With every team in Major League Baseball having played between 69-73 games right now, we’re quickly nearing the halfway point of the season. There’s a strong foundation upon which to judge who the contenders are, but we’ve seen changes.
The Braves and Orioles all but left themselves for dead at the beginning of the season, but are now trying to resurrect. The A’s looked like contenders for a quick second and then squandered everything. The Mariners built a decent lead in the AL West and have now allowed the Astros to grab control. The Blue Jays, Rays and Red Sox let the Yankees build a huge lead in the East before deciding to get hot and become major players in the wild-card race.
Along the way, the top tier in baseball hasn’t been just one or two elite teams. There’s a group of strong contenders which hopefully means the playoffs will be unpredictable and exciting. We’ve had five different No. 1 teams here in Power Rankings this season already (Dodgers, Phillies, Padres, Mets, Tigers) while two more (the Cubs and Yankees) have been awfully close multiple times.
As things stand right now, the top tier is much bigger than many thought it would be, because it isn’t just the Dodgers. Yes, the Dodgers are in the mix, but they aren’t the obvious best team running away with their division. In fact, the NL West is the closest division in baseball. It was tied heading into Saturday. The Dodgers now have a two-game lead over the Giants and it’s three games over the Padres.
The Tigers have had the best record in baseball a decent number of days at this point. They started with three losses in Dodger Stadium, but went 18-9 in April and 19-9 in May. They did just lose a series this weekend, but it was the first one they lost since May 22-24. They only lost two series in April, two in May and just the one so far this month. It’s just a consistently great team on pace to top 100 wins.
The Mets have also been pretty consistently great. They haven’t had a longer losing streak than three all season and though they were just swept this past weekend series, that came on the heels of a six-game winning streak.
The Phillies have been up and down. They’ll look like the best team in baseball for swaths of time but also just went through a stretch where they lost nine of 10. Still, they are on pace to win 96 games. The Phillies haven’t won 96 in a season since winning 102 in 2011.
The Yankees have very clearly been the best AL East team — and second-best American League team — all season. The lead has shrunk to 3 ½ games, but that’s still a leg up.
The Cubs have had just one three-game losing streak and that’s the only time all year they lost more than two straight. They’ve been in first place since April 4 and have built a 5 ½-game lead. They’ve done so despite their top two pitchers falling injured (though Shota Imanaga is coming back soon).
That makes six teams on pace to win between 96 and 102 games. Only one team won 96 last season. We haven’t seen six teams get there since 2019, when a record-tying seven teams won at least 96 games (1999 and 1977 also had seven 96-win teams). Remember how wild those 2019 playoffs were? And the World Series champion only won 93 that year. That means we could be looking elsewhere for our champ.
A short step below the big boys in 2025 is a tier that includes teams like the Astros, Giants, Padres, Blue Jays and Rays. All have looked excellent at times, which means they’ve shown enough good to believe getting hot at the right time in October could well mean a World Series title. Teams like the Brewers, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, Twins, Reds, Guardians, Red Sox and Mariners have also shown themselves capable to be included there when they are playing well.
Even the Orioles (six back in AL Wild Card) and Braves (eight back on NL side) have crawled to a spot in the standings where a playoff run isn’t totally off the table.
The only teams that aren’t truly sitting with at least a sliver of hope for the season are the Rockies, White Sox, Pirates, Marlins and A’s. We might be safe to loop the Nationals in at this point, but that’s still a very short list when we’re nearly halfway through the season.
And at the top, there are a lot of top-level ballclubs.
Biggest Movers
7
Diamondbacks
8
Cardinals
|
Rk |
Teams |
Chg |
Rcrd |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
|
The Tigers haven’t won 100 games since 1984. They haven’t won more than 95 since 1987. | — | 46-27 |
2 |
|
Pete Alonso’s career high in doubles in a season is 31, which he set last year. He’s already got 22 this season. Also of note, the Mets club record for doubles in a single season is 44, set by Bernard Gilkey in 1996. Alonso already has Mets single-season records for home runs and RBI. | — | 45-27 |
3 |
|
The offense is in a bit of a funk right now, having only scored more than three runs once in the last eight games. Thanks to the pitching, though, they’ve gone 4-4 in those eight games.I don’t expect a quiet offense for long, either. | 1 | 44-28 |
4 |
|
It sounds like Roki Sasaki might be done for the season, but at least Shohei Ohtani is returning to the mound. | 1 | 43-29 |
5 |
|
The Yankees are now 1-5 against the Red Sox with five straight losses. Why are they trying to breathe life into their most hated rivals? | 2 | 42-29 |
6 |
|
I’m going to expand on this in an article in the coming weeks, but Kyle Schwarber is in his age-32 season and has 306 home runs. Could he get to 500? That would be an incredible feat and it’s not outlandish to believe he will. | 2 | 43-29 |
7 |
|
What a breakout for Jeremy Peña. At this rate, he’s going to figure in the AL MVP mix (after Aaron Judge, obviously, who is in a category of his own). | 4 | 41-30 |
8 |
|
Grabbing Rafael Devers was a shocker. Wow. He won’t hit nearly as well in that ballpark as he did in Fenway, but he’ll absolutely give the Giants a boost in that lineup. | 1 | 41-31 |
9 |
|
I still think the Rays get buried under those road-heavy schedules in the coming months (they play 16 of 19 and 19 of 22 on the road in two different stretches), but this is all kinds of impressive right now. They’ve won 18 of 24 and just swept the Mets in New York. | 1 | 40-32 |
10 |
|
What a debut for top pitching prospect Jacob Misiorowksi, going five hitless, scoreless innings against the Cardinals. He’ll walk plenty, but he’s fun to watch and was very effective in his first outing. | 2 | 39-34 |
11 |
|
The NL playoff picture is very crowded and the Padres have gone 25-28 since that 14-3 start. The sample of mediocrity is much larger than that of greatness. It’s worrisome. | 5 | 39-31 |
12 |
|
The Jays were outscored 22-6 in getting swept by the Phillies over the weekend. They had won 12 of 14 before that. | 1 | 38-33 |
13 |
|
Elly De La Cruz has homered in four straight games, but his heater really started two games before. In his last six, he’s 12 for 26 (.462) with two doubles, four home runs, seven RBI and eight runs. | 4 | 37-35 |
14 |
|
The D-backs are 9-4 this month and again have the look of a contender. They could very easily fall out of contention, though, and then it’ll matter that Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez are all free agents after the season. | 7 | 36-35 |
15 |
|
The offense was bad early in the season for many reasons, but toward the top of the list was how bad veteran All-Stars Marcus Semien and Adolis García were. Both are showing good signs of life lately and the Rangers have won seven of eight. | 5 | 36-36 |
16 |
|
Here they come? The Red Sox have won seven of their last eight games. (I wrote that before the trade, which on initial glimpse sure seems like a gut punch to the fan base.) | 3 | 37-36 |
17 |
|
All of a sudden, the Cardinals have lost seven of eight. They got within one game of the Cubs on May 19, but the deficit is now seven. | 8 | 37-35 |
18 |
|
Maybe sweeping the Guardians at home will get them back on track. The season was in a seemingly uncontrollable tailspin before that. | 2 | 36-34 |
19 |
|
That 13-game winning streak seems to be doing a lot of propping up in the Twins’ record. | 5 | 36-35 |
20 |
|
The Guardians have now lost eight of 10. They scored 11 runs in one game in that stretch. In the other nine games, they’ve scored 18 runs total. | 5 | 35-35 |
21 |
|
That six-game losing streak includes three home losses to an A’s team that had been absolutely pitiful heading in. The Royals are now 11 ½ games out of first. | 3 | 34-38 |
22 |
|
They are not without flaws, but this thing has actually gotten to the point where a playoff run is realistic and then all bets are off. What if the Orioles somehow ended up our 2025 champs? That would be remarkable and also funny, given where things have been. | 2 | 30-41 |
23 |
|
Though the embarrassing loss to the Rockies on Sunday hurts, the Braves have now won two straight series. That’s a step in the right direction. | 3 | 31-39 |
24 |
|
Mike Trout in 15 games since his return from injury is hitting .302 with a .387 OBP. Remember, he’s still only 33 years old. | 2 | 34-37 |
25 |
|
Pirates pitchers only gave up nine runs in four games against the Cubs and the team still managed to only win once. They average 3.17 runs scored per game, worst in the majors. | — | 29-44 |
26 |
|
Sandy Alcantara in his return from Tommy John surgery was having a simply brutal season through May. In his last two starts, though, he’s only allowed two runs on seven hits in 12 innings. He’s struck out 10 and walked two. Might he be back? | 3 | 28-42 |
27 |
|
At the end of May, the Nats were only two games under .500 and just five games out of playoff position. They’ve gone 2-11 this month and are averaging 2.38 runs per game. | 4 | 30-42 |
28 |
|
The A’s are now 17-21 on the road, which isn’t bad at all. They are 12-23, however, in their faux-home, minor-league ballpark. Once again, this is the fault of the joke of an owner who I like to call Rachel Phelps. | 1 | 29-44 |
29 |
|
Aaron Civale made his White Sox debut Sunday. In case you missed it, he was demoted from the Brewers’ rotation (we already discussed how his replacement, Jacob Misiorowski, fared) and then demanded a trade. The Brewers quickly obliged and sent him from a contender to one of the worst teams in baseball. What a move. | 1 | 23-49 |
30 |
|
On Sunday, the Rockies won their fifth game of June. They only won four apiece in April and May. They’re on fire. | — | 15-57 |
