Over the past week, some of baseball’s top teams stumbled their way into the All-Star break while a chunk of fringe contenders ended the first half with encouraging results.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%.) 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 — I’ve taken some 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 Phillies began the final week of the first half on the highest of notes — they swept the Dodgers behind a pitching staff that held the mighty Los Angeles offense to just five runs across the three-game series. Unfortunately, Philadelphia followed up that triumph with a series loss to the lowly A’s that included an 18-3 blowout on Sunday. Zack Wheeler was scratched from his scheduled start with a minor back injury and Ranger Suárez is also dealing with back tightness. Their ailments will keep both starters from pitching in the All-Star Game, though they’re expected to recover in time to make their next scheduled starts. Regardless of how the week ended, the Phillies carry baseball’s best record into the break and are a cut above the rest of the contenders.

Entering the final weekend of the first half, the Orioles had a chance to pull further ahead of the sputtering Yankees in the AL East standings. Sure, Baltimore had just been swept by the Cubs, but it still held a two-game lead in the division ahead of its three-game series against New York at Camden Yards. Instead, the O’s barely avoided suffering another sweep, which would have dropped them to second place. Down to their final out after Craig Kimbrel had coughed up the lead in the top of the inning, the Orioles scored three unearned runs on a costly error, by Gold Glove shortstop Anthony Volpe, and a misplayed fly ball, by Alex Verdugo, to beat New York in walk-off fashion. It was a terrible loss for the Yankees during an especially brutal month of games; their 8-18 record since June 15 is the worst mark in the majors. And yet, for as awful as they’ve played, the Yankees finished the first half just a game behind the Orioles. The AL East race is going to be quite the treat down the stretch.

Baltimore wasn’t the only AL division leader to limp into the All-Star break. The Guardians lost both of their series last week and are now just 4.5 games ahead of the Twins in the AL Central.

In a pretty big battle for the final AL Wild Card spot last weekend, the Red Sox emerged triumphant in two of their three games against the Royals. Rafael Devers has been on fire this month, but he’s getting a lot of help from Jarren Duran and a surprising breakout from Connor Wong. Boston finished the first half as one of the hottest teams in baseball, winning 18 of its final 25 games entering the break. That 18-7 record since June 15 is the best in the majors across that span. That said, the Sox have a pretty formidable schedule ahead of them; they’ll open the second half with nine of their next 10 series against teams in the middle of the playoff hunt.

The Braves went 4-3 last week, winning a weekend series against the Padres to tighten their grip on the top NL Wild Card spot.

After being swept by the Phillies, the Dodgers traveled to Detroit and were walked off twice in their weekend series with the Tigers. On Saturday, the bullpen squandered a five-run lead in the ninth before losing the game in the 10th. Then on Sunday, a pair of errors by pitcher Yohan Ramírez on back-to-back sacrifice bunts allowed the winning run to score. That loss dropped Los Angeles to 5-10 over its last 15 games, the second-worst record in the National League since June 28. Yet, despite the recent woes, the Dodgers still hold a seven-game lead in the NL West.

The Astros, Brewers, and Twins all wobbled their way into the All-Star break; Houston lost a series to the Rangers, Milwaukee salvaged a single win against the Nationals on Sunday, and Minnesota got tripped up against the Giants.

The Mets won five in a row last week before that streak was snapped on Sunday. Still, those wins carried them into the final Wild Card spot, a game ahead of the Diamondbacks and Padres. Francisco Lindor is once again proving just how much he deserves to be an All-Star despite not being selected to the roster in any of his four seasons with the Mets. Since the beginning of June, Lindor has posted a 155 wRC+, and overall, he’s slashing .253/.329/.454; among NL shortstops, he is tied for first in home runs (17), fourth in wRC+ (125), and second in WAR (4.2). Brandon Nimmo has been even better during this prolonged stretch (172 wRC+), and he won’t be joining the festivities in Texas either.

With a pair of doubleheaders, the Cardinals wound up playing six games in five days last week. They lost both games Wednesday against the intrastate-rival Royals and split their four-game series with the suddenly hot Cubs over the weekend. Despite those lackluster results, St. Louis pulled within 4.5 games of the NL Central lead because of the Brewers’ recent struggles.

After showing some signs of life with 8-3 and 11-0 victories early last week, the Mariners fell back to their familiar, frustrating inconsistencies with three straight one-run losses against the Angels to close the first half. Less than a month ago, on June 18, Seattle held a 10-game lead in the AL West. Now, the M’s enter the break barely clinging to a one-game advantage over the second-place Astros.

The Royals may have lost their series to the Red Sox over the weekend, but they were one of the early movers in the trade market, acquiring Hunter Harvey from the Nationals on Saturday to bolster their bullpen. The relief corps has been a particularly glaring weak spot for Kansas City, but more importantly, the deal signals that the organization is looking to aggressively buy before the deadline in an attempt to take advantage of this surprisingly successful season.

The Diamondbacks had an encouraging finish to their mostly disappointing first half, splitting their series with the Braves early last week and then winning two of three against the Blue Jays over the weekend. With Friday night’s win, Arizona went above .500 for the first time since early April; at 49-48, the D-backs are tied with the Padres in the NL Wild Card standings, just a game behind the Mets for the final playoff berth. Meanwhile, San Diego won just once last week and lost its grip on a playoff spot in the process. The good news is that Xander Bogaerts was activated off the IL on Friday and hopefully can provide a boost to the Friars down the stretch.

The Pirates won a big series against the Brewers last week before sweeping the White Sox over the weekend. Those five wins pushed Pittsburgh’s record back to .500 for the first time since April, and the team sits just a game and a half back in the NL Wild Card race. Of course, the most exciting member of the Pirates is rookie right-hander Paul Skenes, who was selected to start for the NL in Tuesday’s All-Star Game. His sheer dominance just might keep the Pirates in the playoff picture for at least another few weeks and force the organization to make some difficult decisions about whether it wants to push for the postseason or stay the course and continue its rebuild for yet another year.

These six teams have been hanging around the margins of the playoff picture for most of the season, and all of them finished off the first half with some really encouraging results.

The Rays scrambled back to .500 with critical series wins against the Yankees and Guardians last week, though because Boston has been so hot recently, Tampa Bay and the rest of these AL fringe teams still have long odds to make a run at a Wild Card berth. For the Rangers, that possibly means selling off a few of their expendable players at the trade deadline. Texas managed to win its weekend series against the Astros, but the path to the playoffs for the defending champs is crowded and might be too tough to follow. The Tigers took three of four from the Guardians and two of three against the Dodgers last week, but Detroit faces an even longer and more difficult road than the other AL clubs in this tier.

For the Cubs, Giants, and Reds, there’s still plenty of hope that they can make a run over the next few months. Both Cincinnati and Chicago went 5-2 last week to pull within striking distance of the final NL Wild Card spot; the Reds are three games out, while the Cubs are 3.5 back. San Francisco didn’t have as good of a week as those other two teams, but Blake Snell turned in a brilliant start after being activated off the IL on Sunday. Still, of this trio of NL fringe contenders, the Giants have the best odds to make the playoffs.

The Blue Jays haven’t committed to selling or standing pat yet, but their series loss to the Diamondbacks over the weekend didn’t do much to encourage them to try and stick in the playoff race. The decision to trade away some of their best players could significantly alter the fortunes of their franchise, but it seems more likely that they’ll just retool a bit and try to come back competitive next year.

Despite flirting with the NL Wild Card race a month ago, the Nationals announced their intention to sell at the deadline when they traded reliever Hunter Harvey to the Royals on Saturday. That’s wise, because in a seller’s market, Washington has a handful of players who would be very enticing acquisitions for contending clubs. Yes, selling is a bummer, but considering the development of young talents such as James Wood and CJ Abrams, it might not be too long before the Nats are deadline buyers once again.

The A’s added another gigantic offensive outburst to their ledger this year with an 18-3 drubbing of the Phillies on Sunday. They scored 19 against the Orioles just a few weeks ago and 20 against the Marlins on May 4. Of course, that means they’ve scored just 3.5 runs per game in the other 95 they’ve played so far. Still, there are some positive signs from their offense, including Brent Rooker’s continued breakout and a red hot Lawrence Butler.

With his home run on Sunday, Brenton Doyle has already blasted eight dingers in July, and he’s looking more and more like a core player the Rockies can build around. His defensive prowess has already made him one of the more valuable center fielders in the game, but now he’s hitting and hitting for power, giving Colorado an all-around talent at a premium position. That should give Rockies fans some hope as they suffer through yet another disappointing season.

These next few weeks should go a long way towards separating the wheat from the chaff in the postseason race. For the teams on the fringe of the playoff picture, a timely hot streak could convince them to upgrade at the trade deadline, while a cold snap could push them into seller mode. With the All-Star break looming, it’s time for some serious introspection as teams gear up for the stretch run.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached the halfway point of the season and the playoff races are starting to take a more defined shape. While the group of teams vying for the NL Wild Card looks pretty big on paper, our playoff odds show that the postseason field is actually more clearly delineated than the standings might lead you to believe.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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. Read the rest of this entry »

There were some big shakeups in the AL playoff picture as the Red Sox and Astros charged up the standings, while the NL playoff picture is just as messy as ever.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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 — I’ve taken some 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 Orioles had a statement series win against the Yankees last week, taking two of the three games, including a dramatic extra-innings affair on Wednesday and an old-fashioned blowout on Thursday. Unfortunately, they followed that triumph up with a pretty ugly sweep against the Astros in Houston. The Yankees weren’t immune to the weekend woes after the high emotions of that intra-divisional series; they dropped two of three to the Braves and lost Giancarlo Stanton to a hamstring injury. He joined Anthony Rizzo on the IL, and suddenly the Yankees’ offensive depth is being tested.

The Phillies signed Cristopher Sánchez to a four-year extension over the weekend, and he celebrated by spinning seven shutout innings against the Diamondbacks on Sunday. Philadelphia now has the three best qualified starters in the NL by ERA — and Aaron Nola isn’t one of them. Bryce Harper is producing like he wants to win another MVP. Meanwhile, the calendar says June so Kyle Schwarber is crushing the ball.

The Guardians won their fifth straight game on Sunday, sweeping the Blue Jays and overtaking the Yankees for the best record in the American League (though New York still has the most wins in the majors, with 52). Cleveland travels to Baltimore and Kansas City this week in two pretty big tests of the team’s mettle.

The Dodgers haven’t missed Mookie Betts or Yoshinobu Yamamoto yet thanks to the scorching hot Shohei Ohtani. He blasted four home runs last week and is now up to nine in June to go along with a 207 wRC+ this month.

After falling to 10 games back in the NL East on June 11, the Braves have strung together three series wins in a row and have gone 8-3 in that stretch. That cut the deficit down to seven games. Michael Harris II joined Ronald Acuña Jr. on the IL last week, but the rest of their offensive stars have shown a bit of life recently. But the real reason why they should still be considered one of the better teams in the league is because of their pitching staff; over these last 11 games, they’ve allowed just 2.9 runs per game.

The Mariners’ fun differential was nowhere to be found last week; they lost back-to-back series to the Guardians and Marlins on the road. Seattle has a gauntlet of AL Wild Card contenders on the horizon, beginning this week with series against the Rays, Twins, Orioles, and Blue Jays coming up. The Mariners still have a solid grip on the AL West, but last week showed just how razor thin their margin for error is without any significant upgrades to their lineup.

The Red Sox hovered around .500 for essentially the entire season — never climbing more than four games over and never falling more than two games below that mark. Until last week, that is. Their series win over the Yankees a couple of weekends ago gave them the momentum to sweep the Blue Jays and win their weekend series over the Reds, pushing them six games over .500 and into sole possession of the final AL Wild Card spot.

Perhaps the Astros’ sweep of the Orioles last weekend will end up being the turning point for what has been an otherwise disappointing season. They’ve now won three series in a row and have cut their deficit in the AL West from 10 games to just six in the span of a week. Even so, last week was far from ideal. They finally decided to cut the struggling José Abreu, and their pitching staff suffered yet another injury; this time it was Justin Verlander, who was placed on the IL with neck discomfort on Tuesday. Still, the Astros definitely should not be counted out of the playoff picture yet.

The Cardinals and Mets seem to be the two teams in the NL Wild Card race with the most forward momentum right now. St. Louis swept the Giants over the weekend to pull within five games of the Brewers in the NL Central. And no team has been better this month than the Mets, who are 13-6 in June following their brutal 9-19 May. New York’s bats have awoken during the scorching stretch, with a 142 wRC+ that ranks first in the majors this month. Of course, because they’re the Mets, they capped off their week with a self-inflicted wound. Closer Edwin Díaz was ejected before pitching the ninth inning of Sunday’s 5-2 win over the Cubs for a sticky substance violation; his ejection triggered an automatic 10-game suspension.

Last week, I had this group of fringe AL contenders behind the much larger NL group, but I think these five teams are a bit better than that blob of clubs fighting over the NL Wild Card. Right now, the Rays and Rangers look like they’re trending upward, while the Royals and Blue Jays have had pretty terrible fortnights.

After series wins against the Twins and Pirates, the Rays are tied with the Astros in the AL Wild Card standings, and just like Houston, it’s too early to count Tampa Bay out of the race. The same could be said of the Rangers, who are only a half-game behind the Rays and just swept the Royals over the weekend. Texas also welcomed back Max Scherzer on Sunday, the first of what is expected to be a number of reinforcements from the injured list over the next few months.

The Royals have really floundered these past two weeks, winning just three times in their last 13 games. They’ve lost their grip on a Wild Card spot and are now nine games back in the AL Central. Their Cinderella Story might have been too good to be true, though there’s plenty of season left for them to rediscover some of their magic — after all, they have six more games against the White Sox. For now, Kansas City returns home for three games against the Marlins before hosting the Guardians for a four-game set over the weekend.

It’s probably too late for the Blue Jays to regain any ground in the playoff race at this point; they lost all six games they played last week and have won just three times over their last 12 games. Making matters worse, their no. 2 prospect, Orelvis Martinez, was suspended 80 games on Sunday for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drugs policy.

The Tigers took advantage of Toronto’s losing streak to leap the Jays in the Wild Card standings. Detroit’s -6 run differential and +9 Base Runs differential paints a much better picture than its actual record 36-41 record. The biggest issue for the Tigers is their lackluster offense; their 11-run outburst on Sunday broke a stretch of six games in which they had scored two or fewer runs. Their starting rotation has been carrying them for essentially the entire season, and they’re approaching the point where they need to make a decision about whether they want to keep Jack Flaherty for the stretch run or try to get a haul of prospects for the resurgent starter.

Going .500 in a given week is the measuring stick of success for the teams in this tier. That bare minimum means they’re sticking around in the crowded NL Wild Card race without actually pulling too far ahead or falling too far behind. The Diamondbacks, Nationals, Pirates, and Cubs all met that meager mark last week. Meanwhile, the Padres won three of four against the Brewers over the weekend to cap off a 4-3 week and maintain their loose grip on the final Wild Card spot. It feels like the whole NL playoff picture is like a giant Pepe Silvia bulletin board.

The Reds lost both of their series last week and have dropped in the standings just as quickly as they climbed them a few weeks ago. Their youngsters are still battling though plenty of inconsistency as they work out the growing pains of trying to develop in the big leagues. They’ll welcome back Noelvi Marte from his 80-game suspension soon — he’s eligible to be activated on June 27 — and Matt McLain has shown some recent progress in his rehab from his shoulder injury. Those two should provide some support for the lineup whenever they rejoin the club.

Despite playing in the Rickwood Field game on Thursday night and honoring franchise icon Willie Mays after he died at 93 on Tuesday, the Giants had a week to forget on the field. They were swept by the Cardinals over the weekend and now carry a five-game losing streak into Monday night’s series opener against the Cubs in San Francisco. This is a huge four-game set; Chicago is one of the teams immediately ahead of the Giants in the Wild Card standings. And yet despite these woes — because this is the middling National League — San Francisco is only three games behind the Padres for the final playoff berth.

The Angels may have avoided a serious injury scare last weekend: Zach Neto had to be removed from Saturday’s game, but it doesn’t appear to be a serious issue. That’s good, because Neto has been one of the precious few bright spots for the Halos this year.

The Marlins had three walk-off victories in a row last week — and won both of their series to boot — but that’s pretty much the only thing to celebrate in Miami. They had to scratch both Jesús Luzardo and Braxton Garrett from their scheduled starts last weekend, and now their starting rotation is devoid of any of the young, promising starters they’ve developed over the last few years. With so many injuries decimating their youth movement, it’s starting to feel like this season is a complete lost cause, without any hint of momentum to look forward to next year.

There is one problem with putting the White Sox in their own tier below that group of four rebuilding clubs above them: I have to write something about them each week. They won twice last week, which should be considered a moral victory given the historically bad pace they were on a few weeks ago. They’re still on track to lose 119 games, which would match the modern record.

The National League playoff picture continues to grow each week. There are now nine teams within two games of each other at the back of the Wild Card race and just two teams in the entire league who can convincingly be considered out of the race entirely. That has all the ingredients for a dramatic playoff chase this summer.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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 — I’ve taken some 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.

…

The Yankees lost their weekend series against the Red Sox, and even though they won three of four from the Royals earlier in the week, their lead in AL East was trimmed to just a game and a half. They’ll host the Orioles, the team chasing them, in a huge three-game set this week. They’re also expected to activate Gerrit Cole from the IL this week, giving them a major reinforcement in time for this tough stretch of games.

The Orioles managed to pull closer to the Yanks by winning their series last week against the Braves and the Phillies. They’ve gone 14-6 during one of the most difficult stretches of their schedule and have matchups with the Yankees, Astros, Guardians, Rangers, and Mariners still to come over the next few weeks.

Maybe the jet lag from their trip to London impacted the Phillies, as they lost both of their series last week, first against the Red Sox at Fenway and then to the Orioles in Baltimore over the weekend. To make matters worse, J.T. Realmuto finally decided to undergo knee surgery after dealing with nagging pain all season long. Because they have such a large lead in the NL East, they can afford to lose their starting catcher for a month or two with the long range view in mind. Thankfully, as one of their team leaders hits the IL, another — Trea Turner — is set to return on Monday.

The Dodgers had an absolutely terrible Sunday despite shutting out the Royals 3-0 to win their weekend series. First, Yoshinobu Yamamoto had to be removed from his start with a shoulder issue. Then, in the seventh inning, Mookie Betts took a fastball off his hand, fracturing it. It’s too early to tell when they will return, but they are expected to miss at least several weeks. Los Angeles has a commanding lead in the NL West but there’s suddenly an opportunity for any one of the Padres, Giants, or Diamondbacks to gain some ground.

The Mariners might have shut the door on the rest of the AL West this weekend after sweeping the Rangers to extend their division lead to 8.5 games, the largest in the majors. They’re now 17-5 against their division this year, the best intra-divisional record in baseball, and they’re also 27-12 at home. In those three games against Texas, Seattle’s starters allowed just two earned runs, both of which were scored in the first inning of the first game of the series on Friday. Luis Castillo, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert were absolutely masterful, giving fans a taste of what this rotation could be capable of in a short playoff series.

The Guardians and Mariners meet for a big series this week that, although it’s early, could have some implications for AL playoff seeding. Cleveland has been cruising along atop the AL Central for pretty much the entire season, but it has a bit of a gauntlet coming over the next two weeks; the Guardians host Seattle and Toronto this week before heading off to Baltimore for a three-game set and then a big four-game series in Kansas City.

The Brewers continue to find ways to win despite their patchwork rotation that has been wracked by injuries. A big reason why they’ve been so successful is because of their shutdown bullpen, which is still missing its best member, Devin Williams. The rest of the NL Central is a pretty big mess of clubs sitting around .500, so Milwaukee shouldn’t have much trouble getting into the playoffs, but the team will need some sort of upgrade in the rotation if it wants to make some noise once it gets there.

On May 26, the Royals had an eight-game win streak snapped; they’ve gone 7-13 since then and have won just one series during that rough stretch. They couldn’t keep up with the Yankees and Dodgers last week, losing both of those series, and they’re now just a half-game ahead of the surging Twins. For their part, the Twins have won five straight, and Carlos Correa and Royce Lewis erupted for 27 hits and seven home runs between the two of them last week.

Speaking of offensive resurgences, the Braves have scored 28 runs over their last four games and might be looking a little closer to the powerhouse offense we all expected they would be this year. Austin Riley has homered in three straight games, and they blasted nine home runs off the Rays pitching staff last weekend.

This tier has grown enormous. These nine teams are hovering right around .500 and sitting within two games of each other, but only two of them will be able claim NL Wild Card spots — assuming Atlanta maintains its hold on this race.

The two teams who really launched themselves up the standings last week were the Nationals and Mets. Washington ended the week tied for the final Wild Card spot after winning a series against the Tigers and sweeping the Marlins. Expanding our lens a bit to underscore how well the Nats have been playing recently, they have the third-best record in the National League (14-9) since May 24, with six of those 14 wins coming in their eight games against the Braves.

The Mets’ surge has been even more improbable. They won their fifth straight game on Sunday to finish off a weekend sweep of the Padres and are now just a game and a half out in the Wild Card race. Closer Edwin Díaz recently returned from the IL to bolster their bullpen and their offense has been much better this month after a dismal May.

If the Mets and Nats are the teams trending up, it’s the Cubs who are on the way down. Their offense is in such desperate need of a spark that they bunted on three straight plays in a game last week and produced two runs through the effort — yet they wound up losing 3-2 after the bullpen blew the lead. They have the worst record in the NL since the calendar flipped to May and have scored just 3.55 runs per game during this extended slump.

Over in the American League, the playoff picture is a lot more settled. Below the top six teams in the league, the Red Sox and Blue Jays are barely hanging on in the Wild Card race. Both of those teams won statement series last weekend, with Boston beating the Yankees and Toronto surviving a series against the Guardians. The Sox and Jays are set to play each other six times over the next 10 days, each looking to sabotage the other’s summer hopes.

It looks like the Rangers will be getting Max Scherzer back this week from the IL, a stint that was prolonged when he hurt his finger while rehabbing from his back injury. His return couldn’t come soon enough. After getting swept over the weekend by the Mariners, Texas is now 8.5 games back in the AL West and 6.5 out of the final Wild Card spot. When the Rangers entered the season with Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, and Tyler Mahle all on the IL, they were taking a risk that something like this would happen without their rotation at full strength, but I don’t think they expected things to get this bad.

With Kris Bryant’s season — and possibly career — looking like a complete loss because of some unfortunate injury issues, the Rockies need to start focusing on their young building blocks. Luckily, Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle are showing plenty of life with their bats to compliment their already stellar glovework. Colorado also called up top prospect Adael Amador recently and activated Nolan Jones off the IL last week. The Rockies have an opportunity to play the part of pesky little brother to a beat-up Dodgers squad in a four-game series in Colorado this week.

The White Sox wound up losing three of four to the Mariners last week, but they really made Seattle work for each of those wins. Two of the losses were walk-offs, the third was given away in the seventh, and the lone Chicago victory came in extra innings. But make no mistake: This is a truly terrible team. The White Sox have fielded a roster of position players who have combined for -1.8 WAR this year, a full-season pace of -4.0 WAR. That would make them the least-valuable group of position players since the 1998 Twins (-4.5 WAR). No club has combined for -1.0 WAR from its hitters since the 2003 Tigers (-1.2), who finished 43-119 that season. On the bright side, Luis Robert Jr. has blasted five home runs in 12 games since being activated off the IL; yet fittingly for such a moribund franchise, Robert has struck out in almost half his plate appearances, too.

Baseball’s middle class is pretty large this year. Just 10 teams have records over .500 right now, while nine teams are within three games of a playoff berth — and that doesn’t include the four teams that are currently tied for the final National League Wild Card spot. Because the standings are so compressed, especially in the NL, one team going on a hot streak can up-end the status quo very quickly, as the Reds showed us last week.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now two months into the season, and the differences between the haves and the have-nots are becoming a little clearer with each week. That’s especially true in the American League, where a four-game gap separates the Mariners and the Red Sox, the sixth and seventh teams in the league standings. Meanwhile, in the National League, a pretty sizable group of teams is chasing the last two Wild Card spots, with eight or nine teams potentially vying for those playoff berths as the season continues.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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. Read the rest of this entry »

Several preseason favorites are sliding down these rankings as we barrel toward the third month of the season, while other clubs — most notably the Guardians — are continuing their surprisingly strong starts.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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 — I’ve taken some 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 information included in the comments are current as of Tuesday morning. Read the rest of this entry »

The various division races are starting to shape up now that we’ve passed the quarter pole in the regular season. The Astros finally woke up from their early season slumber, reminding us that it’s still not too late for some of these disappointing teams to make a run into the playoff picture.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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 — I’ve taken some 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.

…

The Yankees leapt to the top of these rankings with sweeps of the Twins and White Sox last week. They’ve now won seven straight and 13 of their last 15. Juan Soto and Aaron Judge are powering the offense as expected — along with a resurgent Giancarlo Stanton — but the most impressive part of this hot streak has been their pitching staff. During this stretch, New York has allowed just 2.4 runs per game and gave up a total of six runs last week. The entire starting rotation has stepped up in Gerrit Cole’s absence, with Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil representing the two biggest surprises.

The Phillies stretched their division lead over the Braves to five games with a wild series win against the Mets and a sweep of the Nationals last week. It’s true Philadelphia has played the weakest schedule of any team thus far — it faced the Braves in the first series of the season and hasn’t met a team with a record over .500 since then — but the Phillies are banking enough wins now that it might not matter if they come back down to earth once the schedule toughens up.

While Elly De La Cruz may have stolen the spotlight on Thursday in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won the final three games of their series against the Reds to take the series and held De La Cruz hitless over the weekend. They own the largest division lead and best run differential in baseball.

Max Fried slipped up on Friday after a long stretch of dominant starts, allowing three runs on nine hits against the Padres. After a rainout on Saturday, the Braves lost a stinker on Sunday and are lined up for a doubleheader today. They can still be counted among the upper echelons in baseball, but it’s clear they’re not firing on all cylinders yet.

Both the Royals and Guardians swept their weekend series, though Cleveland’s wins against the Twins are much more impactful than the three wins Kansas City racked up against the A’s. The Guardians still lead the AL Central and knocked Minnesota down a notch, but the Royals are on pace for their second best season in franchise history if they can keep this up.

The Mariners went 3-3 against two of the other teams in this tier last week, which is pretty much what you’d expect from their solid but flawed roster. They still haven’t solved their run scoring issues and Julio Rodríguez’s power outage to start the season is starting to become a little concerning. Meanwhile, the Orioles are trying to keep up with the high-flying Yankees; Baltimore’s series win over Seattle certainly helps in that regard.

A lot of ups and downs in this tier last week. The Twins’ hot streak flamed out after they were swept by the Yankees and Guardians; the Cubs didn’t do much better, losing both of their series to the Braves and Pirates. On the other end of the spectrum, the Rays went 5-2 against the Red Sox and Blue Jays, banking two key series wins against some division rivals.

Here come the Astros. With two wins against the Brewers over the weekend, Houston has now won three series in a row and nine of its last 11 games. Alex Bregman’s bat has suddenly awoken as he raised his wRC+ from 58 to 87 over the last week. The Astros have a huge four-game series in Seattle looming in a week and they’ll hope to continue their momentum ahead of that showdown.

A bunch of the teams in this tier continued their early season struggles and have fallen even further behind in the playoff picture. The Giants and Tigers were the only two among these teams to win a series last week.

San Francisco emphatically swept the Rockies over the weekend, though that’s a small consolation considering the bad news it received about Jung Hoo Lee’s shoulder injury; the Giants’ center fielder will be out for the season after dislocating his shoulder last Sunday. Blake Snell is on the mend and should be activated off the IL soon, but there are still far too many role players sidelined currently, forcing the Giants to turn to their shallow depth. Thankfully, Luis Matos has made an immediate impact, collecting 16 RBIs and recording hits in five of the seven games since being recalled to cover for Lee.

The Cardinals, Pirates, Angels, and Marlins all showed some pluck last week, earning series wins over some high profile opponents. St. Louis won both of its series against the Angels and Red Sox and can’t be counted out of the NL playoff picture just yet; Pittsburgh took three of four from the Cubs over the weekend, a series highlighted by a dominant start from Paul Skenes; and the Marlins picked up series wins over the Tigers and Mets.

With Mike Trout sidelined for the foreseeable future, the Angels have had very few reasons for optimism recently. Thankfully, Jo Adell’s long-awaited breakout is something they can build upon. It’s not a franchise-altering development, but it’s a positive note for an organization that has desperately needed one this year.

After reaching .500 with a 20-4 win over the Marlins on May 4, the A’s have won exactly twice in the 15 games since then. Their nosedive has coincided with a particularly tough stretch in their schedule, with series against the Rangers, Mariners, Astros, and Royals bringing them back down to Earth. Mason Miller has gotten all of the attention as the standout on this roster, but there are a few other breakouts that could become valuable trade bait later on this summer.

The Rockies put together a nice little seven-game win streak with sweeps of the Rangers and Padres before getting swept by the Giants last weekend. Ezequiel Tovar has rewarded the organization’s trust in him with a fantastic start to the season. Nolan Jones should be activated off the IL this week and hopefully he can start pounding the ball again so that Colorado can properly play spoiler to the rest of the teams in the NL West.

There wasn’t much movement in the power rankings this week, as teams have sort of settled into their tiers now that we’re about a quarter of the way through the regular season.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model 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 coinflip 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%). 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. Read the rest of this entry »