FanGraphs Power Rankings: August 18–24

If you’re looking for a team to make a surprise run to the playoffs, the final month of the season likely won’t be that exciting; there are just three teams on the fringe of the postseason picture, and none of them have playoff odds higher than 20%. But with 12 teams jockeying for their playoff position and a handful of division races left to be decided, there’s still potential for a good bit of intrigue between now and October.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings 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%). 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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After a scorching hot streak to start the month, the Brewers finally hit a speed bump last week, losing both of their series and a bit of their buffer ahead of the Cubs in the NL Central. Milwaukee entered the week eight games up on Chicago, but ended the week just five games ahead. Still, that gap should be enough to hold off the surging Cubs; our playoff odds give the Brew Crew an 83.4% chance of holding onto that lead in the division.

Winning three of five against the Brewers last week showed the Cubs that they could hang with Milwaukee in a potential playoff series. As important as that divisional clash was, this week will hopefully be looked back on as the week Kyle Tucker got right. Tucker had been mired in a prolonged slump, slashing just .190/.346/.250 since the All-Star break. Those struggles seem to have been at least partially the result of a hairline fracture in his right hand that he suffered in early June. He had been played through the pain, with the injury only revealed last week after he was benched for a few days in the middle of that big series against Milwaukee. Tucker went hitless upon his return to the lineup on Thursday, but he started off the Cubs’ series in Anaheim on Friday with a home run in his first plate appearance and then blasted two more homers on Saturday.

The Phillies put together as complete a series sweep of the Mariners as you could possibly imagine. They collected 20 or more hits in two of the three games, and their 48 total hits in the series was the sixth most in a three-game series in franchise history. The pitching might have been even better. Each of their starters had double-digit strikeout totals, and the pitching staff’s 46 total Ks was the most in modern franchise history. Overshadowing that impressive performance, however, is the news that Zack Wheeler has been diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, which will keep him off the mound for 6–8 months. The loss of Wheeler has profound implications for the team’s October plans, not to mention the ace’s career.

Shane Bieber made his first start since last April, and his first as a member of the Blue Jays, on Friday. It was a complete success: He allowed just a single run in six innings, while allowing just two hits and striking out nine. If this debut is a sign of things to come, Toronto will have gained some extremely valuable reinforcements for its pitching staff ahead of the stretch run.

The Padres bounced back from their sweep in Los Angeles two weekends ago with a pair of series wins last week, including a bit of revenge against the Dodgers. The division rivals enter this week tied in the standings, with the season series between them now wrapped up; the Dodgers hold the tiebreaker should it come to that. Luckily for the Friars, their schedule is the easiest in baseball over the last month of the season; they’ll play just three playoff teams through the end of the season, and have 10 games against the Rockies and White Sox in September.

The Tigers regained the best record in the American League after sweeping the Astros and taking two of three from the Royals last week. In the series against Houston, Detroit held the top team in the AL West to two total runs across the three games. The Tigers came pretty close to sweeping the Royals too, but wound up losing Sunday’s game even after erasing an early 6-1 deficit. Detroit will get another shot at burying Kansas City’s slim playoff hopes this weekend.

The Red Sox were a win away from truly embarrassing the Yankees with a four-game sweep in New York last weekend. After a loss on Sunday night, however, they’ll have to be satisfied with a dominant series win. That loss also snapped the eight-game win streak that the Red Sox were riding against their hated rivals. After he was dumped by the Nationals, the Red Sox quickly signed Nathaniel Lowe to fill their first base hole, and he made a strong impression right off the bat; he blasted a game-tying ninth-inning home run in his second game with Boston and collected seven hits last week.

Prior to losing their weekend series to the Padres, the Dodgers struggled through a rough series in Colorado that wound up being a four-game split. While the series loss to San Diego stings, Los Angeles also has a pretty soft schedule to finish the season, with just two series against playoff teams (the Phillies and Mariners) in September.

After scoring just twice in three games against the Tigers, the Astros went out and dropped 28 runs on the Orioles in four games to take their weekend series. Still, prior to that series in Baltimore, Houston had been shutout in four of its previous six games. Since the All-Star break, the Astros have a 91 wRC+ as a team, 27th in the majors during that span. That makes the impending return of Yordan Alvarez on Tuesday an even bigger deal than it already was.

Cal Raleigh checked off a pair of historic milestones on Sunday. He blasted two home runs — his 48th and 49th of the season — to pass Salvador Perez for the most home runs in a single season by a primary catcher. The pair of dingers also set the major league record for multi-home run games by a switch-hitter in a single season. The offensive onslaught was part of an 11-3 blowout of the A’s, securing a much-needed series win for the Mariners. Prior to the weekend’s series, the M’s had limped through a long East Coast road trip during which they went 2-7, ending with that ugly sweep in Philadelphia. They’ve been pretty lucky that the Astros have been struggling at the same time, leaving the gap in the division race at just two games.

After that ugly series against the Red Sox, the Yankees will get a bit of a reprieve this week with series against the Nationals and White Sox. That gives them six games to get right before they’re thrown back into the fire with series against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers, and Red Sox to start September.

The Mets sputtered through another uneven week, going 3-3 against the Nationals and Braves. They’ve got an absolutely massive series against the Phillies on-deck this week, though the seven-game deficit they’re facing in the NL East might be too big to overcome even with a great series against Philadelphia; our playoff odds have them with just an 8.9% chance of winning the division. Indeed, at this point, New York should really be paying attention to the Reds, who are just 1.5 games back in the Wild Card race.

The Royals stuck around on the fringes of the AL Wild Card race last week, with three wins in four games against the Rangers, though they couldn’t keep up with the red hot Tigers over the weekend, escaping Detroit with just a single win. Vinnie Pasquantino blasted home runs in all four games against the Rangers and added two more against the Tigers, while Bobby Witt Jr. collected 12 hits last week. Those two — along with Maikel Garcia — will need to continue carrying the offense if Kansas City wants to sneak into the playoffs.

The Reds matched the Mets last week with a 3-3 record against the Angels and Diamondbacks. They’ve got a tough series against the Dodgers to start this week, which should provide a good measuring stick for them.

As for the Rangers, they climbed back to .500 with a sweep of the Guardians this past weekend, erasing the damage of their series loss to the Royals earlier in the week. It was their first series win since taking two of three from the Yankees at the start of the month. Unfortunately, they’ll have to chase down the Royals and Mariners without Marcus Semien manning second base. A left foot fracture sent the iron man to the IL for the first time since 2017; he’ll miss the rest of the season.

The Orioles called up Samuel Basallo a week ago and then proceeded to sign him to an eight-year extension a few days later. Adley Rutschman, Baltimore’s incumbent catcher, is currently sidelined with an oblique strain, which means they don’t have to figure out how to play both Basallo and Rutschman at the moment. It’s not necessarily a position battle, as Basallo has seen time at first base in the minors and one of the two catchers could always DH. Besides, graduating all this young talent is a good thing; a crowded depth chart shouldn’t stand in the way.

It’s been a weird year in Cleveland. The Guardians have been in the playoff picture for nearly the entire season thanks to a strong start, but losing Emmanuel Clase and Luis L. Ortiz to non-disciplinary paid leave as part of a gambling investigation dealt a significant blow to the pitching staff, and the team traded Bieber at the deadline. Despite these hurdles, they had one of the best records in baseball since the All-Star break and were still lurking on the fringe of the AL Wild Card race. Unfortunately, the Guards lost their series against the Diamondbacks early last week and then were swept by the Rangers over the weekend. Those five losses pushed Cleveland’s record back under .500 and probably dashed any hopes of a surprise playoff run.

Without the pressure of a potential Wild Card push, the Marlins have entered the part of their season where they give fringe players a long look in the big leagues to determine if they’re good enough to stick next year. Right now, Jakob Marsee and Janson Junk are two of the guys standing out. The center fielder has posted a .346/.416/.705 slash line (a 201 wRC+) since being called up on August 1, while the right-handed starter has parlayed a stint at Driveline into a minuscule 2.8% walk rate and a 3.06 FIP. Junk exited his start on Saturday with forearm tightness, though he sounded optimistic after the game; he’ll undergo further tests.

Thanks to a home run, a double, and a walk on Friday, Tommy Pham raised his season wRC+ over 100, becoming the only Pirate with a batting line above league average this year. Despite their offensive woes, the Pirates actually had a pretty good week last week; they won their series against the Blue Jays and then swept the Rockies. More importantly, Bubba Chandler finally got called up to the big leagues and delivered four stellar innings in relief on Friday.

The Angels aren’t a worst-case scenario like the other teams in this tier; they didn’t enter the season with high expectations or recent success fueling lofty projections. No, they’re in this tier because they once again acted like buyers at the trade deadline, and once again, they fell out of the playoff picture very quickly afterward. They were three games under .500 on August 1 and have gone 8-13 this month. Jo Adell’s continued excellence has been one of the few bright spots; he hit three home runs last week to bring his total for the month to eight, and his next home run will be his 30th on the season. Unfortunately, Mike Trout seems to have lost all of his power. His batted ball peripherals still look solid, but his slugging percentage is the lowest it’s been since his initial cameo back in 2011.

If you’re the White Sox, you’re looking for any glimmer of excitement amidst this dismal season. Well, Colson Montgomery, who debuted on July 4, blasted a pair of home runs last weekend, bringing his total up to 12. Luis Robert Jr. also had a couple of home runs last week, which is encouraging to see. It’s far too early to start thinking about the end of this rebuilding cycle, but Montgomery certainly looks like one of the building blocks right now.