FanGraphs Power Rankings: 2024 Playoff Edition

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.

Since we’ve reached the postseason, I’ve removed the playoff odds weighting to our raw Elo calculations and presented the teams in the tiers below based on our odds of them winning the World Series as of 11 PM last night. Updated playoff odds can be found here.

The Phillies have the best odds to win the World Series and with good reason. Their roster is filled with playoff-tested veterans, and there is an astonishing amount of continuity from their previous two trips through the postseason, which saw them lose in the World Series in 2022 and in the NLCS last year. Their lineup scored the third-most runs in the NL, anchored by the likes of Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, and Bryce Harper, and their pitching staff is among the deepest in the field. The Phillies have been here before and they’re banking on that quality to carry them to their first World Series title since 2008.

It was a bit of a winding road, and they’re not the juggernaut they were projected to be on Opening Day, but the Dodgers have ended up right where we expected, finishing with the best record in baseball and securing home field advantage throughout the playoffs. But that was the easy part; now comes the hard part. For all their regular season success over the last 11 years, Los Angeles has won just a single World Series championship in that stretch. They’ve got the terrifying trio of Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman leading their offense, but their starting rotation is a huge question mark, as injuries have taken their toll on the staff. Thankfully, their bullpen, a somewhat shaky unit for most of the season, seems to have been stabilized by the acquisition of Michael Kopech.

After such a disappointing 2023 season, the Yankees traded for Juan Soto last winter, forming a formidable one-two punch with Aaron Judge. Those two sluggers created a historic amount of offense this year and essentially carried the lineup for large portions of the season, though the addition of Jazz Chisholm Jr. has provided a spark when Judge and Soto aren’t at their best. There are a lot more concerns about the Yankees’ pitching staff, especially after Nestor Cortes was sidelined with an elbow injury during the final week of the season. The emergence of Luis Gil and the breakout of Clarke Schmidt gives the Yankees four solid starters, but their bullpen is a mess and will need to be sorted out on the fly as they make their way through the postseason.

The Astros might have their sights set on an eighth-straight ALCS appearance, but they’ll have to navigate an extra round of the playoffs to get there — despite winning the AL West for the seventh time in eight years, their slow start to the season cost them a first-round bye. The ‘Stros got good news this morning, though, as Yordan Alvarez, who injured his knee sliding into second base on September 22 and has been sidelined since, is in the Game 1 lineup. Beyond Alvarez, their roster is full of quality veterans, with Kyle Tucker the standout despite missing more than two months of the season with a fractured shin. And even though they weathered a ton of injuries to their pitching staff, Framber Valdez’s resurgent second half, coupled with the deadline addition of Yusei Kikuchi and the post-April breakout of Hunter Brown, gives them one of the best run-prevention units in the AL field.

The Padres’ aggressive insistence on improving their roster has turned San Diego into one of the most balanced teams in the majors. Trade acquisitions Dylan Cease and Michael King have led the rotation, and the bullpen received a ton of reinforcements midseason. Meanwhile, April addition Luis Arraez exemplifies the contact-oriented approach of the lineup — the Friars had the lowest strikeout rate in the majors this year — which could be a key factor in the postseason against the best pitchers in the game. Oh, and let’s not forget the incredible rookie campaign of Jackson Merrill, who’d be the odds-on favorite to win the NL Rookie of the Year award in a season where Paul Skenes hadn’t made his debut.

Despite all of their injury woes and the wild doubleheader they had to navigate on Monday, the Braves have a solid 7.5% of winning the World Series. On paper, this team looks solid, with a strong pitching staff leading the way. But they’re entering the playoffs without Chris Sale, who has been sidelined by a back issue that flared up a couple weeks ago and isn’t expected to pitch in the Wild Card Series, and their lineup sorely misses the dynamic production of Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley. Plus, they have to be exhausted after yesterday. They just might not have enough juice left in the tank to make a deep playoff run.

The Guardians’ blueprint for success is clear: storm out to an early lead, then hand things off to a bullpen full of nasty setup men and Emmanuel Clase, who just had one of the best reliever seasons ever. That approach has been necessitated by a young rotation that hasn’t exactly been the model of consistency this year, and a lineup that has been similarly up and down, though they’ve had a knack for finding timely hits when they’ve needed them most; having José Ramírez sure helps. Whether that will be enough remains to be seen.

The stretch run was rough for the Orioles. They were never on the verge of collapsing entirely thanks to their hot start to the season, but they’re definitely falling backwards into the playoffs rather than surging into October. The return of Jordan Westburg and Ryan Mountcastle should help lengthen their lineup, and it certainly seems like Corbin Burnes figured out whatever was plaguing his cutter in August. The talent on this roster is up there with any of the other teams in the AL, but they really need to come together and find some consistency if they want to make a deep postseason run.

It may be a little surprising to see a 93-win team with such low odds to win the World Series, but I think our projections are underrating the Brewers somewhat. Like the Guardians, they’re not built like a traditional playoff contender; they lean heavily on a deep bullpen and their biggest star, Christian Yelich, was sidelined for the year with back surgery a month ago. Still, young Jackson Chourio has stepped up to fill the Yelich-sized gap in the lineup, and they’ve got solid contributors around the diamond who add up to more than the sum of their parts. The Brewer have now made the playoffs six of the last seven seasons, but they’ve only advanced past the Divisional round once. Maybe this is the year they achieve October success.

After riding the high of their unbelievable comeback victory on Monday, the Mets have to travel back to Milwaukee, where they played last weekend, for the Wild Card Series. Like the Braves, this team has to be exhausted. Their bullpen has been taxed to the extreme over the last few days, and Francisco Lindor’s injured back can’t be enjoying all this travel. Still, with a combination of veterans and ascendant youngsters powering their lineup and a sneaky good one-two punch atop their rotation, these Mets shouldn’t be overlooked.

Led by MVP-candidate Bobby Witt Jr. and a very good starting rotation, the Royals limped to the finish line in September, but they were legitimate contenders throughout the summer. They’ll need to rely heavily on their pitching because after Witt, their lineup just isn’t all that formidable, though Vinnie Pasquantino’s return from a broken right thumb should help bolster the offense somewhat.

The Royals improved by 30 wins over last year’s 106-loss season, but somehow they aren’t the most surprising playoff team this October. Instead, that distinction belongs to the Tigers, whose improbable run through August and September secured a postseason berth during the final week of the season (though this is my opportunity to remind you that September performance does not guarantee October success). The Tigers are an interesting underdog because of their unorthodox pitching staff. Behind Cy Young-favorite Tarik Skubal, they’ve got a cavalcade of bulk pitchers and interchangeable high-leverage relievers; since July 1, they’ve been the second-best run prevention unit in the majors, allowing just 3.58 runs per game. The Tigers’ young roster is getting their first taste of postseason play — perhaps A.J. Hinch’s experience on the game’s biggest stage will be enough to continue their Cinderella season.