FanGraphs Power Rankings: July 1–7

These next few weeks should go a long way towards separating the wheat from the chaff in the postseason race. For the teams on the fringe of the playoff picture, a timely hot streak could convince them to upgrade at the trade deadline, while a cold snap could push them into seller mode. With the All-Star break looming, it’s time for some serious introspection as teams gear up for the stretch run.

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 Orioles solidified their grip on the AL East lead by winning series against the Mariners and A’s last week. And while a 19-8 loss on Saturday won’t do their actual run differential any favors, their BaseRuns run differential is the best in the American League by a pretty wide margin. They’ll have an opportunity to put some serious distance between themselves and the Yankees in a huge three-game series this weekend.

The Guardians bounced back after their series loss to the Royals a couple of weekends ago with a pair of series wins against the White Sox and Giants last week. They’re outperforming their BaseRuns record by the widest margin in baseball — a whopping nine wins — and their absolutely elite bullpen and fantastic clutch hitting are the big reasons why. One of those things seems more sustainable than the other, and both the Twins and Royals have done well to mostly keep pace in the AL Central. It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of upgrades Cleveland pursues at the trade deadline to help ward off those two challengers.

The Phillies have gone a respectable 5-4 since putting both Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber on the IL a week and a half ago, though they did lose their series against the Braves over the weekend. Much of that success is thanks to the other star in Philadelphia’s lineup, Trea Turner; he collected nine hits and four home runs last week. Thankfully, Schwarber should be coming off the IL this week, with Harper likely be right behind him.

After a brief hiccup against the Giants and Diamondbacks, the Dodgers got back to winning this past weekend, taking two of three from the Brewers at home. They’ll face a tough challenge with a three-game set in Philadelphia this week.

The red-hot Astros ran into the almost equally hot Twins this past weekend and their three-game set was filled with drama. Seven batters were hit by pitches in the series, forcing Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, and Carlos Correa to miss at least a game. Though none of the injuries seemed serious, there was certainly no love lost between these two teams. As for the games themselves, there was the slugfest on Friday in which Minnesota scored seven times in the ninth inning only to fall one run short of completing a comeback. And while Saturday’s game was pretty run-of-the-mill, the Twins completed the series victory with a walk-off win on Sunday in which Christian Vázquez knocked in all three runs, including the game-winning home run.

Facing a challenge from the Cardinals in their division, the Brewers didn’t wait around to make an upgrade to their patchwork rotation, trading for Aaron Civale last week. He should provide some league-average innings for Milwaukee. The Brewers could still use another starter or two to feel really good about their chances of hanging on to the division lead — Dallas Keuchel just isn’t the solution for a playoff-bound team — but it’s unclear how much more prospect capital they’re willing to part with.

The Red Sox continued their ascent up the standings with five wins last week, including two in New York in a huge series win over the struggling Yankees. As you’d expect, Rafael Devers has been the centerpiece of their surge, blasting seven home runs over the last two weeks, including two on Sunday night. He can’t do it all, though, and Boston again finds itself in position to be aggressive at the trade deadline to acquire some offensive help.

Meanwhile, things have gotten pretty dire in the Bronx. The Yankees were swept by the Reds before falling to the Red Sox, and they couldn’t score more than four runs in any of their five losses last week. They did score 14 in their lone victory, led by a trio of home runs from Ben Rice, but this is a ballclub that’s sorely in need of some sort of spark. They’ve got a pretty big road trip this week to finish off the first half the season, with three against Tampa Bay followed by three in Baltimore.

The three National League teams in this tier are fighting over the last two Wild Card spots — though the Cardinals have a shot at the NL Central division lead, too — and right now the Mets are on the outside looking in. They won four games last week, keeping pace with the rest of the field. More importantly, they welcomed Edwin Díaz back from his sticky stuff suspension on Saturday and he promptly secured a save in a 5-2 victory. His return was particularly important because the bullpen had allowed a whopping 35 runs while he was away.

The Padres lost their first series in two and a half weeks last weekend, dropping two of three to the Diamondbacks. The Friars have greatly benefitted from Jackson Merrill’s midseason breakout — he was one of four rookies selected to the All-Star game this year — and he’s been a big reason why San Diego has been able to weather the loss of Fernando Tatis Jr. for the last few weeks.

The Mariners’ loss on Sunday was a microcosm of their now three-week slide: George Kirby fired six solid innings of one-run ball, the bullpen blew a three-run lead in the seventh, and the offense left the bases loaded in the eighth, ninth, and 10th innings in a 5-4 loss. Earlier in the week, they held the high-powered Orioles offense to just nine runs in three games but walked away with just one win in the series. Things just aren’t going their way right now, and they’re really feeling the effects of their razor thin margins.

Three straight series wins — two against division rivals — have the Diamondbacks suddenly back in the NL playoff picture. They made it back to .500 with their victory on Sunday, bringing them within two games of the last NL Wild Card spot, and have a pretty big four-game series against the Braves on the docket this week.

The reason the Rays had the luxury of trading Civale despite being on the fringe of the AL playoff picture is because Shane Baz has returned to the big league rotation after completing a long rehab process from Tommy John surgery. The team will also welcome Jeffrey Springs back soon, giving the pitching staff even more help for the stretch run. Of course, as soon as the Rays worked their way into the playoff picture, they were swept by the Rangers over the weekend, dropping them below .500 again.

The Royals lost both of their series last week and are now a game and a half back in the AL Wild Card race. They’ve got a huge series in Boston this weekend that could shape the course of the rest of their season. They’ve indicated they’re willing to buy at the deadline to help bolster their surprising run this year, but they’ve got plenty of players who would be enticing for other teams should they want to improve their long-term outlook. This final week before the All-Star break could push them one way or the other.

This tier of middling squads has grown a lot bigger as the teams in the Wild Card races pull ahead of this group. It’s possible one or two of these clubs can play their way back into the playoff picture — the Rangers’ sweep of the Rays last weekend shows they still have a bit of juice left in them — but I’d expect most of them to slowly realize they should sell as the trade deadline approaches.

Texas has one big shot to get back into the playoff race over these next two weeks; the team will finish off the first half with a three-game series in Houston and then open up the second half with a series against the Orioles. If those games go well, the Rangers could be set up for a second half surge; if they don’t, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them sell at the deadline. The Blue Jays and Tigers are in essentially the same position as Texas, though their schedules aren’t as favorable to producing the big swings in the standings needed to get back into the race. All three of those teams have a bit of momentum after winning their weekend series last week.

After the high of sweeping the Yankees in New York, the Reds returned home and were promptly swept by the Tigers in three games. That dropped them to five games back in the Wild Card race, behind four other teams vying for that final playoff spot. The Pirates, Nationals, and Cubs didn’t do much better than Cincinnati last week, with the latter two winning three times while the former won just twice.

The Rockies’ one saving grace during their extended run of ineptitude has been a pretty solid record at home. Maybe that’s part of why they’ve always enjoyed pretty good attendance numbers despite posting losing records in six straight seasons. For whatever reason, they’re just 20-27 at home this year, lightyears better than their record on the road, but still a disappointment compared to the success they’ve enjoyed in recent seasons. They just completed a seven-game home stand in which they scored 3.29 runs per game, were shutout once, and still managed to win four games. Maybe the Coors magic is still alive, even if it’s a little diminished.