FanGraphs Power Rankings: May 19–25

We’re almost through the first two months of the season, and playoff races in both leagues are shaping up to be pretty entertaining this summer. All but three teams in the AL are within three games of a postseason berth, which makes for a very crowded field. The NL is a little more stratified, but there are four Wild Card hopefuls hanging four or five games back in the standings.

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.

All power rankings stats, including team records, are updated through Sunday’s games. The rest of the information below is current as of Tuesday morning.

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The Phillies leapt to the top of the major league standings with a nine-game winning streak that was snapped on Sunday. Sure, they beat up on the likes of the Pirates, Rockies, and Athletics during this stretch, but that’s what good teams do: They find ways to win against weaker opponents. With a home run on Saturday, Kyle Schwarber is now tied for second in the majors with 18. He, Bryce Harper, and Trea Turner have been leading the offense lately; Harper collected 16 hits during the winning streak, while Turner had 13 of his own.

The Yankees pitching staff has been on a roll in May. Sunday’s 5-4 victory in Colorado was the just the fifth time all month that a team has scored more than three runs in a game against Yankees pitchers. They’ve allowed just 65 runs total this month, which translates to 2.95 runs per game. When your pitching staff is that stingy, it doesn’t really matter too much that Aaron Judge is flirting with hitting .400 this deep into the season. But for good measure, the Yankees have scored the second-most runs in the American League this month.

First, the good news: There were no new IL stints for the Dodgers last week, and Shohei Ohtani took the next step in his pitching rehab by throwing to live hitters off a mound on Sunday. Los Angeles did wind up losing its weekend series to the Mets, and has played just a game better than .500 in May. For all the gnashing of teeth this offseason about how the Dodgers had built a superteam, they’ve looked very mortal for the past month or so. They’ll be fine in the end, but it’s just another reminder that the regular season is a marathon that grinds down even the best of teams.

The Tigers couldn’t handle the Guardians last weekend, losing three of four to their division rival. Tarik Skubal nearly singlehandedly saved Detroit from a sweep on Sunday with his first career complete game — a Maddux, no less — in which he allowed just two hits and struck out 13. After two more games at home this week against the Giants, the Tigers hit the road for another big divisional weekend series, this time against the Royals in Kansas City.

The Cubs have continued to take advantage of this soft spot in their schedule, winning both of their series against the Marlins and Reds last week. They’ve got nine more games against sub-.500 teams before they start to face some real challengers again.

The vibes surrounding the Mets have been pretty meh this month, especially over the last two or so weeks. After ending April tied for the best record in the majors, they are just one game over .500 in May. Things could be looking up for them, though, as they’ve won four of their last five games, a stretch that includes winning two out of three against the Dodgers over the weekend. They’ve got two more games against the White Sox before hosting the Rockies for a three-game set and then heading to Los Angeles to face the Dodgers next week.

Most people were ready to write off the Cardinals as an afterthought in a weak NL Central following their oddly passive offseason and rough first month, but their scorching May has put them solidly in the NL playoff picture. They swept the Diamondbacks last weekend, and even with their Memorial Day loss to the Orioles, the Cards are just three games behind the Cubs in the division.

After enduring a rain-soaked week, the Twins managed to take two of three from the Royals last weekend after the weather cleared up. They welcomed back Carlos Correa from the IL, though Byron Buxton is still dealing with concussion symptoms after their big collision a few weeks ago. The team proved its resiliency with three walk-off wins last week. And remember that note above about how the Yankees have allowed only 65 runs in May? The Twins had allowed just 61 through Sunday before giving up seven to the Rays on Monday, putting them slightly behind the Yankees entering play Tuesday.

In a key series between the top two teams in the AL West, the Astros took three of four from the first-place Mariners to pull within 1.5 games of the division lead. Houston capped off the series on Sunday when Christian Walker blasted a walk-off two-run homer, a welcomed sight for the Astros considering how poorly their new first baseman has played so far this season. Perhaps that big hit will be what finally gets him going. As for Seattle, the fantastic offense that drove the team’s success in April has fallen back to merely league average in May; Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez are essentially the team’s only two hitters contributing consistently. The Mariners will need their other batters to get back on track soon if they want to hold onto their slim division lead.

It’s hard to tell if the Guardians’ success is smoke and mirrors or if they’re truly a contender. They’re outperforming their -11 run differential by four wins and their BaseRuns record by a whopping seven wins. The bullpen is good, but it’s not the otherworldly force that it was last year, when it was a foundational piece of the Cleveland club that went all the way to the ALCS. Still, the Guardians are finding ways to win when it counts; with their weekend series win over the Tigers, they improved to 14-5 against divisional opponents.

After their sweep of the Blue Jays last weekend and another victory on Monday, the Rays have quietly put together a six-game winning streak, pushed their record over .500, and leap-frogged the Blue Jays and Red Sox in the AL East standings. Brandon Lowe blasted three home runs last week, and Junior Caminero broke out of a prolonged slump with five hits over the weekend and two more on Monday.

The Braves activated Ronald Acuña Jr. off the IL on Friday, and he launched a mammoth home run on the very first pitch he saw and a hit another on Saturday. Even with Acuña back in the lineup, Atlanta dropped two of three to the Padres over the weekend and four of five overall last week. A huge series against the Phillies looms as the Braves desperately need to make up some ground in the standings.

The Diamondbacks snapped a five-game losing streak on Monday, pushing their record back up to .500, but they’re still a fourth-place team in the loaded NL West. The good news is their offense has been firing on all cylinders — the breakout of Geraldo Perdomo has been a nice surprise — and the starting rotation has been improving. Instead, the big issue lately has been their bullpen. Three of Arizona’s losses last week came in the seventh inning or later.

The ongoing saga of the Red Sox infield hit a new low last weekend when Alex Bregman injured his quad on Friday. It’s a huge blow to Boston’s lineup, and combined with the ongoing struggles of Kristian Campbell and Trevor Story, makes the infield a significant weakness for the ballclub. The Sox did call up Marcelo Mayer to cover for Bregman, and perhaps he can provide a desperately needed spark.

The Angels won their eighth straight game on Friday and climbed all the way back to .500. But, of course, they proceeded to drop their next three games and now look just as aimless as they did before. Taylor Ward and Logan O’Hoppe each hit five home runs during the winning streak, propelling the Halos offense to 7.63 runs per game in that span. Alas, the Angels have scored just three runs in their three games since the streak was snapped.

The Nationals called up Robert Hassell III on Thursday for his major league debut. They now have four of the five prospects from their 2022 Juan Soto trade contributing in the big leagues. That’s a pretty amazing success rate for Washington, and at least three of those five look like they’re going to be franchise pillars for a long time; we’ll see if Hassell can become the fourth.

The Athletics endured an 11-game losing streak before finally ending it with a come-from-behind victory on Sunday. They went a combined 4-15 against the Mariners, Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, Angels, and Phillies over the last three weeks. That would be a gauntlet for any team, but the A’s completely crumbled against that high-level competition. Any thought of their being a surprise Wild Card contender can probably be put to bed.

The Orioles snapped an eight-game losing streak on Wednesday and then split a big four-game series in Boston last weekend. It’s probably too little, too late, but Jordan Westburg and Colton Cowser both started rehab assignments recently and should be returning from their injuries soon.

The Rockies claimed their ninth win of the season on Friday, against the Yankees of all teams. They were close to taking the series in Sunday’s rain-interrupted finale, but they fell just short in a 5-4 loss, meaning that Colorado is still on the hunt for its first series win of the season.