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.
Complete Power Rankings
| Rank | Team | Record | Elo | Opponent Elo | Playoff Odds | Power Score | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yankees | 37-18 | 1604 | 1507 | 98.2% | 1612 | 0 |
| 2 | Phillies | 38-16 | 1593 | 1467 | 98.5% | 1605 | 0 |
Tier 1 – The Best of the Best
Yankees: Yankees starting pitchers continued their run of dominance in the absence of ace Gerrit Cole. Aaron Judge is absolutely lighting the league on fire right now; he hit home runs in four straight games last week.
Phillies: The Phillies swept away the Rangers before losing their weekend series to the pesky Rockies in Colorado. They still hold the best record in baseball.
Guardians: The Guardians won their ninth straight game on Sunday, giving them the best record in the AL momentarily. José Ramírez is anchoring the Guardians offense right now.
Tier 2 – On the Cusp of Greatness
Braves: The Braves received some terrible news on Sunday night with Ronald Acuña Jr.’s injury. Chris Sale has done a phenomenal job as Atlanta’s ace.
Orioles: The Orioles were swept for the first time in over two years last week, but bounced back by sweeping the White Sox in four games over the weekend.
Dodgers: The Dodgers had a rough week, losing a series to the Diamondbacks before getting swept by the Reds.
Royals: The Royals had a eight-game winning streak snapped on Sunday; prior to that loss, they had scored at least seven runs in six straight games.
Tier 3 – Solid Contenders
Brewers: There are some huge intra-divisional series on the docket for nearly every team in this tier.
Mariners: The Mariners and Astros, Brewers and Cubs, and Twins and Royals all meet four times this week.
Twins: The Twins are locked in a tight battle for the final NL Wild Card spot with the Royals and other teams.
Padres: San Diego has remained in the playoff race despite some challenges and injuries to key players like Xander Bogaerts.
Giants: The Giants have had an eventful week with come-from-behind wins and exciting games.
