FanGraphs Power Rankings: May 13–19

The various division races are starting to shape up now that we’ve passed the quarter pole in the regular season. The Astros finally woke up from their early season slumber, reminding us that it’s still not too late for some of these disappointing teams to make a run into the playoff picture.

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.

…

The Yankees leapt to the top of these rankings with sweeps of the Twins and White Sox last week. They’ve now won seven straight and 13 of their last 15. Juan Soto and Aaron Judge are powering the offense as expected — along with a resurgent Giancarlo Stanton — but the most impressive part of this hot streak has been their pitching staff. During this stretch, New York has allowed just 2.4 runs per game and gave up a total of six runs last week. The entire starting rotation has stepped up in Gerrit Cole’s absence, with Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil representing the two biggest surprises.

The Phillies stretched their division lead over the Braves to five games with a wild series win against the Mets and a sweep of the Nationals last week. It’s true Philadelphia has played the weakest schedule of any team thus far — it faced the Braves in the first series of the season and hasn’t met a team with a record over .500 since then — but the Phillies are banking enough wins now that it might not matter if they come back down to earth once the schedule toughens up.

While Elly De La Cruz may have stolen the spotlight on Thursday in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won the final three games of their series against the Reds to take the series and held De La Cruz hitless over the weekend. They own the largest division lead and best run differential in baseball.

Max Fried slipped up on Friday after a long stretch of dominant starts, allowing three runs on nine hits against the Padres. After a rainout on Saturday, the Braves lost a stinker on Sunday and are lined up for a doubleheader today. They can still be counted among the upper echelons in baseball, but it’s clear they’re not firing on all cylinders yet.

Both the Royals and Guardians swept their weekend series, though Cleveland’s wins against the Twins are much more impactful than the three wins Kansas City racked up against the A’s. The Guardians still lead the AL Central and knocked Minnesota down a notch, but the Royals are on pace for their second best season in franchise history if they can keep this up.

The Mariners went 3-3 against two of the other teams in this tier last week, which is pretty much what you’d expect from their solid but flawed roster. They still haven’t solved their run scoring issues and Julio Rodríguez’s power outage to start the season is starting to become a little concerning. Meanwhile, the Orioles are trying to keep up with the high-flying Yankees; Baltimore’s series win over Seattle certainly helps in that regard.

A lot of ups and downs in this tier last week. The Twins’ hot streak flamed out after they were swept by the Yankees and Guardians; the Cubs didn’t do much better, losing both of their series to the Braves and Pirates. On the other end of the spectrum, the Rays went 5-2 against the Red Sox and Blue Jays, banking two key series wins against some division rivals.

Here come the Astros. With two wins against the Brewers over the weekend, Houston has now won three series in a row and nine of its last 11 games. Alex Bregman’s bat has suddenly awoken as he raised his wRC+ from 58 to 87 over the last week. The Astros have a huge four-game series in Seattle looming in a week and they’ll hope to continue their momentum ahead of that showdown.

A bunch of the teams in this tier continued their early season struggles and have fallen even further behind in the playoff picture. The Giants and Tigers were the only two among these teams to win a series last week.

San Francisco emphatically swept the Rockies over the weekend, though that’s a small consolation considering the bad news it received about Jung Hoo Lee’s shoulder injury; the Giants’ center fielder will be out for the season after dislocating his shoulder last Sunday. Blake Snell is on the mend and should be activated off the IL soon, but there are still far too many role players sidelined currently, forcing the Giants to turn to their shallow depth. Thankfully, Luis Matos has made an immediate impact, collecting 16 RBIs and recording hits in five of the seven games since being recalled to cover for Lee.

The Cardinals, Pirates, Angels, and Marlins all showed some pluck last week, earning series wins over some high profile opponents. St. Louis won both of its series against the Angels and Red Sox and can’t be counted out of the NL playoff picture just yet; Pittsburgh took three of four from the Cubs over the weekend, a series highlighted by a dominant start from Paul Skenes; and the Marlins picked up series wins over the Tigers and Mets.

With Mike Trout sidelined for the foreseeable future, the Angels have had very few reasons for optimism recently. Thankfully, Jo Adell’s long-awaited breakout is something they can build upon. It’s not a franchise-altering development, but it’s a positive note for an organization that has desperately needed one this year.

After reaching .500 with a 20-4 win over the Marlins on May 4, the A’s have won exactly twice in the 15 games since then. Their nosedive has coincided with a particularly tough stretch in their schedule, with series against the Rangers, Mariners, Astros, and Royals bringing them back down to Earth. Mason Miller has gotten all of the attention as the standout on this roster, but there are a few other breakouts that could become valuable trade bait later on this summer.

The Rockies put together a nice little seven-game win streak with sweeps of the Rangers and Padres before getting swept by the Giants last weekend. Ezequiel Tovar has rewarded the organization’s trust in him with a fantastic start to the season. Nolan Jones should be activated off the IL this week and hopefully he can start pounding the ball again so that Colorado can properly play spoiler to the rest of the teams in the NL West.