FanGraphs Power Rankings: September 3–8

With three weeks left in the regular season, it looks like there’s just one true playoff chase remaining: the National League Wild Card race. That said, there’s the possibility that the American League Wild Card race could get a lot more interesting if the Twins keep faltering and any of the Tigers, Mariners, or Red Sox get hot. Still, at a time of year when fans are often obsessively scoreboard watching, the lack of tension is disappointing.

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 Dodgers won their weekend series against the Guardians and claimed the best record in baseball. Shohei Ohtani inched ever closer to the 50-50 mark, and the team dodged a bullet when tests came back negative on Teoscar Hernández’s ankle after he was hit by a pitch on Friday. The pitching staff is still a little beat up, with Gavin Stone the latest hurler to hit the IL, but they should be getting Yoshinobu Yamamoto back from his shoulder injury just in time for the stretch run.

With a series win over the Tigers followed by a series loss to the Giants, the Padres treaded water in the standings last week. They’ve fallen six games behind the Dodgers in the NL West, and are only two games ahead of the Mets and Braves and a half game ahead of the Diamondbacks in the Wild Card race. Thankfully, they activated Yu Darvish off the IL last week, bolstering a pitching staff that’s been led by Michael King recently.

The Astros were swept by the Reds last week but got back on track with a decisive series win against the Diamondbacks over the weekend. They welcomed back Kyle Tucker from his shin fracture on Friday and Yordan Alvarez added another multi-homer game to his ledger, his third in the last two weeks. They play the A’s and Angels 10 times over the next two weeks, which should give them the opportunity to build an insurmountable lead in the AL West.

The Phillies couldn’t complete the series win against the Marlins over the weekend after scoring 21 runs across the first two games of the series. Kyle Schwarber did his best to carry Philadelphia’s offense; he blasted five home runs and collected 12 hits last week.

The Diamondbacks managed to avoid a sweep in Houston on Sunday night thanks to the heroics of Pavin Smith, who homered three times and drove in eight in a blowout victory. Like most of the other teams in this tier, the Diamondbacks received some injury reinforcements last week; Ketel Marte and Christian Walker were both activated off the IL and should join a rejuvenated Corbin Carroll in powering Arizona’s offense over these next few weeks.

The Brewers currently possess the best run differential in the majors and will most likely be the first team to lock up their division. There isn’t enough attention being paid to how strong this team looks given the adversity they’ve had to overcome this year. Wouldn’t it be ironic if this was the year they made a deep playoff run after jettisoning their best pitcher over the offseason, having their long-time manager hired by a division rival, and losing Christian Yelich to a season-ending back injury?

The roller coaster ride that is the AL Central just continues. After their losing streak was extended to seven games by the Guardians, the Royals turned around and won four straight, including a sweep of the Twins this past weekend. Thanks to Cleveland’s series loss to the Dodgers, Kansas City is back to being just 2.5 games back in the division and 2.5 games up on Minnesota in the Wild Card race. A three-week stretch in which they’ve played only playoff-caliber teams is about to come to a close with their series against the Yankees this week; after that, their schedule should lighten up quite a bit.

The Mets had their nine-game win streak snapped on Sunday, but their hot streak momentarily thrust them into sole possession of the final NL Wild Card spot. Their loss combined with the Braves extra-innings victory on Sunday means these two division rivals are tied in the standings; they have three more head-to-head meetings to look forward to during the final week of the season. Between now and then, New York has seven games against the Phillies, while Atlanta has four against the Dodgers as its toughest matchup. The Mets will also have to overcome an injury to Jeff McNeil, who fractured his wrist on Friday and will be sidelined for the rest of the regular season.

The Yankees and Orioles matched each other with three wins last week, which means New York has maintained its loose grip on the AL East lead for now. In a bizarre twist, Aaron Judge hasn’t homered since appearing on an episode of PAW Patrol on August 26 and is quickly approaching the longest homerless stretch of his career. His powerful bat has gone cold at exactly the wrong time, and the Yankees continue to stubbornly play Alex Verdugo in the outfield instead of calling up Jasson Domínguez. They’re not in danger of missing the playoffs, but the division title is definitely on the line, and if Judge doesn’t turn things around quickly, a deep postseason run could be in jeopardy too.

While the Braves are desperately trying to hold off the Mets in the NL Wild Card race, the Twins are in danger of letting the Mariners, Tigers, and Red Sox back into the AL Wild Card race. They were swept by the Royals over the weekend and have now won just six of their last 20 games. Minnesota has scored just 3.4 runs per game during this cold streak, while the pitching staff is feeling the effects of trying to carry three rookies in the starting rotation. It’s possible Carlos Correa could return from his foot injury soon, but Byron Buxton was removed from a minor league rehab game last week with renewed pain in his hip. The Twins are still in the driver’s seat, up 3.5 games on Seattle and Detroit and four games ahead of Boston, but they’ll need to figure out a way to turn things around quickly if they want to maintain their grasp on the final playoff spot in the AL.

The Cubs’ long-shot hopes of sneaking into the Wild Card race took a big hit last week after losing their series against the Pirates and Yankees. The offense that had been powering this late-season hot streak suddenly went cold; they were shut out three times last week but threw a 12-run blowout in there for good measure.

With four wins last week, the Mariners made the most headway in the standings out of the three teams on the fringe of the AL Wild Card race. Twelve of their remaining 18 games are at home, where they’ve won 60% of the time this year. Meanwhile, the Tigers won three of their games last week and have a bit of a tough stretch coming up, with six against the Orioles and three against the Royals over the next two weeks. Meanwhile, the Red Sox have one of the toughest remaining schedules of any team in baseball; they have just one series against a team with a record below .500 and run through the Orioles-Yankees gauntlet this week.

It’s all coming far too late, but the Rangers have actually been playing pretty good baseball recently; they’ve won four straight series and have looked a lot like the team that won the World Series last year. And even though it won’t really affect where they stand this season, both Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer are on track to be activated off the IL this week. For the former, it’s a big step towards getting healthy before next year.

The Giants turned their attention to their future last week, signing Matt Chapman to a six-year, $151 million extension. He played his way into the big contract that many thought he should have received last winter and should be a mainstay in San Francisco’s lineup for the next half-decade. The deal also solidifies his place on the 2025 roster — he had an opt out after this season that he almost certainly would have exercised if he hadn’t signed his extension. That helps the Giants plan for what could be a big offseason as they try to take a significant step forward towards the playoffs.

The A’s have cooled off a bit after a scorching hot midsummer. Much of that progress can be chalked up to the breakout of Lawrence Butler; he’s in the midst of an 18-game hitting streak and had a stretch of nine straight games with an extra-base hit snapped on Thursday. And let’s not forget about his bash brother, Brent Rooker, who had his own 11-game hitting streak snapped on Sunday.

Speaking of young hitters powering a rebuilding club, Connor Norby blasted two home runs in the Marlins’ blowout of the Phillies on Sunday, the fifth and sixth dingers he’s hit for his new club in just 18 games.

The White Sox won two games last week, already half way to the number of victories they collected during all of August. This week, the Guardians have the opportunity to avoid becoming the only AL team to have a losing record against Chicago this year. Good luck to them.