FanGraphs Power Rankings: August 26–September 1

As we enter the final month of the season, there are a handful of clubs on the edge of the playoff picture whose play of late has made a few of the postseason races fairly exciting as the 2024 campaign winds down.

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.

Note: All stats, including team records, are updated through Sunday’s games. The information included in the comments are current as of Tuesday morning.

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The Dodgers finished August with a series win over the Orioles and started off September with a huge series win over the Diamondbacks, their closest division rival. Of course, all eyes are on Shohei Ohtani as he chases the mythical 50-50 season. He added three home runs and three stolen bases to his totals last week, then swiped another three bags on Monday.

As for the Diamondbacks, their 14-3 victory on Sunday was a nice palate cleanser after a pretty bad week that saw them win just one of their previous five games. Still, the Dodgers got the last laugh, taking the series with an 11-6 blowout on Monday. Those losses to Los Angeles probably put the Snakes’ long-shot hopes of winning the division to bed, but they’re still well ahead in the NL Wild Card race.

The Astros continue to pull away in the AL West standings after winning five in a row last week, including a four-game sweep of the Royals at home. Despite having had so much trouble with their pitching staff for a large portion of the season, their rotation has really stabilized over the last month or so. Yusei Kikuchi has been excellent, Hunter Brown has sorted out his issues, Justin Verlander is healthy again, and Spencer Arrighetti looks like he’s taken a big step forward. We should have never doubted Houston.

The Padres clambered back into a virtual tie with the Diamondbacks after a 4-3 week. Manny Machado was the focal point of their offense last week, collecting 10 hits and three home runs. He’s been much more productive recently after a pretty slow start to the season. With Fernando Tatis Jr. activated from the IL on Monday, Machado and the Friars are getting some critical reinforcements at just the right time.

The Brewers continue to chug along atop the NL Central. They won five of their seven games last week and currently own the largest division lead in baseball.

With their walk-off victory over the Braves on Sunday securing a series win, the Phillies all but locked up the NL East division title. They’re seven games up on Atlanta and have started playing much better the past few weeks after their midsummer slump. The top seed in the NL is still up for grabs and their schedule over the next few weeks looks pretty soft.

The Yankees lost a bit of ground to the Orioles last week after losing both of their series to the Nationals and Cardinals. They did activate Anthony Rizzo off the IL, and Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt shouldn’t be that far behind; those reinforcements should help during the stretch run. Surprisingly, they’ve opted to leave Jasson Domínguez in the minors for the time being.

The Guardians and Royals have been locked in a back-and-forth battle over the past week. Kansas City struck the first blow last week, winning three in a row in Cleveland — the team actually held a share of the AL Central lead on Tuesday — before losing the final game of the four-game series on Wednesday and then getting swept by the Astros over the weekend. The two AL Central rivals were back at it on Monday, with the Guardians emerging victorious; that pushed their lead over the Royals back up to 4.5 games. Cleveland’s lineup has recently benefited from some additional power in the form of Jhonkensy Noel, while still enjoying an MVP-caliber season from José Ramírez and a 100 RBI season from Josh Naylor.

The Twins haven’t been able to take advantage of the Guardians’ ongoing struggles and the Royals’ recent slide in a wide open AL Central race. They were swept by the Braves last week before winning their first series in two weeks over the weekend. And despite all their woes, the Royals remade their bench last week, claiming Tommy Pham and Robbie Grossman off waivers and trading for Yuli Gurriel.

With the NL East all but out of reach, the Braves must now turn their attention to holding off the Mets and Cubs in the NL Wild Card race. And they’ll have to do it without three of their best hitters in the lineup, though it’s possible Ozzie Albies will be back from his wrist injury before the season ends. Unlike last year, it’ll have to be Atlanta’s pitching staff that carries the team to the playoffs and beyond. Chris Sale is the favorite to win the NL Cy Young, Reynaldo López has shaken off a minor elbow injury, and Spencer Schwellenbach has been a revelation this summer.

The Mets and Cubs are dead set on making the NL Wild Card race exciting this month. New York has won five straight and is sitting just a half game behind the Braves, while Chicago just had a six-game win streak snapped on Monday and are 3.5 games back. The Cubs offense has exploded for an astounding number of runs during this hot streak; they scored double-digit runs three times last week and have scored 7.25 runs per game over their last 16 contests.

The Cubs aren’t the only Midwest team making a surprising run towards the playoffs: the Tigers have won 14 of their last 20 games and have launched themselves onto the fringe of the AL Wild Card chase, leapfrogging the Mariners and sitting just behind the Red Sox. Spencer Torkelson has looked a lot more dangerous at the plate since being recalled from Triple-A a few weeks ago, posting a 175 wRC+ in 15 games since making it back to the big leagues.

While Detroit rises up the standings, the Red Sox and Mariners are both limping towards the finish line. Boston lost a weekend series to those climbing Tigers and Seattle blew a series to the hapless Angels. Both teams lost in their games on Monday, too.

Even though they’re well behind in the NL Wild Card race, the Cardinals showed how dangerous they can be as a spoiler last week; they split a four-game series against the Padres and took two of three from the Yankees, scoring 14 runs and collecting 21 hits on Sunday. They’re also committed to giving Jordan Walker regular playing time in September, a move that could pay dividends in the future if he can figure things out at the big league level.

The Pirates made the dramatic decision to move Oneil Cruz from shortstop to center field last week. It’s an interesting gambit. Making the move now gives Pittsburgh a month to see how Cruz handles the position under the bright lights of regular season play instead of trying to make this transition during spring training.

Last week in this column, I wrote that the Reds had made some positive progress towards breaking out of their rebuilding cycle. That same day, Dan Szymborski authored an article breaking down Cincinnati’s future; he argued that the Reds are stuck in a weird limbo where they have plenty of young talent but little motivation to spend to really upgrade their roster in the places where they lack that young talent. Their recent cold streak hasn’t helped the vibes either. On August 14, they were a game under .500, but 12 losses over their following 18 games now has them seven games under .500 and essentially looking like they did at the end of last season.

If you’re looking for a dark horse team that could play spoiler in September, look no further than the Rockies. All but one of their opponents this month is either in the middle of a playoff race or on the fringe of postseason contention. Is Colorado good enough to actually have an effect on those races? We’ll see. It’s always tough to play the Rockies at home, and the Cubs, Diamondbacks, and Dodgers all have series lined up in Coors Field later this month.

The White Sox lost their 11th game in a row yesterday, giving them their third double-digit losing streak of the season.