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The calendar has flipped over to May, and a handful of teams have jumped out ahead in the standings. Behind them sit a huge mass of mediocre ballclubs all jostling for position but struggling to stand out in one way or another.

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.

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The Dodgers had their seven-game win streak snapped on Sunday night, but that surge gave them the best record in baseball and a half-game lead over the Padres in the NL West. However, for as well as they’ve played this season, the Dodgers still have their issues, especially on the injury front. Last week began with Tyler Glasnow landing on the IL with shoulder inflammation — he was shut down from throwing for 10-14 days, and the Dodgers are expected to be cautious with him as he works his way back — and then Tommy Edman followed him a few days later after he hurt his right ankle on a slide. It’s the same ankle that Edman sprained last year while he was recovering from offseason wrist surgery and delayed his season debut until August; he did not sprain it this time around, and the Dodgers expect him to return as soon as he’s eligible to come off the IL on Saturday. The lineup hardly skipped a beat without the surprisingly powerful switch-hitter; Los Angeles put up double-digit runs in three games last week.

The Cubs won both of their series against the Pirates and Brewers last week, beating up on some division rivals and pushing their lead in the NL Central to three games, the largest in baseball. They could be facing some more injury trouble as Shota Imanaga exited his start on Sunday with a hamstring injury. Not to be outdone, the Padres completed a perfect week with five straight wins. That streak got San Diego back on track after a pretty poor end to April. On the flip side, the Mets lost both of their series last week.

The Mariners’ ascent has continued despite some choppy seas. Not only did they lose Logan Gilbert to a minor forearm injury, but Luke Raley and Dylan Moore joined him on the IL last week, sapping the lineup of two key contributors. No matter, because Jorge Polanco is doing his best Aaron Judge impression, Cal Raleigh is leading the league in home runs, and role player Leo Rivas is enjoying some surprising success (182 wRC+ in 15 games). More importantly, key setup man Matt Brash was just activated off the IL over the weekend after rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, and George Kirby made his first rehab start as he works his way back from a spring shoulder injury.

Javier Báez lives! The erstwhile shortstop made the transition from the infield to center field a few weeks ago and has suddenly thrived in the new role. He’s collected hits in every game he’s started at his new position. Last week, he clubbed home runs in three straight games and his resurgence is a big reason why the Tigers have maintained the best record in the AL.

The Phillies could use some bullpen help. On Tuesday, Orion Kerkering blew a save against the Nationals when he allowed four runs in the top of the ninth inning, though his offense picked him up with two runs in the home half to walk it off. Philadelphia wasn’t so lucky on Sunday. This time it was José Alvarado who gave up four runs — one in the ninth and three in the 10th — leading to an ugly extra-innings loss to the Diamondbacks. By league- and park-adjusted ERA, the Phillies have the sixth-worst relief corps in baseball right now. Even so, despite the bullpen woes, they’ve won six of their last eight games and enter this week just 2.5 games behind the Mets in the NL East standings.

The Giants are no longer in first place, though they’ve mostly kept pace with the surging Dodgers and Padres. San Francisco enters this week as the third-place team in the NL West, but the club is just 1.5 games out of first. That early-season success isn’t much of a mirage, either. The Giants’ actual record is just a game better than their Pythagorean record and two games better than their BaseRuns record. Meanwhile, it seems shortstop Willy Adames is finally heating up. Last week, he slashed .348/.483/.826 with three home runs and a 251 wRC+ in 29 plate appearances.

Last week was a bit of a mixed bag for the two NL teams in this tier, as both the Braves and Diamondbacks went 3-3 and maintained their places on the fringe of the playoff picture. Arizona salvaged its weekend series with a wild Sunday win over the Phillies to go along with a series win over the Mets. All eyes are on ace Corbin Burnes, who is skipping his start this week due to a sore shoulder. Atlanta, meanwhile, escaped Colorado with a series victory but lost two of three against the Dodgers over the weekend.

Aaron Judge can’t do it all. He extended his hitting streak to 14 games on Sunday — and on the season he has a ludicrous .423/.510/.777 slash line with 11 home runs, a 261 wRC+ and 3.4 WAR — but the Yankees lost both of their series last week to the Orioles and Rays. Luckily for New York, though, no one else in the AL East was able to take advantage of the hiccup; despite going 2-4 last week, the Yankees enter Monday’s series opener against the Padres with the same two-game lead that they held a week ago.

The Royals blasted seven home runs in their victory over the Orioles on Sunday; they had hit 18 total as a team heading into that contest. Following the barrage, they are now tied with the Pirates for the second-fewest homers in baseball. However, that lack of power hasn’t held them back over the last two weeks. Kansas City has won four straight series and is 11-2 during this stretch.

The Rangers fired offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker on Sunday, the second domino to fall after they demoted key offseason acquisition Jake Burger on Friday. Texas has lost five straight series and scored more than four runs just three times in its last 16 games, a truly miserable stretch. Meanwhile, the Athletics have become road warriors after going 5-2 on their latest trip — which included a huge series win over the Rangers — and pushing their record to 13-7 away from Sacramento. We’ll see if they can keep up their winning ways when they return home this week for series against the Mariners and Yankees.

The Blue Jays and Orioles each moved one game closer to the Yankees during New York’s skid last week, but the Red Sox and Rays failed to gain any ground after matching the AL East leader’s 2-4 record. Boston has to be a little worried about its mounting injury woes; as soon as the team welcomed back Lucas Giolito, it placed Walker Buehler on the IL with a shoulder injury. The bigger blow came on Friday, when first baseman Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon; he’s out for the season after undergoing surgery on Sunday.

The one saving grace for the Orioles last was the collective poor play from the rest of the AL East. They started the year with 48% odds to make the playoffs; they’re at 13.4% right now and time is growing shorter for them to turn things around. Baltimore’s series win over the Yankees at the beginning of last week could have been that turning point, but the O’s followed it up with a series loss to the Royals.

The Nationals have been on a quiet run of good play over the last few weeks. Despite going 3-3 last week, they’re 9-7 over their last 16 games. At the forefront are two guys they acquired in the big Juan Soto trade a few years ago. James Wood has pushed his wRC+ up to 157 after collecting eight hits last week, and MacKenzie Gore’s strikeout rate is now up to 36.4% on the season after striking out nine in another solid start on Sunday.

After starting the season with a promising 9-5 record, the Angels have won just four of their last 19 games. To make matters worse, Mike Trout landed on the IL with a bone bruise in his left knee. Prior to hurting his knee, Trout had been showing some good power — his nine home runs are tied for fourth in the AL — but his overall batting line (a 97 wRC+) left a lot to be desired.

A rain-shortened win over the Astros on Sunday gave the White Sox a rare series victory and their fifth win in their last 10 games. Amazingly enough, their run differential is just a single run worse than that of the Guardians, who are 10 games up on them in the standings. This little “hot” streak has pushed the South Siders ahead of their historically inept pace from last year, though they’re still tracking to lose well over 100 games this season.

Random relievers can do crazy things in small samples. Who can ever forget Nationals right-hander Justin Miller striking out 57.9% of the hitters he faced across a three-week stretch of 2018? Or Kody Funderburk’s legendary whiff explosion to close out the 2023 Twins season? Guardians reliever Hunter Gaddis is on one of these incendiary strikeout runs, and it’s driving me to madness.

Gaddis might not strike you as operating at the same level of random as Miller and Funderburk. By any set of reasonable standards, Gaddis broke out last season, appearing in nearly half of his team’s games while delivering a 1.59 ERA. But — forgive me — I didn’t really buy it. His 23.7% strikeout rate matched the league average for relievers, and his arsenal didn’t exactly justify a .205 BABIP. Given his pitch shapes and peripherals, I figured Gaddis would settle in as more of a solid middle-relief type than one of the premier backend arms in the league. And then this April happened. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in January, I wrote an article called “Unfuzzing the Strike Zone.” The premise was pretty simple. As umpires have grown more accurate, as the edges of the strike zone have gotten clearer and more distinct, the strike zone has effectively gotten smaller. Misses go both ways, but there’s a big difference between an incorrectly called ball and an incorrectly called strike. Calling a pitch inside the zone a ball doesn’t shrink the effective size of the zone, but calling a pitch outside the zone a strike does make it bigger. As long as a pitcher knows it’s possible to get a strike call out there, they’ll consider it part of the zone. Little did I know that as I was writing that article, Major League Baseball was preparing to test its exact premise.

The strike zone has steadily shed its fuzz over the past 23 seasons, but on Thursday, Jayson Stark and Ken Rosenthal reported in The Athletic that the league has decided to break out a sweater shaver. Over the offseason, the Major League Umpires Association came to a new agreement with MLB. Part of the agreement included tightening the standards by which ball-strike calls are graded.

Umpires used to have a two-inch buffer around the edge of the strike zone, meaning that if they’d missed a call by fewer than two inches outside the zone, the call would still go down as correct in their assessments. Having that buffer is necessary because calling balls and strikes is extraordinarily difficult. It’s extremely rare for an umpire to get every call right even in a single game. The new border is just three-quarters of an inch on either side. The league is demanding a less fuzzy strike zone. Read the rest of this entry »

It is well known that analytics have changed the baseball landscape. Moreover, it is widely understood that the evolution is ongoing. Embracing innovation, especially within the technology realm, has increasingly become a must for teams looking to keep up with — and ideally get a step ahead of — the competition. For front offices across the game, it’s adapt or die.

What does that mean for the general managers and presidents of baseball operations who lead those front offices? In other words, how have the ever-continuing advancements impacted their jobs over the years? Wanting to find out, I asked four longtime executives for their perspectives.

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On how analytics have impacted the job

John Mozeliak, St. Louis Cardinals

“When I first broke in, how you made decisions was basically based on scouting reports and traditional statistics. Now it’s much more analytically driven because of the advanced metrics. If you think about it, in the old days when people would invest in stocks… it’s the same kind of thinking now. The more information you have, the better your decisions are. That’s changed quite a bit over the last 25 years.

“Two things come to mind. One is understanding the longevity of a player. In other words, how long should you be investing in a player? The other thing is prospect evaluation; how much value someone might have, even though they’re still in the minor leagues. When you think back to 20-30 years ago, a lot of times minor league players didn’t have the same type of value that you’re seeing today.

“The economics of baseball have changed drastically. There is more revenue in the game, and higher payrolls, but there is also how you think about moving talent for talent. It’s much more based on economics than just pure ‘I think he’s a good baseball player.’”

Jerry Dipoto, Seattle Mariners Read the rest of this entry »

Ty France went into last season trying to be something he’s not, and the results reflected that. Over 535 plate appearances split between the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds, he slashed .234/.305/.365 with 13 home runs and a 93 wRC+. Statistically speaking, it was the worst year of his career.

Now with the Minnesota Twins after inking a modest $1M free-agent deal in mid-February, France went into yesterday with numbers more in line with what he did from 2019-2023. A month-plus into the campaign, the 30-year-old first baseman has a 118 wRC+ and a .271/.341/.407 slash line.

How has he rediscovered the better version of himself?

“My swing is simple and compact right now,” France told me prior to an 0-for-4 Friday night that included his being robbed on a diving catch and lining an at-em ball at an infielder. “Instead of trying to do too much, I’m just trying to get in my best position and take a good swing.

“Guys are getting paid for homers and doing damage, so a lot of my training last offseason was geared toward trying to hit the ball in the air and drive the ball,” France added. “I kind of lost touch with what I was best at, which is using the right side of the field just collecting hits. This past offseason was about getting back to the basics and rediscovering who I am as a hitter.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mike Trout’s latest injury, Pete Alonso’s renaissance, a Daulton Varsho recovery catch, Andrés Muñoz the cat guy, and the called strike zone (sort of) shrinking. Then (40:49) they bring on top-tier Patreon supporter Carson Otter to talk about his background with baseball and the podcast, share his baseball-related work experience, and answer listener emails about home teams hiring umpires, the one Statcast stat about Babe Ruth they would want, and a way to extend a consecutive-games-played streak without playing.

Audio intro: Cory Brent, “Effectively Wild Theme”
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Through the first five weeks of the 2025 season, the best you could say about Mike Trout was that he was at least healthy enough to play every day and was hitting a lot of home runs. However, the 33-year-old slugger departed Wednesday’s game against the Mariners with soreness in his surgically repaired left knee following a sprint to first base, and while he remained on the active roster for Thursday’s game, afterwards, the Angels placed him on the injured list with a bone bruise in the knee. That’s not a worst-case scenario, but it’s frustrating news on top of what’s already been a slow start.

Trout entered this season with more question marks hanging over his head than at any point in his 15-year career. After playing just 82 games in 2023 due to a fractured hamate bone — including just one after July 3 — he was limited to 29 games last year due to a torn meniscus in his left knee. He underwent surgery, but instead of the typical four-to-six week timetable, he needed nearly three months before beginning a rehab stint, and then played just two innings for Triple-A Salt Lake City before exiting due to discomfort in the same knee. After he flew back to Anaheim for further evaluation, he was diagnosed with another meniscus tear, requiring season-ending surgery.

Upon reporting to the Angels’ spring training facility in Tempe, Arizona in February, Trout met with general manager Perry Minasian and manager Ron Washington, and together they decided that the best course of action would be to move the 11-time All-Star center fielder to right field in order to save his body some wear and tear. Up until Wednesday, the plan seemed to be working; he’d played all 29 of the Angels’ games (matching last year’s total) with seven starts at DH interspersed with his appearances in right field. His .179/.264/.462 batting line, 96 wRC+, and 0.1 WAR aren’t anything to write home about, but he’s been hitting the ball hard on contact. His nine homers are enough to tie him for third in the American League alongside Tyler Soderstrom, Spencer Torkelson, and teammate Logan O’Hoppe, behind only Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh. Read the rest of this entry »

I never thought I’d get to use the transit method. If that phrase rings a bell but you can’t quite place it, let me remind you about NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which spent nine years pointed out into space, observing stars. By measuring tiny dips in the brightness of those stars, scientists were able to detect the existence of thousands upon thousands of planets that orbited them. Those exoplanets blocked out some of the light when their orbit brought them between their star and Earth, and Kepler was attuned to interpret the minuscule effect of those shadows. Anyway, this is as close as I’ll ever come.

It happened in Seattle on Wednesday, and it started in the bottom of the seventh inning. The score was knotted at three at the beginning of the frame, but the Mariners quickly broke things wide open. J.P. Crawford knocked in two runs with a single past the third baseman, then Julio Rodríguez knocked in Crawford with a double to the deepest part of the ballpark. That brought Cal Raleigh to the plate with Rodríguez, briefly, on second. In the dugout, tuckered out from his 270-foot journey, Crawford did exactly what a high-performance athlete is supposed to do. He focused on recovery.

Raleigh took a Reid Detmers curve for a ball, then another for a strike. Rodríguez took off as soon as Detmers raised his right foot for the 1-1 pitch. The slider hit the outside corner and Raleigh was out in front of it, chopping it down toward the third baseman. Or rather, toward where third baseman Luis Rengifo would have been standing were he not covering third base. The steal attempt forced him over to the bag and he watched helplessly as the world’s easiest chopper floated right toward the vacancy he’d created. But that vacancy was soon to be filled. Rodríguez bore down on the base, putting him on a collision course with the ball. Or not. Read the rest of this entry »