Original source (on modern site)
We're nearly a month through the season and there's still a jumble of teams sitting around .500 who could wind up in the playoff picture with one hot streak. That's exactly what happened with the Twins last week. Of course, the opposite is true, too, with the Rays learning that lesson while getting swept by the White Sox. 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. Complete Power Rankings … Tier 1 - The Braves The Braves continue to run roughshod over the rest of baseball, sweeping the Marlins and winning a dramatic weekend series against the Guardians. They're doing it all despite slow starts from Ronald Acuña Jr. (111 wRC+), Austin Riley (95), and Matt Olson (101). They did just get Ozzie Albies back from his toe injury earlier than expected and Marcell Ozuna continues to power the offense. Tier 2 - On the Cusp of Greatness The four teams in this tier have been playing some excellent baseball recently and are separating themselves from the morass of teams below them. The Guardians still have the best record in the AL despite losing two of three to the Braves, and the Phillies have won 13 of their last 15 games, including a sweep of the Padres over the weekend. The Dodgers had their six-game win streak snapped Sunday, but their sweep of the Nationals and series win over the Blue Jays helped put their early-season struggles behind them. A trio of rookies — Andy Pages in the outfield and Landon Knack and Gavin Stone in the rotation — have helped sure up some of the roster's question marks. Of course, it's hard to be worried about Los Angeles when Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani are driving the offense with MVP caliber seasons. The Yankees split a four-game series against the surprisingly tough A's, but then beat up on the Brewers by scoring 30 runs on Saturday and Sunday. Aaron Judge, who had been slumping to start the season, homered twice this weekend and it looks like all the adjustments that Anthony Volpe has made have helped him take a big step forward this year. New York heads into this week with a huge four-game series against the Orioles on the docket. Tier 3 - Solid Contenders The Orioles had a forgettable weekend, starting with the demotion of Jackson Holliday and ending with a series loss at home to the A's that included two Craig Kimbrel meltdowns. Meanwhile, the Mariners' starting rotation carried them to the top of the AL West; their starters have allowed just 20 runs over their last 16 games. The Cubs looked great in their dominant sweep of the Astros before faltering against the Red Sox, getting blown out 17-0 on Saturday and losing a heartbreaker in the ninth on Sunday night. The Brewers didn't fare much better, splitting a four-game series with the Pirates before getting trounced by the Yankees. Still, these two teams — and the generally good play of the rest of the teams in the division — have made the NL Central one of the more compelling storylines to start the season. Chicago is hanging around despite missing Cody Bellinger, Seiya Suzuki, and a handful of pitchers, all suffering from a variety of maladies. Milwaukee has had plenty of injury issues too, and it's enjoying a surprising breakout from Brice Turang, but its pitching staff is running pretty thin — allowing 30 runs across the last two days is evidence enough of that. These two teams will face off this weekend in a three-games series that could set the tone for how this rivalry will shape up this year. Tier 4 - The Melee All the teams in this huge tier are hovering around .500, sitting on the knife's edge between competing and retooling for next year. A hot streak or a cold snap could propel them one way or the other very quickly. The Twins are a perfect example of how quickly a team's fortunes can change. They've won seven straight and have now climbed a game over .500. They're still pretty far behind the Guardians and Royals for the division lead, but they're now firmly in the conversation after being left in the dust over the first three weeks of the season. It helps that they faced the White Sox and Angels and have another series against the South Siders lined up this week. If they can take this momentum and start winning games against tougher opposition, they could make the AL Central race a lot more interesting. The Royals and Tigers, who both sit above Minnesota in the AL Central standings, just battled it out over the weekend, with Detroit emerging victorious in two of the three games. It's the pitching that's been the most impressive for the Tigers and Royals, though they're both struggling to score runs with any consistency. For Detroit, Riley Greene is its only young hitter producing with any consistency right now; Kerry Carpenter started strong but fell off last week, and the club is still waiting for Spencer Torkelson and Colt Keith to wake up. The Cardinals won both of their series last week, giving them a bit of life after a sluggish start to the season. They still seem to be missing that devil magic that made them such consistent winners for most of the last two decades. They demoted Jordan Walker to Triple-A last week and their offense is last in the NL in scoring. At least their pitching staff, the focus of all their offseason energy, is much improved, with Sonny Gray continuing to look like a frontline ace. Tier 5 - Waiting for Launch Four of the teams in this tier had serious designs on competing for a playoff spot this year, and then there's the Pirates, who have seriously cooled off after their hot start. The Padres have won just three of their last 11 games, and the Diamondbacks have been only slightly better than that. The Rays had a pretty terrible week, losing two of three to the Tigers and then getting swept by the White Sox of all teams. It's pretty easy to diagnose what's wrong with their roster: They've allowed the third most runs in the AL and Randy Arozarena (47 wRC+) and Yandy Díaz (86) aren't driving the offense right now. No amount of depth will help when the best players on your roster aren't producing. The Astros managed to take both games of the Mexico City series against the Rockies, but their path out of their early-season hole won't get any easier this week; they've got a homestand against the league-leading Guardians and division-leading Mariners on the docket. Like Tampa Bay, Houston's pitching staff has been a mess so far, with Ronel Blanco representing the only bright spot. Meanwhile, the Astros have one of the best offenses in the league; the problem is they're not turning that production into scoring right now. There's a dangerous ballclub in here somewhere that's just waiting to strike, but Houston is running the risk of waiting too long. Tier 6 - Hope Deferred If you remove the seven games the A's played against the Guardians earlier this season, in which they went 1-6, their record against all of their other opponents would be 11-11. That's much better than anyone could have expected, and they just split a series against the Yankees in the Bronx and won a series against the Orioles in Baltimore. The Nationals are also outperforming expectations right now; they won series against the Dodgers and Astros a couple of weeks ago and are in line to sweep the Marlins in four games if they can win Monday night. CJ Abrams has continued his breakout from last year and is looking like the core piece for Washington to build around. The White Sox doubled their win total on the season last weekend with their three-game sweep of the Rays. Eloy Jiménez and Andrew Benintendi sparked the offense while Erick Fedde led the pitching staff. Even the worst teams in history have to win 50-60 games in a season, so it's not that surprising that three of those wins came in a row. Still, this roster is among the worst in franchise history and there's very little hope on the horizon.