FanGraphs Power Rankings: Opening Day 2026 (No. 19–30)

Welcome back, baseball! Opening Day is almost upon us and with it comes new hopes and dreams for each team. The aspirations for the best teams in the league are more lofty than those of the clubs building for the future, but anything can happen over the course of the long regular season. Over the next two days, I’ll lay out what the best- and worst-case scenario might look like for every team in 2026. Today, I’ll cover the teams projected to finish under .500 in 2026, with those forecast for a .500 or better record to follow tomorrow.

Our power rankings use 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 ranking format that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. For these Opening Day rankings, I’ve pulled the Depth Charts projections and calculated an implied Elo ranking for each team. First up are the full rankings presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams we’re covering today into tiers, with comments on each club. The delta column in the table below shows the change in ranking from the pre-spring training run of the power rankings in February.

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The Rays are in the middle of a roster reset after missing out on the playoffs in each of the last two years. Fresh off a star performance for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, Junior Caminero looks set to truly establish himself as a superstar. Shane McClanahan is finally healthy, too, even if his stuff has looked a little diminished this spring. With their perpetual — and fairly successful — commitment to wringing every last bit of value out of their roster, it would be foolish to completely count out the Rays this season. Even so, considering the strength of the other four teams in the AL East, as well as the other AL wild card contenders, it feels unlikely that Tampa Bay will return to the postseason in 2026.

After a fairly quiet offseason, the Padres made a flurry of moves as spring training was getting underway, bringing in Nick Castellanos, Ty France, Walker Buehler, Griffin Canning, and Germán Márquez to fill out the depth of their roster. None of those veterans profiles as an impact player at this stage of his career, but each of them provides San Diego with the necessary bodies to backfill all the roster turnover that its win-now moves in recent years have created. Maybe the Padres will get lucky and one of them will turn back time for a season. Even with all that added depth, though, the success or failure of the Friars’ season will come down to how their stars perform. Best case, Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, and Mason Miller guide the team to another 90 wins and a third straight postseason appearance. Worst case, the addition of those vets still doesn’t provide enough depth if one or more of their stars falter.

The Athletics have quickly established a potent young core of position players. Led by reigning Rookie of the Year Nick Kurtz and bolstered by the extremely hitter friendly Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, the A’s could very well finish among the leaders in runs scored this year. Their pitching staff, however, is the problem. Their home ballpark certainly doesn’t help, but the organization has also struggled to develop the kinds of mid-rotation arms that it seemed to produce in endless supply during its last contention window half a decade ago. Prospects Gage Jump and Jaime Arnold offer some hope in that regard, though both are a year or two away from making an impact in the big leagues. It’s entirely possible the A’s outslug their opponents en route to a surprising playoff appearance, but it sure feels like they are waiting for their forthcoming move to Las Vegas to announce themselves as true contenders.

The Reds’ hopes to return to the playoffs after their unexpected postseason appearance last year took a hit when Hunter Greene was sidelined for three to four months with bone chips in his elbow. Thankfully, Cincinnati has a bunch of young pitchers who could step up and fill in during Greene’s absence — left-handers Andrew Abbott and Nick Lodolo are coming off strong 2025 campaigns, and the trio of Chase Burns, Rhett Lowder, and Brandon Williamson all made the Opening Day roster, too — but the loss of the team’s ace slims its margin for error considerably. The Reds’ path to a competitive summer will also depend on getting bounce-back performances at the plate from Elly De La Cruz and Matt McLain, as well as a strong rookie campaign from first baseman Sal Stewart, who ranks 34th on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list. If the lineup doesn’t produce, no amount of elite pitching will help Cincinnati make it to October.

It took an incredible September run — and a historic collapse by the Tigers — for the Guardians to hit their best-case scenario last year. It might be a stretch to think Cleveland will pull it off again, but this team has made a habit of outperforming its underlying peripherals over the last few years. A successful division-title defense will require another MVP-caliber season from José Ramírez, breakouts from guys like Kyle Manzardo, Bo Naylor, and Joey Cantillo, and promising debuts from top prospects Chase DeLauter and Travis Bazzana. That’s a lot of things that need to go right for the Guards to reach their ceiling, which means it isn’t hard to imagine what their worst-case scenario might look like either.

Late last season, the Marlins were playing like one of the best teams in the National League. That gave us a glimpse of what their best-case scenario could look like this year. The offense has some intriguing pieces to build around in Jakob Marsee, Kyle Stowers (whose season will be delayed because of a hamstring injury), and Owen Caissie, and left-handed starting pitcher Eury Pérez looks poised to supplant Sandy Alcantara as their ace. Most likely, though, the Marlins aren’t ready for primetime yet. Their lineup has neither the depth nor the star power to threaten opposing pitchers, putting the pressure on their own staff to be as close to flawless as possible. Still, the Marlins have their share of talented pitchers in their major league rotation — Alcantara, Pérez, post-hype sleeper Max Meyer, veteran Chris Paddack, and supreme strike-thrower Janson Junk — and two others in the high minors, top prospects Thomas White and Robby Snelling. It’s possible that those pitchers could pitch well enough for this team to sneak its way into the postseason. But, as was also the case with Miami’s other recent postseason berths in 2020 and 2023, such an outcome would be unexpected.

The Twins took a few steps toward their worst-case scenario last month, when Pablo López went down with a season-ending elbow injury. You might have been able to squint and see how Minnesota could have made a surprise playoff run with López leading the pitching staff, but now the team seems a bit directionless. Sure, there’s still talent on the roster, but it feels like the organization needs a full reset after its dramatic sell-off last summer and significant transition in the front office this winter. Instead of entering the season as a postseason long shot, the Twins might be simply hoping for positive development from the youngsters already on the big league roster and the prospects in the high minors.

The Cardinals have already torn off the Band-Aid this winter, trading away Nolan Arenado, Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, and Brendan Donovan as they stripped their big league roster down to the bones. There really isn’t much left to sell off this summer. That makes their best- and worst-case scenarios pretty easy to parse out. Ideally, they’d like to see a promising debut from JJ Wetherholt, any sign of life from Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman, and continued development from Masyn Winn and Matthew Liberatore. Steps backwards from any of those core pieces would likely push the timeline for their rebuild even further into the future.

The best-case scenario for the Angels has already taken some small hits this spring. Grayson Rodriguez has been dealing with a dead arm these last few weeks — a bigger concern thanks to his lengthy injury history — and reclamation project Alek Manoah has a 9.39 ERA in 15 1/3 innings this spring while walking nearly as many batters as he’s struck out. He has been dealing with a fingernail blister and may begin the season on the IL; if not, he’ll start the season in Triple-A, as he did not make the team’s five-man rotation coming out of camp. Los Angeles was counting on both of them regaining some measure of their previous production to bolster its starting rotation this year. More encouragingly, back in center field, Mike Trout is feeling healthier and running harder than he has since he tore his meniscus in 2024. Even if the Halos get a fully healthy season out of Trout, they probably don’t have enough talent on their roster to make an unexpected postseason push. It might be weird to say, but the worst-case scenario for this team might be a season in which it wins 80 games, misses the playoffs anyway, and delays its seemingly inevitable rebuild by another year.

It was a little odd to see the Nationals option Dylan Crews, Harry Ford, and Josiah Gray to the minor leagues to start the season. After trading away MacKenzie Gore this offseason, Washington’s timeline to break out of its current rebuild was pushed back by a few years. That trio of youngsters should be an important part of the team’s future, and I’m not sure any of them has anything left to prove in Triple-A. The true success or failure of this year should be measured by how many steps forward James Wood takes. He’s the budding superstar the Nats need to build around, and things might start to look particularly dire if he stumbles in his third big league season.

The White Sox improved by 19 wins last year, but they’re still a few years away from completing their current rebuild. They’ve got a quartet of pitching prospects — Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith, Tanner McDougal, and David Sandlin — pushing their way toward the majors this year, and a historically young group of catchers to help guide them. Understandably, Chicago’s prospect pipeline is going to warrant the most attention for the organization this year, but the major league roster does have some notable players for fans to follow on the South Side. It’ll be fascinating to see if Munetaka Murakami can adjust to MLB pitching quickly and if Colson Montgomery can continue his development and sock a lot more home runs in 2026.

It’s not hard to imagine what the worst-case scenario would look like for the Rockies; they endured it just last year. You could argue they’ve been stuck in it for the past seven years. After hiring Paul DePodesta to run the front office, any hint of organizational improvement would be a good sign that things are heading in the right direction. That might not materialize in a bunch of wins at the major league level, but as long as Colorado is working on developing its youngsters, investing in its R&D infrastructure, and prioritizing the future, it would mark a significant departure from how this team has been run in the recent past. It would probably be too much to envision a miraculous run to the playoffs — our playoff odds give the Rockies just a 0.1% shot of playing in October — but bounce-back seasons from shortstop Ezequiel Tovar and center fielder Brenton Doyle, as well as continued development from catcher Hunter Goodman and outfielder Mickey Moniak, would be great to see.