FanGraphs Power Rankings: July 7–14

Over the last three weeks, we’ve had three different leaders atop these power rankings. The top of the standings have been volatile, as no one really has pulled away from the pack. On the other hand, the bottom half of the rankings have been stable, with a large group of mediocre teams stuck in the awkward zone between competing and retooling.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings 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%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. 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 — there are times where I take 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.

…

The Brewers completed a perfect six-game homestand on Sunday that included sweeps of the Dodgers and Nationals. At 57-40, they have the second-best record in franchise history entering the All-Star break and boast the best record in baseball since May 18, at 35-15. The pitching has been bolstered by the return of Brandon Woodruff and the debut of Jacob Misiorowski, and perhaps as expected, Christian Yelich and Jackson Chourio have carried the offense. However, the most surprising recent contributor has been Andrew Vaughn. Acquired from the White Sox in late May, Vaughn was recalled from the minors last week to take the place of the injured Rhys Hoskins. He’s already collected hits in all five games he’s played and driven in 10 runs. He announced his arrival with a massive home run off Yoshinobu Yamamoto in his first Brewers at-bat, and he had two key game-tying ninth-inning hits, one on Wednesday and another on Saturday.

The Blue Jays extended their season-best winning streak to 10 games last week before losing on Wednesday, and then they dropped their weekend series against the Athletics. Despite the hiccup in Sacramento, they enter the midseason break in first place in the AL East. It’s the latest in a season that they’ve led the division since 2016.

After their impressive sweep of the Dodgers two weekends ago, the Astros backslid their way into the break. First, they were swept at home by the Guardians, who were riding a 10-game losing streak entering the series, and then lost their weekend series against the Rangers, which cut Houston’s lead in the AL West to five games. The Astros match up with the Mariners to open up the second half of the season, a series that could have some massive ramifications for the AL West race.

The Dodgers endured a rough series in Milwaukee to start last week, scoring just four runs in the three-game sweep. They bounced back with a weekend series win over the Giants, though it wasn’t easy, requiring an extra-innings victory on Sunday after Tanner Scott blew a 2-0 lead in the ninth inning. Los Angeles had lost seven straight games before beating San Francisco on Saturday. Even so, because the Giants and Padres were unable to capitalize on the skid, the Dodgers will enter the second half with a healthy 5 1/2-game lead in the NL West.

The Cubs barely managed to hold off the red hot Brewers by winning their weekend series against the Yankees. Matthew Boyd and Shota Imanaga were brilliant in their starts after Chicago dropped the opener in New York; Boyd tossed eight scoreless innings on Saturday and Imanaga followed with seven innings of one-run ball on Sunday. Those two make for a formidable one-two punch atop the Cubs rotation, but pitching has to be the number one item on the shopping list as the trade deadline approaches.

The Tigers stumbled into the break with a four-game losing streak — their longest of the season — though they still possess the best record and largest division lead in baseball. An overworked relief corps was exposed a bit during this four-game slump, allowing 28 runs and costing Detroit two of its four losses. Last year, the deep and flexible pen was the backbone of the team’s surprise run to the postseason. Things have been flipped a bit this season; the starting rotation is the obvious strength, while the bullpen needs one or two more high-leverage arms.

The Red Sox head into the All-Star break as the hottest team in baseball. They won their 10th game in a row on Sunday, completing a huge four-game sweep over the Rays to overtake Tampa Bay in the Wild Card standings. Boston is getting healthy at just the right time too; both Alex Bregman and Masataka Yoshida were activated off the IL last week. The real star of this hot streak has been Ceddanne Rafaela, who blasted a dramatic three-run walk-off home run on Friday. He’s posted a .390/.405/.902 slash line in July.

The Mets and Phillies briefly flip-flopped at the top of the NL East standings last week; New York went 3-3 against the Orioles and Royals while Philadelphia went 2-4 against the Giants and Padres. The Phillies held the lead for most of the week, but they dropped their first two games to San Diego over the weekend and allowed the Mets to take first place with two wins in Kansas City. The next day, New York gave the lead right back with a walk-off loss, as Philadelphia avoided a sweep with a 2-1 win. The two teams are separated by just a half game, the smallest divisional gap in baseball heading into the second half of the season.

The Mariners suffered what was probably their worst loss of the season on Thursday against the Yankees. Bryan Woo had spun seven no-hit innings, and Seattle was up 5-0 when he returned to the mound for the bottom of the eighth and was greeted with back-to-back singles. New York scored three runs in the eighth, two of which were charged to Woo, and tied it with two more in the ninth off All-Star closer Andrés Muñoz before winning it in the 10th to complete the three-game sweep. The M’s responded in a big way with a sweep of the Tigers over the weekend, scoring 35 runs across the three games. Julio Rodríguez, who had been mired in a pretty miserable slump since the end of May, hit home runs in each of the three games in Detroit, and Cal Raleigh dumped two dingers on Friday for his eighth multi-homer game of the season. He ended the first half 38 home runs, the most in the majors.

After finishing June on a tear, the Rays have really stumbled since the calendar flipped to July, losing 12 of their final 16 games before the All-Star break and falling to fourth place in AL East. They are now 1 1/2 games back in the AL Wild Card race and face a difficult decision regarding what to do with their roster ahead of the trade deadline.

The NL Wild Card race still doesn’t have much clarity. The Padres and Reds went 4-3 last week, which was one win better than what the Giants and Cardinals accomplished. Those slim margins allowed San Diego to slip into the final Wild Card spot, a half game ahead of San Francisco. The Friars welcomed back Yu Darvish last week, giving a boost to a pretty thin starting rotation. For the Reds, a healthy Noelvi Marte has provided a spark for their lineup; he hit three home runs last week after returning from an oblique injury on July 4.

Of the seven teams in this tier, five of them sit between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 games out of the final AL Wild Card spot. The odds say at least one or two of these teams should give the Red Sox, Mariners, and Rays some trouble down the stretch, but as currently constructed, none of them looks good enough to make much noise.

Byron Buxton has spent so much of his career on the IL; he’s accumulated more than 400 plate appearances in a season only once and has played in more than 100 games in a season twice. He’s currently enjoying his most productive season since 2021, when he played just 61 games, and appears to be healthier than he’s been in a long time. He punctuated his fantastic first half by hitting for the cycle on Saturday. The Twins have won three straight series and will be a very interesting team to watch at the trade deadline.

After a rough finish to June, the Royals have performed a bit better lately, compiling an 8-4 record this month. Jac Caglianone hit two home runs last week, but his first taste of the big leagues has been disastrous; through 35 games, he has a brutal .140/.196/.264 slash line, though his expected stats — .250 xBA/.459 xSLG — offer some hope that he’ll get better with more at-bats.

The Guardians bounced back nicely after snapping their ugly 10-game losing streak. They swept the Astros in Houston, then won three of four against the White Sox, with the only loss coming in extra innings in the second game of a doubleheader on Friday. At the center of this surge was José Ramírez; he had been mired in a three-week long slump — he had just 12 hits total from June 15–July 6 — but he broke out with home runs in each game against the Astros and added another on Friday for good measure.

They won’t be confused for contenders anytime soon, but the Marlins continue to play good baseball. They went 4-3 last week and have the second-best record in the NL since June 13. Eury Pérez, who returned from Tommy John surgery in early June, is quickly making up for lost time. He has allowed just one run and six hits in 18 innings across his last three starts while striking out 21. Meanwhile, Sandy Alcantara seems to be coming around just in time for his trade market to heat up ahead of the deadline. And in a good bit of revenge, Kyle Stowers blasted three home runs on Sunday against the Orioles, the team that traded him to Miami last July.

This lost season continues to go poorly for the Braves; on Saturday, they placed Austin Riley on the IL with an abdomen strain. If you want to look on the bright side, Ronald Acuña Jr. has already accumulated 2.5 WAR despite missing nearly two months of the season, and his 194 wRC+ is a career high. As for Atlanta’s other superstar back from a major injury, Spencer Strider is still figuring out how to be effective with stuff that hasn’t yet returned to its former glory.

It’s been a while since we checked in on the Rockies’ march toward history: A much more respectable 10-16 record in June finally pushed them into double-digit win territory, but they’ve won only three times in July. They’re on pace to lose 125 games, which would smash the modern record set by the White Sox just last year. With Chicago’s unfortunate season still fresh in our minds, it feels like Colorado’s futility is getting overlooked a bit. If the Rockies actually remember the trade deadline this year and sell off some of their useful pieces, they could get even worse in August and September.