With just two weeks left in the regular season, the two Wild Card races look like they’ll be the only source of drama down the stretch. Entering this week, the top team in the closest divisional race has an 87.8% chance to finish in first — that’s the most uncertain winner, according to our playoff odds.
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 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%). 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.
| Rank | Team | Record | Elo | Opponent Elo | Playoff Odds | Power Score | Δ |
|---|
Tier 1 – The Best of the Best
- Padres: 85-65, 1574 Elo, 1502 Opponent Elo, 98.6% Playoff Odds, 1613 Power Score
- Phillies: 90-59, 1571 Elo, 1492 Opponent Elo, 100.0% Playoff Odds, 1612 Power Score
- Dodgers: 88-61, 1566 Elo, 1496 Opponent Elo, 100.0% Playoff Odds, 1608 Power Score
The Phillies went 5-1 last week, dealt a blow to the playoff hopes of the Mets, and reclaimed the best record in baseball. Their seven-game road trip through Milwaukee and Queens this week is their last big hurdle before the playoffs, and they’ll probably have the NL East locked up in just a few days. Mostly, though, they’ll be looking to earn the top seed in the NL over the next two weeks while ensuring they get to October as healthy and prepared as they can be.
Tier 2 – On the Cusp of Greatness
- Diamondbacks: 83-66, 1574 Elo, 1501 Opponent Elo, 88.8% Playoff Odds, 1601 Power Score
- Astros: 81-68, 1558 Elo, 1498 Opponent Elo, 97.8% Playoff Odds, 1596 Power Score
- Brewers: 86-63, 1544 Elo, 1492 Opponent Elo, 100.0% Playoff Odds, 1591 Power Score
- Yankees: 87-63, 1531 Elo, 1504 Opponent Elo, 100.0% Playoff Odds, 1582 Power Score
With Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman nursing nagging injuries and Justin Verlander suddenly looking extremely mortal at 41 years old, the Astros are having to rely on the next generation of stars to fuel their postseason run. Houston lost a series to the A’s last week but made up for it by sweeping the Angels over the weekend. That helped the team maintain its position 4.5 games ahead of the Mariners in the AL West.
Tier 3 – Solid Contenders
Royals: 82-68, 1522 Elo, 1497 Opponent Elo, 97.2% Playoff Odds…
