FanGraphs Power Rankings: May 25–31

As the calendar turns to June, the playoff picture is tight in both leagues. There are 11 teams in the NL with records over .500, which should make for an exciting Wild Card race this summer. The AL is nearly as competitive, though for the opposite reason, as more than half of the clubs in the junior circuit have losing records.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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.

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The Dodgers are back on top of these rankings after going 5-1 against the Rockies and Phillies last week. They had a modest six-game winning streak snapped on Saturday, when Tanner Scott allowed three runs in the eighth inning to give away a two-run lead. The loss was frustrating, but the team has to be encouraged by the performance of Roki Sasaki; he tossed 5 1/3 innings of one-run ball against Philadelphia, giving up just three hits and one walk while striking out seven. The young Japanese pitcher has struggled for most of the season, but his last three outings have been promising. During that stretch, he’s allowed just four total runs in 17 1/3 innings while running an excellent 6.33 strikeout-to-walk ratio. With Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell sidelined for the foreseeable future, getting any kind of positive performance out of Sasaki should help stabilize the starting rotation.

After a bit of a slow start and a brief IL stint, Ronald Acuña Jr. is finally showing some signs of life. He’s blasted five home runs over his last four games and added four steals to boot. If he can maintain the regained MVP form he’s displayed recently, the Braves might have another gear in them this summer. As things stand, after a 4-2 week, Atlanta holds a nine-game lead in the NL East.

The Brewers gained ground in the NL Central last week by sweeping the Cardinals and winning their weekend series against the Astros. Milwaukee allowed just two total runs in that series against St. Louis, an impressive show of dominance over a division rival. Jacob Misiorowski fired off two more gems last week, combining for 14 innings of one-run ball and allowing just five hits and one walk while striking out 20.

The Rays hit their first major speed bump last week when they were swept by the Orioles in Baltimore. A series win against the Angels helped them maintain their lead in the AL East, but the gap is now down to just 1.5 games. No team has outperformed its Pythagorean or BaseRuns record more than Tampa Bay. Luckily, the team’s schedule over the next two weeks looks incredibly soft: The Tigers, Marlins, Red Sox, and Angels are lined up before a big series in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. The Rays will want to keep banking as many wins as they can before the inevitable regression hits.

The Yankees made up a bunch of ground on the Rays by sweeping the Royals and winning their series against the Athletics over the weekend. Let’s play a quick game of good news, bad news. Good news: Gerrit Cole looked dominant in his second start of the season, holding the Royals scoreless over 6 2/3 innings while striking out 10. He has not allowed a run in his two starts since coming back from Tommy John surgery, which forced him to miss the entire 2025 season. Bad news: Aaron Judge collected just five hits last week and is mired in a three-week slump that’s dropped his wRC+ from 183 on May 10 to 150. Ben Rice has continued to mash and carry the lineup — he recorded 10 hits last week — but the Yankees need Judge to break out of his funk if they want to catch Tampa Bay.

The Mariners swept the Athletics to start last week, jumping into first place in the AL West, and then swept the Diamondbacks over the weekend to push their lead to 2.5 games. With Cal Raleigh and Brendan Donovan still on the mend, Seattle has needed its other superstar to lead the way, and Julio Rodríguez stepped up big time. He just wrapped up one of the best months of his career, blasting 10 home runs in May, the most he’s ever hit in a month. The Mariners are looking at an incredibly soft schedule to finish off the first half of the season; they have just four series against teams with winning records from now until the All-Star break.

The Guardians gave up some ground to the red hot White Sox in the AL Central standings last week. Cleveland lost both of its series, against the Nationals and Red Sox, while Chicago combined to go 6-1 against the Twins and Tigers. It doesn’t get any easier for the Guardians — they face the Yankees six times over their next nine games. As for the White Sox, their hot streak was marred by the hamstring injury suffered by Munetaka Murakami on Friday. Rookie starter Noah Schultz also hit the IL last week, with the same recurring knee issue that sidelined him for large chunks of last season. Chicago’s upcoming schedule looks just as difficult as Cleveland’s; after a series against the Twins, the White Sox will face the Phillies, Braves, Dodgers, and Yankees.

There was a whirlwind of activity in the NL Central last week. The Cubs split a four-game series with the Pirates, then lost their weekend series with the Cardinals. That leaves St. Louis a half-game ahead of Pittsburgh and Chicago in the standings — and don’t forget about the Reds, who are a game back of that duo — and 4.5 behind the first-place Brewers. The Pirates activated Jared Jones off the IL on Friday, though they placed Konnor Griffin on the IL on Sunday with a minor elbow injury. Bryan Reynolds collected 11 hits and two home runs last week to lead the Bucs. Meanwhile, Ian Happ notched 10 hits and three home runs last week, with five knocks and two long balls coming in two Cubs wins in Pittsburgh, his hometown. The first of those wins snapped Chicago’s 10-game losing streak.

After taking first place in the NL West a few weeks ago, the Padres have endured a 3-8 stretch and slipped to 5.5 games back in the division. Fernando Tatis Jr., who finally hit his first home run of the season on Saturday, has caught fire during his team’s slide, batting .405/.479/.500. Unfortunately, he’s getting no support from the rest of the lineup. San Diego has been shutout three times and scored just 2.8 runs per game during this cold snap.

With series wins over the Guardians and Padres last week, the Nationals haven’t lost a series since dropping two of three against the Marlins three weeks ago. They’re a game back in the NL Wild Card race and their run differential has crept into the positive side of the ledger, at +1. More than two months into the season, the Nats somehow still boast the highest scoring offense in baseball. James Wood and CJ Abrams are leading the way at the plate, but don’t overlook the improvements from role players up and down the lineup. Curtis Mead, Keibert Ruiz, and Jacob Young have all taken pretty big steps forward.

After sweeping the first-place Rays to start the week, the Orioles lost the first two games of their four-game series against the Blue Jays, with both losses stemming from bullpen meltdowns. Baltimore bounced back with a wild walk-off victory on Saturday and a solid 9-5 win on Sunday. The O’s haven’t played consistently this season, but thanks to the uninspiring play throughout the AL, their current hot streak has pushed them to within a game of the final Wild Card spot.

Even with their series loss to the Brewers over the weekend, the Astros have been playing a lot better recently. They are 10-6 over their last 16 games and may have climbed back onto the fringe of the AL playoff picture. Houston’s highlight from last week was the improbable combined no-hitter that its pitching staff spun on Monday, the first of three wins in a four-game set against the Rangers in Arlington. Yordan Alvarez blasted five home runs in that series to drive the offense, pushing his total to 20 on the season, tied for the AL lead. The Astros have also benefitted from the return of Jeremy Peña a few weeks ago. In his 54 plate appearances since being activated off the IL on May 18, he is slashing .286/.333/.469 with three homers and a 125 wRC+.

It was a rough week for the Athletics. They got swept by the Mariners and were outscored 22-4 in the series, falling out of first place in the process. Then, they lost their weekend series against the Yankees, with Sunday’s rubber match a particularly ugly affair. The A’s held the Yankees scoreless and hitless in eight of the nine innings; the problem was New York plated 13 runs in the third. To make matters worse, both Luis Severino and Aaron Civale were placed on the IL last week with shoulder injuries. The A’s did call up top pitching prospect Gage Jump to take one spot in the rotation, though he struggled in his debut on Tuesday against the Mariners.

The Twins cooled off considerably last week, going 1-6 against the White Sox and Pirates. It’s been an up-and-down season for Minnesota; the team started off 11-7, went 5-16 over its next 21 games, then won 10 of 14 before this latest slide. The pitching staff has been less than stable — Bailey Ober and Kendry Rojas were the latest starters to hit the IL last week, and the team designated Simeon Woods Richardson for assignment on Saturday. At least Joe Ryan has been a steady presence throughout the season. The Twins also have to be encouraged by the progress of former top prospect Brooks Lee this year. It took him about two weeks to get going, as he had a wRC+ of 9 across his first 10 games (32 plate appearances). But in 46 games since then, he is slashing .271/.326/.476 with eight home runs and a 123 wRC+ in 185 plate appearances.

The Giants scored 19 runs in a massive blowout win over the Rockies on Sunday. That was more runs than they had scored over their previous five games combined, all losses. San Francisco has certainly had its offensive issues this year, but for one afternoon, its hitters were crushing the ball and plating a ton of runs. If you’re looking for signs of hope, both Logan Webb and Jung Hoo Lee were activated off the IL on Friday, and Lee tallied 11 hits in three games over the weekend. Also, Rafael Devers ran a 147 wRC+ in May, and Willy Adames wasn’t too far behind, at 119. If those two stars can keep up the offense, maybe the Giants can turn things around. Maybe.

The Tigers are now tied with the Rockies for the worst record in baseball. They simply haven’t been able to break out of a spiral that started when Tarik Skubal hit the IL on May 4. The thing is, the rotation hasn’t been the issue in Detroit. Instead, the offense has been abysmal, scoring just 2.52 runs per game in its last 19 games. It’s been a common refrain for other AL teams that no amount of early-season struggles have hurt that much because the entire league has struggled. Well, this hole might be too much for the Tigers to climb out of. They are seven games back in the Wild Card race and 11.5 games out in the division.