FanGraphs Power Rankings: August 19–25

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.

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.

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The Diamondbacks claimed the top spot in these rankings with a perfect week, sweeping the Marlins and the Red Sox to wrap up their long East Coast road trip. Still, they only gained a single game in the standings because the Dodgers went 5-1 to maintain their grip on the very tightly contested NL West. Even without down-ballot MVP candidate Ketel Marte driving the offense — he reaggravated an ankle sprain on Monday — the Snakes still managed to score over seven runs per game last week.

As if you needed any reminders, Shohei Ohtani continues to show us why he should already be considered one of the greatest players of all time. Last week, he became the first player in major league history to reach the 40-40 mark in August, and a 50-50 season — something no one has ever accomplished — isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

The Padres weren’t able to keep up with their division rivals, going 4-3 after splitting their weekend series with the Mets thanks to some more late-game heroics from Jackson Merrill. They also activated Yu Darvish off the restricted list; he’s currently ramping up to rejoin the club sometime in mid-September.

The Orioles and Astros battled to a standstill over the weekend, splitting a highly entertaining four-game series in Baltimore. But neither team won their series earlier in the week, and those stumbles have given the Yankees an opportunity to build their lead in the AL East (they’ve opened up a 1.5 game gap) while providing the Mariners a lifeline in the AL West.

For all the headlines that Ohtani is creating, Aaron Judge’s overall offensive performance is even more impressive. He blasted seven home runs last week and is on pace to best his record-breaking 2022 campaign. The Yankees also got Jazz Chisholm Jr. back from an elbow injury earlier than expected.

After their loss to the Rangers on Friday — their sixth loss in seven games — the Guardians saw their AL Central lead over the Royals slip to just one game. Thankfully, a pair of wins against Texas combined with a series loss by Kansas City has that lead back up to three games. The two division rivals will face off seven times over the next 10 days, beginning with a huge four-game set in Cleveland this week. These next two weeks should go a long way towards determining the shape of the AL Central race over the final month of the season. And don’t count out Minnesota. While the Guardians and Royals beat each other up, the Twins could sneak ahead with a nicely timed hot streak, though they didn’t exactly help their cause last week, losing series to the Padres and Cardinals.

The Braves won the first round of seven head-to-head games against the Phillies in a two-week stretch. Unfortunately, they lost Austin Riley to a broken wrist, another injury in a season filled with extremely bad injury luck. Meanwhile, the Phils went almost an entire week without hitting a home run before scoring 11 runs in each of their weekend games. The four-game series between the two teams this weekend in Philly has the potential to reshape the NL East race as the regular season reaches its climax.

All three of the teams in this tier are outside the postseason picture looking in, but the playoff odds give them a sliver of hope.

The Mets’ wild week last week was pretty indicative of their roller coaster season so far. They managed to win a series against the Orioles with a pair of dramatic walk-off wins, then split a four-game set with the Padres, losing the final game of the series on a walk-off home run. And while he’s been overshadowed by Ohtani’s brilliance in the NL, Francisco Lindor is putting up MVP numbers again.

It was one step forward, two steps back for the Red Sox last week. They managed a series win over the Astros to start the week but were then swept by the Diamondbacks over the weekend. Their Wild Card hopes are hanging on by a thread right now.

After a dismal road trip that saw them go 1-8, the Mariners made the dramatic decision to fire manager Scott Servais and hitting coach Jarret DeHart on Thursday. In their place, franchise legends Dan Wilson and Edgar Martinez will look to turn things around. The M’s responded by winning their weekend series against the Giants. Their goal is to stay within shouting distance of the Astros until the final week of the season, when these two AL West rivals match up for a three-game series in Houston. With a historically good rotation leading the way, it’s still too early to count out Seattle.

The Rays are actually only a half game behind the Mariners in the AL standings, but their path to the postseason has to run through a Wild Card spot, so they’ve been out of the playoff picture for a while now. That hasn’t stopped them from playing some competitive and entertaining baseball as a spoiler. They also called up their top prospect, Junior Caminero, a few weeks ago; he hit his first two home runs of the season over the weekend.

The Cubs and Cardinals just won’t let go of their long-shot Wild Card dreams; both teams won both of their series last week, with St. Louis dispatching the Brewers and Twins. It’s all a little too late for either ball club, and the Cards lost Willson Contreras to a broken finger over the weekend too. The same could be said for the Giants, who are sitting right at .500. Their odds could be slightly improved by the return of Camilo Doval from his brief banishment to the minor leagues; he looked pretty good in his return to the majors over the weekend.

While a surprise playoff run isn’t in the cards for the Pirates or Reds this year, things are still looking up for both franchises, as they’ve each made significant strides toward breaking out of their respective rebuilding cycles this year. These two division rivals met in a four-game series last weekend, with the Pirates emerging victorious in three of the games. That feels like a pretty good indicator of where these two clubs stand relative to each other, and is also a pretty significant change in position from the beginning of the season.

The Nationals announced their intention to call up Dylan Crews to make his debut on Monday. He’ll join James Wood in the majors for the final month of the season, giving us a preview of what could be a very impressive young lineup moving forward. For his part, Wood has quickly adjusted to big league pitching, posting a 182 wRC+ in August after a slow-ish start to his career.

With Mike Trout sidelined for the rest of the year, there are very few reasons to watch the Angels right now. They’ve won just three times over their last 16 games, one fewer win than the White Sox over that same period. Instead of calling up one of their young starting pitchers toiling away in Triple-A, they’ve opted to give major league innings to Johnny Cueto. Last week, general manager Perry Minasian was given a two-year extension to continue to guide the organization through this rebuild.

The White Sox lost their 100th game of the season on Sunday. The calendar still reads August. Yikes.