FanGraphs Power Rankings: July 3–9

As the baseball world celebrates the All-Star festivities in Seattle this week, let’s take a look at how every team stacks up with the first half of the season at an end.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), their pitching (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by starter and reliever IP share), and their defense (RAA) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. 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 Braves had their nine-game win streak snapped on Tuesday but managed to win both of their series last week anyway, including a huge three-game set against the Rays over the weekend. After his slight hiccup at the start of June, Spencer Strider has gotten his outstanding season back on track; he held Tampa Bay scoreless over 6.1 innings on Saturday, striking out 11. Atlanta heads into the All-Star break with the best record in baseball and plenty of momentum for the second half of the season.

Both the Rays and the Rangers have slipped recently. Tampa Bay snapped a seven-game losing streak with a 10-run outburst on Sunday after scoring just eight runs in five games previous. Those struggles have allowed the Orioles to close the gap in the AL East to just two games. Meanwhile, Texas hasn’t won a series since taking two of three from the White Sox back on June 19–21. The team has done some early work to try to improve the roster, trading for Aroldis Chapman on June 30, but that hasn’t significantly impacted the results yet. The Rangers are also heading into the All-Star break just two games up in their division.

The scariest thing that happened to the Diamondbacks last week wasn’t a three-game sweep at the hands of the Mets but a violent swing by Corbin Carroll that forced him to leave Thursday’s game with a sore shoulder. Thankfully, he was in the lineup the next day and led Arizona to a series win against the Pirates over the weekend, collecting the walk-off hit on Saturday. Those losses earlier in the week did come back to haunt Arizona, which slipped into a virtual tie for the division lead with the Dodgers after Sunday’s loss.

Despite climbing back to the top of the NL West, the Dodgers continue to work through troubles in their rotation. Clayton Kershaw hit the IL with a minor shoulder injury on June 30, but he’s expected to be back soon after the All-Star break. The big blow was the news that Dustin May would require surgery to repair his flexor tendon in his elbow, a procedure that will knock him out of action until next year. It’s not all bad news in Chavez Ravine, though. Mookie Betts will be in the Home Run Derby for the first time in his career and has already gotten plenty of practice over the last few weeks; he blasted four home runs last week and has hit nine over his last 15 games.

The Orioles wrapped up the first half of the season with a five-game win streak that closed the gap in the AL East to just two games. Just a few weeks after calling up Jordan Westburg, Baltimore graduated another one of its top prospects, this time bringing up Colton Cowser to patrol the outfield. The O’s aren’t finished yet either: They’ve got a handful of top prospects still percolating in Triple-A, and it’s only a matter of time before they get the call, too.

On July 1 last year, the Mariners were 37–41 and floundering in the AL West. They then rattled off 14 straight wins to take them into the All-Star break and never looked back. On July 1 this year, the Mariners were 38–42 and floundering in the AL West. They didn’t put together a huge win streak to put them over the hump, but they did win three straight series against the Rays, Giants, and Astros to finish off the first half of the season. They’ve weathered some injuries to their rotation by graduating another pair of fantastic starters, and their offense has been a little more consistent as the weather has heated up.

The Angels had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. The worst news was Mike Trout’s broken hamate bone, which will sideline him for a month or two. Shohei Ohtani also left his start on Tuesday early, though his injury was simply a blister issue rather than something more ominous. To make matters worse, they didn’t win a single game last week. Ohtani is on a historic path at the plate, with a real shot at challenging Aaron Judge’s AL home run record he set last year and a very good chance at winning the AL Triple Crown. Still, he’s only one man (even though he plays like two), and without Trout supporting him, the Angels’ path to the postseason gets murky. They were already in a bit of a free fall before this terrible week; after hitting a season high eight games over .500 on June 18, they’ve gone 4–13 since and head into the All-Star break a game under .500.

The Red Sox have spent most of the first half of the season lurking toward the bottom of the AL East standings, right around .500, but they’ve come alive over the last two weeks, winning eight of their last nine games and heading into the midseason break on a five-game win streak. Like so many other teams, their starting rotation has been hit hard by injuries. Thankfully, Brayan Bello has taken a big step forward at just the right time, and a finally healthy James Paxton is leading the way.

Thanks to a series win against the Royals over the weekend, the Guardians head into the All-Star break leading the AL Central with a .500 record. They received some relatively good news, too: Triston McKenzie likely won’t need surgery on his elbow at this point and should be able to return to the mound later this year after some rest and rehab. Josh Naylor and Amed Rosario have both come alive at the plate and have carried a lot of the offensive load recently. With no other team running away with the division at this point, Cleveland has as good a shot as the Twins to sneak into the playoffs with a strong second half.

The Mets swept the Diamondbacks early last week but couldn’t keep that momentum going in a series against the equally disappointing Padres, winning in extra innings on Friday but dropping their final two games of the first half. Francisco Lindor is doing everything he possibly can to pull the team out of its doldrums; over his last 20 games, he’s posted a 209 wRC+ with seven home runs and seven stolen bases. New York’s playoff hopes are dwindling, however, with seven games separating the team from a postseason berth, and five other teams to hurdle to claim it.

The Tigers recently activated Riley Greene, Tarik Skubal, and Eduardo Rodriguez off the IL, significantly strengthening their roster; if you squint, you could see how they could be a nuisance to the rest of the American League during the second half of the season. They also get the honor of employing this year’s most unlikely All-Star in Michael Lorenzen, who was healthy enough to be selected for the honor instead of Greene or Rodriguez, both of whom could have been perfectly cromulent picks if they hadn’t been injured.

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