FanGraphs Power Rankings: April 6–12

It seems like every team is dealing with serious injuries to start the season. Maybe that’s why there isn’t much daylight in the standings yet. Every team has won at least six games so far, with most clubs huddled right around .500.

Our power rankings use 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 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 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 — 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.

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To no one’s surprise, the Dodgers possess the best record in baseball through the first half-month of play. Their star-studded roster has been fantastic, but the player leading the National League in wRC+ and tied for the most WAR is none other than Andy Pages. He’s building off his breakout 2025 campaign by dramatically improving his contact quality, though his .526 BABIP is bound to come back down to Earth at some point.

Despite all of the injuries that decimated the Braves’ roster this spring, they’ve looked like one of the better teams in the league so far. Atlanta won both of its series last week, is tied for the second-best record in the NL, and has the best run differential in baseball. The biggest surprise has been the pitching staff. Even after losing three of their top six starters to injuries, the rotation has the lowest ERA in the NL and the bullpen has been one of the best in baseball. After a bit of a slow start, Ronald Acuña Jr. blasted his first home run of the season on Friday and has collected multiple hits in four of his last seven games. He’s leading an offense that’s second in the NL in runs scored.

The reason the Diamondbacks sit so high in these rankings is because they’ve played the toughest schedule in baseball by a pretty wide margin. But despite facing the Dodgers, Tigers, Braves, Mets, and Phillies to start the season, they boast a solid 9-7 record. Their run differential sits at -6, but a 17-2 blowout back on April 2 is weighing heavily on their total runs allowed; in their 15 other games, they’ve allowed just 3.5 runs per game.

Mason Miller has been utterly dominant to start this season. He’s struck out 19 of the 24 batters he’s faced, and is working on a 28.2 scoreless inning streak dating back to August 6 of last year. He’s a big reason why the Padres are tied for the second-best record in the NL. San Diego ran its win streak up to five games after sweeping the Rockies at home over the weekend. That series featured a Xander Bogaerts walk-off grand slam in the 12th inning on Thursday, followed by a Gavin Sheets three-run walk-off home run on Friday. If you’re watching the Friars, you’d better stay tuned until the final out because it’s a sure bet to be exciting one way or another.

The Mets’ early-season losing streak reached five games after they were swept by the Athletics over the weekend. With Juan Soto on the IL and Francisco Lindor and Bo Bichette off to slow starts, the offense has sputtered a bit. The Mets were shutout twice and scored just 13 runs in their other four games last week; the team has scored just 27 runs in the eight games since their superstar outfielder hit the IL. The schedule isn’t doing the club any favors, either. They head out on a road trip this week, with series against the Dodgers and Cubs on deck. Thankfully, Soto’s calf injury isn’t serious, and he should be back sometime next week.

This absolutely massive tier includes more than a third of the teams in the majors. The entire American League is huddled in this morass of clubs sitting right around .500; there just really isn’t much separating the teams in the Junior Circuit right now. The Twins (!) and Guardians are currently tied for the best record in the AL at 9-7, while the Astros (!) and White Sox are tied for the worst record at 6-10.

The Athletics completed a very impressive road trip against the two New York teams, winning their series against the Yankees and sweeping the Mets. Most shockingly, the A’s pitching staff tossed three shutouts last week and held those two high-powered offenses to just 13 total runs across six games. And the offense that had struggled to start the season is slowly starting to come around. Nick Kurtz hit his first home run of the season on Sunday, and Jeff McNeil earned a bit of revenge against his former team by collecting six hits over the weekend.

The Twins have gotten off to a solid start, much better than was expected given the tremendous turnover on the roster and in the front office during the last calendar year. Minnesota was 3-6 through the first three series of the year, but the team got back on track with a huge four-game sweep of the Tigers, followed by a series win against the Blue Jays last week. Taj Bradley finally looks like he’s turning his tremendous raw talent into positive on-field results; he’s allowed just three total runs through four starts, while running a 31.2% strikeout rate. Unfortunately, Royce Lewis was placed on the IL on Sunday with a sprained knee, though the team should be quite familiar with navigating his absence by now.

Things went from bad to worse for the Cubs last week. A day after placing Cade Horton on the IL with an elbow injury, Matthew Boyd joined him with a strained bicep. Boyd’s injury sounds pretty minor at least, but Horton is out for the season with a torn UCL. A few days after those two starters hit the IL, Hunter Harvey and Phil Maton joined them, significantly thinning out the team’s bullpen. Chicago managed to salvage a win on Sunday in a walk-off victory against the Pirates, but the team’s upcoming schedule looks pretty unforgiving; the Cubs will face the Phillies, Mets, the Phillies again, Dodgers, and Padres to finish out the month of April.

After starting out 2-8, the Red Sox have rattled off four wins over their last five games to climb back to a more respectable 6-9. The rotation has been a bit hot and cold, with Garrett Crochet, Sonny Gray, and Connelly Early out to strong starts, while Ranger Suarez and Brayan Bello have really struggled. At least Suarez turned in a solid start against the Cardinals on Saturday, holding them scoreless over six innings. The spark that helped the lineup turn things around came from Willson Contreras; he collected 11 hits and nine RBIs last week.

The World Series hangover is lingering for far too long in Toronto. After sweeping the A’s in their first series of the season, the Blue Jays have won just three times in their last 12 games. Injuries have been a huge issue on both sides of the ball. Cody Ponce joined Trey Yesavage, Shane Bieber, and José Berríos on the IL after throwing just 2.1 innings in his return to MLB from the KBO; he’s out for the season after undergoing knee surgery to repair a torn ACL. Meanwhile, Alejandro Kirk is out for a couple of months with a fractured thumb, George Springer was just placed on the IL on Sunday with a fractured toe, and Addison Barger sprained his ankle last week. All of those absences go a long way towards explaining why the team is 13th in the AL in runs scored and 14th in runs allowed.

The Astros lost all six of their games last week, first getting swept by the Rockies in Colorado and then losing the first three games of a wraparound four-game set in Seattle. Their red hot offense cooled off a bit — the team scored just a single run in three of those losses last week including twice in Coors Field — but the big reason they’re suddenly struggling is because the pitching staff has fallen apart. Hunter Brown and Cristian Javier were placed on the IL last week with shoulder injuries, and on Monday, Tatsuya Imai joined them on the shelf with what the team is describing as “arm fatigue.” Shortstop Jeremy Peña also hit the IL on Monday with a minor hamstring strain. With all those injuries crushing the starting rotation, the bullpen has been stretched dangerously thin; the team has the worst ERA in baseball by a pretty wide margin. It’s not all doom and gloom: Yordan Alvarez has quickly started to make up for his largely lost 2025 season, blasting six home runs, which is tied for the AL lead.

The Cardinals’ 8-7 record is a nice surprise, but the most encouraging development in St. Louis so far this year is Jordan Walker’s hot start to the season. He blasted his league-leading seventh home run on Sunday and is currently slashing .327/.393/.745 (a 217 wRC+). If he’s truly turned a corner, the Cards might have a middle-of-the-order bat to build around. There’s still plenty of work to be done to get the organization in shape, but the team might not be too far off from fielding a competitive roster again.

Would you believe it if I told you the Nationals have scored the fourth-most runs in baseball so far? James Wood is really heating up. He’s collected a hit in seven straight games, including four home runs and four multi-hit efforts. Of course, the Nats have also allowed the second-most runs in baseball, which is why their run differential is just +1. The team did just complete an impressive three-game sweep of the Brewers over the weekend, so they’re still finding ways to win despite their disaster of a pitching staff, but this isn’t likely to cut it in a competitive NL East.