FanGraphs Power Rankings: July 21–31

The trade deadline is nearly upon us, and there are plenty of teams still vying for playoff position in both the AL and NL. It’s been a slow hot stove season so far, but there should be plenty of action over the next two days as teams try to position themselves for the stretch run.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by IP share) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. New for this year, I’ve opted to include defense as a component, though it’s weighted less heavily than offense and pitching. Some element of team defense is captured by RA9-, but now that FanGraphs has Statcast’s OAA/RAA available on our leaderboards, I’ve chosen to include that as the defensive component for each team. I also add in a factor for “luck,” adjusting a team’s win percentage based on expected win-loss record. The result is a power ranking, which is then presented in tiers below.

The Yankees stumbled out of the All-Star break a bit, getting swept in a pair of two-game series against the Astros and Mets. They took care of business against the Orioles and Royals and continue to hold a commanding lead in the AL East, but they did slip behind the Dodgers for the overall best record in baseball and hold a slim two-game lead over the Astros for the top seed in the American League. They got an early start on their deadline shopping by trading for Andrew Benintendi to stabilize their outfield. They’ll almost certainly be in the market for pitching help, too, especially after Michael King was lost for the season with a fractured elbow. And as for your weekly Aaron Judge check-in: he’s blasted nine home runs since the All-Star break, no big deal.

The Dodgers emphatically started off the second half with a four-game sweep of the Giants two weekends ago. Those two teams match up for four more games in San Francisco to start this week, with a series against the Padres immediately afterwards. Neither division rival is anywhere close to challenging for the NL West, but a solid week against these two teams should all but wrap up the division for Los Angeles in the first week of August.

This week in “you can’t predict baseball,” the Astros sandwiched a pair of series wins against the Mariners between a three-game sweep at the hands of the A’s. Interestingly, they’re reportedly open to moving one of their starters prior to the deadline; they’re currently running a six-man rotation, Lance McCullers Jr. is close to returning from his elbow injury he suffered last year during the postseason, and they have a number of pitching prospects currently throwing well at Triple-A. It’s an enviable situation to be in, and one that is rare given how high pitcher attrition rates are in the modern era.

Both the Braves and the Mets currently hold 100% playoff odds with two months left to play in the season. For New York, it’s not much of a surprise given the team’s excellent play throughout the entire season. For Atlanta, it’s the culmination of a pretty quick turnaround, with playoff odds that stood at 60.4% on May 31. While the Braves’ postseason hopes are all but secure at this point, getting in as a division winner is a far better proposition than as one of three Wild Card teams. Our playoff odds currently give the edge to the Mets; they hold a three-game advantage in the standings and will welcome back Jacob deGrom this week. The Braves have gone 39–14 over the last two months, but they have a few more obvious holes on their roster they’d do well to address this week. These two teams will face each other five times in four days this coming weekend, a massive opportunity for both clubs.

After they were swept in four games in Seattle in early July, the end of an ugly 1–9 stretch, the Blue Jays have gone 12–3 since. Interim manager John Schneider has overseen 11 of those wins and stabilized a team that seemed like it was teetering on the edge of collapse. It helps that Matt Chapman has been on fire during this stretch, collecting 21 hits and blasting seven home runs in the past 15 games. With their offense looking as potent as ever, they’ll need some pitching help if they want to make a deep run in the playoffs this year.

Despite trailing in the NL Wild Card race by a single game, underperforming their run differential by four games, and getting lackluster performances from nearly half their lineup, the Cardinals grade out well in these rankings. They’ve been buoyed by an MVP-caliber season from Paul Goldschmidt, but they desperately need some help if they’re going to make another surprising push for the playoffs this season. Perhaps they’ll push all their chips in and deal for Juan Soto. That would certainly help, but there are enough holes on the roster — particularly in the rotation — that they might be better served upgrading multiple positions instead of shooting for the moon with one blockbuster move.

The Brewers entered the All-Star break just a half-game ahead of St. Louis after ending the first half on a 6–10 skid. But they’ve won seven of their first nine games in the second half to increase their lead in the NL Central back up to three games. They’re also getting Freddy Peralta back from the IL this week, solidifying their pitching staff for the stretch run. The most obvious position they could upgrade this week would be center field, though their offense has been hitting well recently, giving them some hope they’d be able to keep up the run scoring in October — their Achilles heel over the last four years of playoff appearances.

The Mariners have had a wild start to the second half of the season. They were swept by the Astros two weekends ago, then swept Texas earlier last week to stay in the middle of the AL Wild Card race, then traveled to Houston over the weekend and lost the first two games by a combined score of 15–3. But in the middle of a 11–1 beatdown on Friday night, the team announced that it had acquired Luis Castillo from the Reds, securing the best pitcher on the market in a blockbuster deal. If that wasn’t enough, Julio Rodríguez was hit on the wrist by an errant pitch on Saturday and was placed on the IL a day later, paving the way for Jarred Kelenic’s return to the majors after working on his swing in Triple-A for the past three months. Oh, and the Mariners play the Yankees six times over their next ten games. After this rough stretch, their schedule lightens up considerably, and Rodríguez’s injury seems to be fairly minor. With Castillo in the fold, they’ve announced their intention to go all-in this season

Even without Bryce Harper, the Phillies managed to go 15–10 in July, their second-best month of play this season. They stumbled a bit out of the break, getting swept by the Cubs in three games two weekends ago, but got right back on track by taking two of three from the Braves last week and sweeping the Pirates in four games over the weekend. They definitely have some holes on their roster; in Jay Jaffe’s Replacement Level Killers series this past week, they showed up at shortstop, third base, center field, and right field. They started addressing one of those holes by dealing for Edmundo Sosa on Saturday.

The AL Central suddenly looks very competitive. The Twins have been on top of the division for nearly the entire season, holding a lead as large as 4.5 games as recently as July 13. But a bad series against the White Sox just before the All-Star break and a couple of series losses last week has cut their lead to just a single game. Meanwhile, both the Guardians and White Sox have played good baseball to start the second half of the season. Cleveland just wrapped up an 11-game stretch against some tough competition with a 6–5 record. Chicago is in the middle of a soft part of the schedule, with the Royals, Rangers, and Tigers on the docket over the next two weeks. Any one of these teams has a shot at winning the division, and they all should be active at the trade deadline, trying to find that edge to put them ahead.

Well, the injuries start coming and they don’t stop coming for the Rays. Harold Ramírez, Francisco Mejía, and Matt Wisler all hit the IL within the last two weeks, and the team announced that both Mike Zunino and Kevin Kiermaier would be sidelined for the rest of the season following surgeries for their respective ailments. Tampa traded for David Peralta on Saturday but will need some more help quickly to maintain its grip on the final AL Wild Card spot after starting the second half with a 3–7 slide.

The Giants dipped below .500 for the first time this season after losing seven straight to open up the second half of the season. They managed to take three of four from the Cubs over the weekend to get back to even, but they’re currently stuck in a weird position: not bad enough to sell, not good enough to buy, and headed toward the trade deadline in the awkward position of trying to do both. San Francisco does have a couple of players who could be interesting as rentals down the stretch and enough young talent on the roster that the team should be looking to retool for 2023 instead of embarking on a full teardown.

In their first game after the All-Star break, the Red Sox gave up 28 runs; when combined with two blowout losses before the break, they allowed a whopping 55 runs in a three-game stretch. Things haven’t gotten much better since, as they’ve won just three times since then and have dropped below .500 again and behind the Orioles in the standings. Still, it would be a surprise to see them sell everything over the next couple of days; instead, they’ll look to create some payroll flexibility (a cursed phrase in Boston) with an eye toward 2023.

The Orioles have cooled off considerably since their ten-game win streak that shot them up the standings in early July, but they’ve put together winning records in back-to-back months and are poised to play spoiler in a tightly contested AL Wild Card race. Are they good enough to potentially sneak into the playoffs this year? Probably not. But like the Tigers last year, they’re well positioned to take a big step forward in 2023, provided they avoid repeating what Detroit has done as a followup this year.

Despite possessing a positive run differential, the Rangers can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot. They’re an astonishing 5–23 in one-run games this year, and their bullpen has been awful recently; in July, their relievers put up a 5.02 ERA and led baseball with 23 meltdowns and -2.38 WPA. All those losses have hidden the fact that Marcus Semien and Corey Seager have started to hit consistently, and masked breakout seasons from Jonah Heim and Nathaniel Lowe.

For teams looking to upgrade their roster over the next two days, look no further than the teams in this tier — except the Rockies. Ever the enigma, Colorado signed its 37-year-old closer, Daniel Bard, to a two-year contract extension on Saturday. The Rockies have made it clear that they don’t intend to trade away their veteran talent for an infusion of youth into their organization, and while that’s not necessarily a surprising position, it’s still a little baffling. And given that they play the majority of their remaining games on the road, they’re not even in a good position to play spoiler in many NL playoff races either.

The Reds’ (and Red Sox) season is neatly encapsulated in this tweet:

The Reds have 3 series wins against the AL East this year. The Red Sox have 0.

— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) July 31, 2022

To their credit, they have been playing much better since their ugly start to the season, they just received a haul of prospects from the Mariners, and they should continue to bolster their farm system with a number of deals in the next couple of days. Oh, and reigning NL Rookie of the Year Jonathan India finally looks healthy and is playing really well; he’s collected 13 hits and three home runs to start the second half.

The A’s started off the second half with seven wins in 11 games, including a shocking three-game sweep of the Astros last week. They have a bunch of pieces to sell over the next few days, completing a tear down that began over the offseason.

The big question looming over the trade deadline is whether or not the Nationals will trade Soto. There are plenty of suitors, though it’s unclear if any of them have a package big enough to entice Washington to part with its superstar. The team doesn’t have any pressure to move him now, either. If no one steps up with an absolutely monster offer, the Nationals can hold onto him until this offseason, when the market might be a little bigger.

…