’re both struggling to score runs with any consistency. For Detroit, Riley Greene is its only young hitter producing with any consistency right now; Kerry Carpenter started strong but fell off last week, and the club is still waiting for Spencer Torkelson and Colt Keith to wake up.

The Cardinals won both of their series last week, giving them a bit of life after a sluggish start to the season. They still seem to be missing that devil magic that made them such consistent winners for most of the last two decades. They demoted Jordan Walker to Triple-A last week and their offense is last in the NL in scoring. At least their pitching staff, the focus of all their offseason energy, is much improved, with Sonny Gray continuing to look like a frontline ace.

Four of the teams in this tier had serious designs on competing for a playoff spot this year, and then there’s the Pirates, who have seriously cooled off after their hot start. The Padres have won just three of their last 11 games, and the Diamondbacks have been only slightly better than that.

The Rays had a pretty terrible week, losing two of three to the Tigers and then getting swept by the White Sox of all teams. It’s pretty easy to diagnose what’s wrong with their roster: They’ve allowed the third most runs in the AL and Randy Arozarena (47 wRC+) and Yandy Díaz (86) aren’t driving the offense right now. No amount of depth will help when the best players on your roster aren’t producing.

The Astros managed to take both games of the Mexico City series against the Rockies, but their path out of their early-season hole won’t get any easier this week; they’ve got a homestand against the league-leading Guardians and division-leading Mariners on the docket. Like Tampa Bay, Houston’s pitching staff has been a mess so far, with Ronel Blanco representing the only bright spot. Meanwhile, the Astros have one of the best offenses in the league; the problem is they’re not turning that production into scoring right now. There’s a dangerous ballclub in here somewhere that’s just waiting to strike, but Houston is running the risk of waiting too long.

If you remove the seven games the A’s played against the Guardians earlier this season, in which they went 1-6, their record against all of their other opponents would be 11-11. That’s much better than anyone could have expected, and they just split a series against the Yankees in the Bronx and won a series against the Orioles in Baltimore.

The Nationals are also outperforming expectations right now; they won series against the Dodgers and Astros a couple of weeks ago and are in line to sweep the Marlins in four games if they can win Monday night. CJ Abrams has continued his breakout from last year and is looking like the core piece for Washington to build around.

The White Sox doubled their win total on the season last weekend with their three-game sweep of the Rays. Eloy Jiménez and Andrew Benintendi sparked the offense while Erick Fedde led the pitching staff. Even the worst teams in history have to win 50-60 games in a season, so it’s not that surprising that three of those wins came in a row. Still, this roster is among the worst in franchise history and there’s very little hope on the horizon.

We’re a little more than 10% of the way through the regular season and some of the hottest teams to start the year have cooled off. It’s far too early to pass any judgment on any of the starts just yet; there’s still plenty of games to play.

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 dozen of them. 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 »

What’s gotten into the Central divisions? Often an afterthought behind the big market clubs on either coast, it’s the Central teams in both leagues that are providing the most surprising starts, and most entertaining baseball, so far this season.

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 »

It’s been an eventful start to the regular season and not all of it good. A rash of injuries to some of the game’s biggest stars has marred the first week and half of play, and a number of teams now have to face the rest of the spring and summer without some of their best players. The conversation around these injuries, particularly those to pitchers, and their root causes has drowned out a lot of the exciting action we’re seeing on the field.

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 now defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution, one 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 the 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 Braves’ strong start has been overshadowed by the news about Spencer Strider’s elbow. After experiencing discomfort on Friday, the right-hander underwent an MRI over the weekend that revealed damage to his UCL; he was placed on the 15-day IL. A course of treatment has yet to be determined, and there’s no specific timeline for his return, but Atlanta should be prepared to play on without him for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, the Braves offense is already firing on all cylinders; they’ve scored nine runs or more in half of their games so far and had a couple of dramatic come-from-behind wins against the Diamondbacks this past weekend.

The Yankees started off the season with a four-game sweep of the Astros in Houston and a pair of series wins against the Diamondbacks and Blue Jays. Juan Soto was sensational during that opening series, and the powerful bats of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton have provided plenty of pop behind him. So far, the Yankees haven’t missed Gerrit Cole. Luis Gil has done a commendable job filling in for their injured ace, striking out more than a third of the batters he’s faced in two solid starts.

The Astros have gotten off to a pretty lousy start. Their vaunted bullpen has blown leads in half of their games played so far and their offense is still in startup mode. Luckily, they’ve had a few brilliant moments sprinkled in through their misery. In their three wins this season, they’ve allowed a total of four hits, including a no-hitter spun by Ronel Blanco, who followed that performance with another 5.2 innings of no-hit ball on Sunday night.

No matter how good their offense is, the Rangers were always going to face a tough uphill battle during the first half of the season while they waited for their injured starting pitchers to return. At least they’ve gotten off to a hot start, with a pair of series wins over the Cubs and Rays. Unfortunately, they’ll have to keep things going without Josh Jung in the lineup; he broke his wrist a week ago and could be out until the All-Star break. With their two rookie outfielders, Wyatt Langford and Evan Carter, still getting up to speed this season, Texas’ margin for error in the competitive American League West is even slimmer now.

The Guardians have also seen their excellent start to the season marred by terrible injury news. After making two brilliant starts, Shane Bieber tore his UCL and will undergo Tommy John surgery, forcing him to miss the rest of the season. After graduating three of their top pitching prospects to the majors last year, there isn’t really an in-house option ready to step into Bieber’s shoes. The Guardians will have to make do as they try and keep their momentum going in a wide open AL Central race.

It’s hard to argue with the Pirates’ 8-2 start, especially when it was capped off by a pair of walk-off wins against the Orioles this weekend. Their youngsters are having fun, their veterans are producing, and things are looking up in Pittsburgh. And even if the good times come to an end in the near future, the exciting debut of Jared Jones is another reason for optimism. Along with Paul Skenes, Jones should give the Pirates two fantastic starters to anchor their rotation.

The Twins have gotten off to a rough start, one made all the worse by the injury to Royce Lewis on Opening Day. Their lineup just hasn’t been able to hit consistently — Lewis hit one of their three home runs on the season — with Carlos Correa essentially the only batter enjoying any kind of sustained success thus far. That’s a good sign for their star shortstop, but he’ll need help from the rest of the lineup soon.

Likewise, the Rays have struggled in the early going, though it’s their pitching staff that bears the brunt of the blame. The Rays have the third-worst team ERA in the majors thus far, though series against the Rangers and the Rockies in Colorado didn’t help in that regard.

The Mariners have already used a position player to pitch twice if that gives you any indication of how their season has started. It feels like they’re pretty lucky to be 4-6. As a team, they’re striking out at the second-highest rate in the majors, while their ISO is the second lowest. That’s a bad combination, and they’ll need their lineup to wake up soon if they want to keep pace in the AL West.

The Padres wound up losing a dramatic three-game set against the Giants over the weekend thanks to two bullpen meltdowns. Dylan Cease has been great in his first two starts for San Diego and Yu Darvish has been solid, but the rest of the pitching staff looks a little shaky. The lineup looks good, however, with plenty of contributions from both their stars and role players. Fernando Tatis Jr. seems to have put his injury issues behind him and looks like he’s back on the ascendant path he was on a few years ago.

The starting rotation with the second-best park- and league-adjusted ERA and FIP in baseball is none other than the Royals. (Let’s also pause here for a moment and recognize just how good the Red Sox pitching staff has been so far.) Cole Ragans looks like an ace, Brady Singer has spun two brilliant starts, and Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha, signed as free agents this offseason, have looked good as well. After losing their first two series by razor thin margins, the Royals swept the White Sox in four games over the weekend.

The Marlins finally got into the win column on Sunday, snapping an 0-9 skid to start the season. Of course, they’re more worried about the health of Eury Pérez; he’s slated to undergo Tommy John surgery and will be sidelined for the season. It’s a brutal blow to a pitching staff that was already missing Sandy Alcantara and two other starters, Edward Cabrera and Braxton Garrett. With reports that manager Skip Schumaker is now a lame duck after his contract option for 2025 was voided this offseason, it’s pretty apparent that this season is already considered lost by the brass in Miami.

Another shoe finally dropped in the ongoing relocation saga in Oakland. While there hasn’t been much progress towards constructing a new stadium in Las Vegas, the Athletics announced that this will be the final year they’ll call Oakland home. The team will be moving to Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, currently the home of the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, for the next three years (or possibly longer if their new stadium isn’t finished in time). It’s an ugly end to the franchise’s long and storied tenure in the East Bay.