FanGraphs Power Rankings: August 5–18

If it’s parity you’re looking for, consider this: 10 of the top 11 teams in these rankings are separated by just 4.5 games in the major league standings, and the odd team out has been the hottest ballclub in baseball over the last two weeks. While no team is currently on pace to win 100 games, the bunching in the standings should make for some very exciting playoff races 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 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%). 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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Usually, I put few teams into a top “The Best of the Best” tier and then follow that up with another two tiers: “On the Cusp of Greatness” and “Solid Contenders.” This time, however, I decided to lump together the NL contenders into one tier and the AL ones into another because, as I mentioned at the top, there isn’t much separation between any of the best 11 clubs.

The Padres and Diamondbacks both lost their weekend series, derailing what had been a dramatic ascent up the standings for each team. This weekend against the Rockies was San Diego’s first series loss since before the All-Star break, and during that span, the Padres cut the Dodgers’ NL West lead to just three games. Arizona’s climb from potential deadline seller to sure-fire contender has been even more impressive. Before getting swept by the Rays over the weekend, the D-backs hadn’t lost a series since June 27. At that time, they had a losing record and were 11.5 games out in the NL West; now, after going 30-14 since then, they enter this week just four games out of first place. They also hold the second NL Wild Card spot, with a 4.5-game lead over the Mets, the first team out. Led by Ketel Marte, a finally healthy Corbin Carroll, a resurgent Eugenio Suárez, and the surprising Jake McCarthy, the Snakes have had the best offense in baseball during the second half of the season.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers have been rather resilient to cling to their division lead despite all the injuries they’ve suffered. The latest man to go down was ace Tyler Glasnow, who was sidelined with an elbow injury last week. Thankfully, their lineup should receive some reinforcements this week as Tommy Edman and Max Muncy are both expected to be activated from the IL within the next couple of days.

Last week, Christian Yelich announced that he would undergo season-ending back surgery, a blow to the Brewers’ postseason outlook. After Milwaukee swept the Guardians over the weekend to move 11 games ahead of the Cardinals in the division, getting to the postseason seems all but assured, but without Yelich in the lineup, the Brewers could wind up with the same problem that’s plagued them in their other recent playoff appearances: a critical lack of offense. Thankfully, Jackson Chourio has stepped up to fill the gap with a 149 wRC+ in August.

Technically, the Phillies still have the best record in baseball, but they’re riding on the coattails of their hot start to the season. They’ve gone 8-8 in August, which is slightly better than their ugly 10-14 record in July. They might just be turning things around at the right time, though; they went 4-2 last week and have seven games against the Braves sandwiched around series with the Royals and Astros over the next two weeks.

Two weeks ago, the Astros were a game behind the Mariners in the AL West and had been hovering right around .500 since the All-Star break. Well, since then, they’ve caught fire, winning 10 of their last 11 games, which included an eight-game winning streak. Entering this week, Houston holds a four-game lead over Seattle in the division, an astonishing turn of events in such a short amount of time.

Since July 28, the Guardians have won five in a row, lost seven in a row, won another five in a row, and were finally swept in three games over the weekend. That kind of streakiness has allowed the Twins and Royals to close the gap in the AL Central; Minnesota enters this week just two games back in the division, while Kansas City trails Cleveland by three games. At 17-10, the Royals are tied with the Astros for the best record in the AL since the All-Star break, but the Twins, at 16-12, are right there, too. After losing righty Joe Ryan to a shoulder injury earlier this month, Minnesota has cobbled together a starting rotation by calling up two rookies, David Festa and Zebby Matthews, who both have pitched well so far. As for Kansas City, Bobby Witt Jr. continues to make a compelling case as Aaron Judge’s biggest rival for the AL MVP award. The young shortstop now leads the majors with 8.8 WAR to go along with his best-in-baseball .350 batting average.

Over the last three weeks, the Yankees and Orioles have been separated in the standings by no more than one game. New York finally seems to have come out of its six-week funk leading into the week of the trade deadline; since then, the Yankees are 11-7, the third-best record in the AL during that span, while the Orioles, who also struggled in late June and July, are 11-9 across that same three-week window. Both teams are also dealing with recent injuries to key players; a sprained elbow sidelined Jazz Chisholm Jr. last week, and Baltimore has had to make do without Jordan Westburg and Grayson Rodriguez. All of this is to say things are incredibly tight, and it seems like this division race won’t truly be decided until these two teams meet again during the final week of the regular season.

The Braves are barely clinging to the final NL Wild Card spot, as they managed to put a little space between them and the Mets last week with a pair of series wins against the Giants and Angels. Atlanta is getting a little healthier too; Michael Harris II was activated from the IL last week and Reynaldo López should follow this week. Meanwhile, New York produced a series win against the Marlins over the weekend, getting things back on track after a brutal 10-day, four-city roadtrip during which they went 4-6.

The Red Sox have been just a half-game better than the Mariners since the All-Star break (uncomplimentary) and are in danger of dropping entirely out of the AL playoff picture. They had a decent week against the Rangers and Orioles last week, going 4-3 to help them keep pace with the surging Royals and Twins. Unfortunately, Boston will run into the Astros and Diamondbacks this week, two of the hottest teams in baseball.

After sweeping the Mets a couple of weekends ago, holding them to just a single run across three games, the Mariners fell flat on their faces with a five-game losing streak last week that finally ended on Sunday. They scored 10 runs in that victory, which was more than their combined run total across those five losses. Their playoff odds are quickly dwindling, and even though they have a pretty soft schedule to finish out the season, it won’t matter all that much if they can’t figure out a way to score runs more consistently.

The Giants scrambled back to .500 after a pretty ugly week; they were nearly swept in four games by the Braves and split a short two-game set against the A’s. They’ve still got an outside chance at making a miracle run at that final Wild Card spot — though their results against Atlanta certainly didn’t help. If San Francisco makes things interesting, it’ll be on the backs of Logan Webb and Blake Snell, who looks like he’s finally rounded into form just in time for the stretch run.

A sweep by the Guardians last week put a damper on the Cubs’ hot streak that had pushed them back into the fringes of the NL playoff picture. They took two of three from the Blue Jays over the weekend, and they won’t face a team with a record over .500 until September 6. Stranger things have happened.

It’s too late now, but Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has been on an absolute tear during the second half of the season; he’s posted an incredible 278 wRC+ since the All-Star break and is nearly singlehandedly carrying the Blue Jays offense.

It was a bad week for the three NL Central teams in this tier. The Pirates managed to right the ship with a series win against the Mariners last weekend, but the 10-game losing streak that preceded it essentially sunk whatever hope they had to make a surprise playoff run this year. The Cardinals have also fallen down the standings nearly as quickly as Pittsburgh; they’re two games under .500 now and essentially out of the playoff picture. Things were looking up for the Reds after they swept St. Louis early last week, but all that work was undone after they were swept by the Royals over the weekend. Cincinnati scored just three times in three games against Kansas City.

The Athletics aren’t the pushovers you’d expect from a team with such an uncertain future. They’ve lost only one series during the second half, though just three of their opponents have had records over .500. Still, they’re playing exciting baseball, giving the few fans who are still showing up to games something to cheer about during the dog days of the team’s final summer in Oakland.

If you can believe it, the Rangers entered this month just 4.5 games out in the AL West with an outside shot at overtaking both the Astros and Mariners. They’ve won just five times in August and are now 11 games back and completely out of the playoff picture. Their collapse probably shouldn’t be all that surprising considering the risk they were taking entering the season with more than half of their starting rotation on the long-term IL. If it’s any consolation, Jacob deGrom should be starting a rehab assignment this week.

The Marlins were one of the most active teams at the trade deadline, shipping out 10 players and bringing in a ton of youngsters to see which ones can stick in the majors and earn a spot on the 2025 roster. One guy who has done more than his part is Jake Burger; after a pretty slow start to the season, he’s really come on strong during the second half and has blasted nine home runs in August already.

The White Sox wound up tying the American League record with 21 straight losses before winning for the first time in nearly a calendar month. That epic losing streak put them back on track to make history as one of the worst teams ever assembled. Somehow, they managed to win a game apiece against the Yankees and Astros last week.