FanGraphs Power Rankings: September 6-19

It’s shaping up to be a dramatic finish to the season, with surprise contenders and potential tie breaking scenarios still very much alive. With just two weeks left in the season, three teams in the National League have already punched their postseason tickets, and though nothing is official yet, the three division races in the American League have largely been decided as well. That leaves the NL East and West (the Central is all but sewn up) and the two Wild Card races still to be determined.

A quick refresher: my approach takes the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (50%/50% FIP- and RA9-) — and combines them to create an overall team quality metric. I add in a factor for “luck” — adjusting based on a team’s expected win-loss record — to produce a power ranking.

These six teams have either already clinched a playoff berth or should clinch sometime this week. They’re also the favorites to make deep postseason runs; the Dodgers lead the pack with 20.8% odds to win the World Series. It’s a little weird to see Max Scherzer hit a major career milestone in a Dodger uniform, but he finally reached 3,000 career strikeouts last week. Since joining Los Angeles on July 30, he’s posted an absurd 0.78 ERA across nine starts with a 79-to-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio. His performance, and Walker Buehler’s season-long excellence, give the Dodgers an embarrassment of riches when it comes to who should start the NL Wild Card game should the Dodgers fail to catch up to the Giants in the West.

Despite clinching their fourth straight playoff berth on Saturday, the Brewers have a pretty tough schedule to finish off their season. They will play the devil-magic driven Cardinals seven times in their last 13 games, beginning with a four-game set at home. They’ll also match up with the desperate Mets later this week and end their season with a three-game series in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. With the NL Central all but wrapped up, and the Giants and Dodgers fated to face each other in the divisional round — assuming one of those two teams wins the Wild Card game — the Brewers are simply playing out the string waiting to see which NL East team they’ll face in the first round. That gives them a bit of leeway to make sure their roster is healthy and rested for a deep run into the playoffs.

It’s been lost amidst the much larger collapses of the Yankees and Red Sox, but the Rays haven’t played very well during the last month of the season. They’re just 8-10 in September and lost four of seven against the Tigers over the last two weeks. Their lead in the AL East was so large that, combined with the aforementioned collapses, they don’t really have much to worry about as far as clinching their playoff spot, but their schedule is pretty difficult over the next two weeks, which could affect their seeding. They play the Blue Jays and Marlins at home this week and then close the season with a road trip to Houston and New York. Wander Franco should be returning from his hamstring injury soon and Shane Baz is on his way up to the majors to make his debut today. If Baz makes a good impression against Toronto, he could play a crucial role for the beleaguered Rays rotation in the playoffs.

The Astros have the best shot at taking the top seed in the AL from the Rays. Over the last two weeks, they sorted out some of the offensive woes that had been plaguing them during the second half, scoring double-digit runs in four of their last 13 games. They play the Angels and A’s on the road this week before a huge three-game set against Tampa Bay to open the final week of the season. Should the Rays continue to slide, the Astros could sneak into the top spot in the league right as the season ends, with that series in Houston the deciding factor.

The odds are that two of these three teams will end up playing in the AL Wild Card game. Somehow the Red Sox managed to weather a serious COVID outbreak on their roster. Since August 27, the day they placed their first player on the COVID-IL, they’ve gone 13-9 despite losing 15 different players to positive tests or the close contact protocols. What could have been a disastrous blow to Boston’s playoff hopes has barely hurt their standing in the Wild Card race. Last week, they solidified their grip on a playoff spot with a series win against the Mariners and a sweep of the Orioles. Now they enter the last two weeks of the season with the easiest schedule of these three teams; they play the two teams from New York this week and close the season with six on the road against the Orioles and Nationals.

The Blue Jays have been the hottest team in baseball in September, losing just three times this month. They leap frogged three teams in the standings in just two weeks and now hold the second AL Wild Card spot outright. A 1 1/2 game lead over the Yankees might not seem like much, but they’re playing the best baseball of their season right now. The battle over this final playoff slot might come down to a three-game series against the Yankees in Toronto September 28–30. But even if the Blue Jays lose ground in that critical series, they have the benefit of finishing their season with three games against the Orioles.

A series win against the Orioles last week has been the lone bright spot for the Yankees in September. That’s the only series they’ve won this month, and they face a tough road ahead. They begin this week with a three-game series against the Rangers and then face the Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Rays to close out their season. Six games against their direct Wild Card competition gives them an opportunity to climb back into the race. That would require them to put together a string of wins, something they’ve looked incapable of doing since winning 13 straight in late August.

The A’s have put together a five-game win streak at just the right time, with a sweep of the Angels over the weekend. That’s helped them stay within two games of the final Wild Card spot. Unfortunately, they don’t have the benefit of any remaining games against the AL East contenders and can’t directly affect their position in the standings. Instead they’ll be relegated to scoreboard watching and hoping the Red Sox, Yankees, and Blue Jays all beat each other up enough to provide a window — provided they continue winning themselves. The final 13 games of their season are against the Mariners and Astros, so it won’t be easy.

Out of nowhere, the Cardinals have jumped over the Reds and Padres to claim the second Wild Card spot in the National League. They’ve won eight in a row and all but eliminated the Padres in a three-game sweep over the weekend. They’ve gone 12-6 in September, but their rise in the standings has more to do with the collapse of San Diego and the inconsistency of Cincinnati. They finish off their season with seven games apiece against the Brewers and Cubs. With a commanding three-game lead in the standings, they now control their own playoff destiny.

With 12 games remaining against the Giants, Dodgers, and Braves, the Padres season has likely come to an ugly early end. Technically, they’ve still got a shot at that final Wild Card spot, but the odds are stacked against them. The Reds haven’t helped themselves either. They haven’t won a series since sweeping the Marlins in four games from August 19–22. Of the NL Wild Card contenders, their schedule is the easiest over the last two weeks: six against the Pirates, four against the Nationals, and two versus the White Sox.

The Phillies have a better shot at claiming the NL East division crown than catching the Cardinals in the NL Wild Card race. They’re just two games behind the Braves and the division could be decided in a three-game series in Atlanta from September 28–30. Before that fateful series, the Braves continue their West Coast road trip with four in Arizona and three in San Diego while the Phillies host the Orioles and Pirates this week. At 5 1/2 games back, you can probably count out the Mets, especially after their series loss against Philadelphia last weekend. That was their big opportunity to get back into the division race and they blew it. They have one final series against the Braves during the last weekend of the season, but it will likely be too little, too late.

Meanwhile, the Mariners saw a prime opportunity to secure an AL Wild Card spot slip through their fingers. On September 10, they had just won the first game of a three-game set against the Diamondbacks, cutting their deficit in the standings to just one game. They wound up losing the remaining two games to Arizona that weekend and then lost the following series to a direct competitor, the Red Sox. Three of those four losses were the fault of Seattle’s bullpen. That group has had to shoulder a ton of responsibility this year and just couldn’t hold it together when everything was on the line.

Among the long list of teams that have been eliminated from playoff contention, a handful still have an opportunity to affect the playoff races as spoilers. The Angels, Marlins, Pirates, and Diamondbacks all have 10 games remaining against teams directly competing for a playoff spot or vying for playoff seeding; the Orioles have nine. The Nationals and Cubs each have seven games remaining against Wild Card hopefuls. On the other end of the spectrum, the Royals schedule is filled with teams from this tier that have already been eliminated, while the Rangers and Twins have just a single series each as their last opportunity to play spoiler.

Major league baseball is on pace for four 100-loss teams for the second time in the last two full seasons. The one team that has lost 100 games in both of those seasons? The Orioles, who have actually lost 100 games in three consecutive full seasons. There are a few signs of hope in Baltimore — Cedric Mullins’s breakout has been a joy to watch and they now possess one of the strongest farm systems in the majors — but after so much futility over the last four years, one would hope to see more progress than they’ve shown so far.

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