With the MLB Draft and all the All-Star Week festivities in the rearview mirror, it’s the perfect time to take stock of where each team finds itself heading into the second half of the season. Today, I’ll cover the teams ranked 18th to 30th according to our power rankings, with the top-rated teams to follow tomorrow.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 — there are times where I take 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 Astros spent the first half of the season trying to overcome a bunch of injuries and a porous pitching staff. A 16-11 record in June got them right back in the middle of the American League playoff picture, but they went 2-4 during the final week of play before the All-Star break, including a series loss to the Rangers this past weekend. Not even the return of Hunter Brown has been able to fix the team’s pitching woes; Brown has a 4.74 ERA in five starts since coming off the IL. The one saving grace in Houston has been Yordan Alvarez and his MVP-caliber season. It will be fascinating to see if the Astros act like buyers at the trade deadline despite a depleted farm system, or if they’ll simply hope for better fortunes down the stretch as they try to sneak into a playoff spot.

The Orioles ended the first half with a modest four-game winning streak. That pushed them to just five games under .500, which in the AL means just a two-game deficit in the Wild Card race. The lineup hasn’t been terrible, but it definitely hasn’t been good enough to make up for the mediocre pitching staff. Pete Alonso has been fantastic since the calendar turned to June, with a 160 wRC+ and 10 home runs. The bigger issue is Gunnar Henderson’s disappointing season. He was supposed to be the team’s offensive leader, but he has just a 95 wRC+ on the season and finished the first half in a deep slump, posting a 52 wRC+ over his last 16 games. That won’t cut it if Baltimore wants to make some noise in the Wild Card race this summer.

Even though the Tigers dropped the final two games of the first half, they went into the All-Star break with a 9-3 record over their last 12 games. It’s the pitching staff that’s been carrying the load during this hot streak; the team has allowed just three runs per game during this stretch, and that includes a 10-run blowup against the Rangers back on July 2. In the 26 games following Tarik Skubal being activated off the IL on June 13, Detroit has allowed more than four runs in a game just four times. That hot streak has helped them get back into the AL playoff picture, though the decision to keep or trade Skubal could rest on how the team performs over these next few weeks.

Somehow, the Padres entered the All-Star break with a .500 record despite having the worst offense in baseball and a starting rotation that ranks 27th in ERA- and 25th in FIP-. A lockdown bullpen certainly helps, but it can only do so much on its own. With so many needs to address at the deadline, a host of underperforming stars, a particularly thin farm system, and a crowded National League Wild Card field, it’ll be really interesting to see how San Diego handles the next few weeks. Treading water at .500 probably won’t cut it, and it could force the team to reset for next year.

The Nationals limped into the All-Star break after being swept by the Yankees, ending the first half with a 2-6 record over their previous eight games. That cold snap dropped the team back below .500. Still, this season has to be viewed as a significant step forward for the franchise. The new resources and focus on player development have helped a bunch of Washington’s young hitters take big steps forward. The pitching staff is still a work-in-progress, however, and unless they can find some upgrades ahead of the trade deadline, it seems likely to be the reason the team falls short of a playoff berth.

More and more, the offense that carried the Blue Jays to last season’s World Series appears to have been a one-year blip. In 2024, the Jays had the sixth-lowest strikeout rate in baseball, but were 20th in slugging percentage. Last year, they continued to put the ball in play, posting the lowest strikeout rate in the majors, but with the seventh-highest slug. This season, they’re second in strikeout rate, but the power has fallen back to 25th. Obviously, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s continued power outage is the biggest concern, but George Springer has fallen back to earth after his career year in 2025; the veteran outfielder has a 91 wRC+ and just nine home runs this season. The additions of Kazuma Okamoto and Dylan Cease have worked out wonderfully, but they can’t carry the team on their own.

Nearly everything that could go wrong in San Francisco this season has gone wrong. The team is playing uninspired baseball, and off the field issues are overshadowing everything. It’s too bad, because Luis Arraez’s resurgent season has been fun to watch, Casey Schmitt is in the midst of a breakout year, and Rafael Devers has a 147 wRC+ and 12 home runs since the beginning of June. Instead of celebrating an exciting summer of baseball down by the bay, the team is alienating its fans and heading into another roster reset at the trade deadline.

The Reds are tied for the worst record in baseball since the beginning of June. Sure, Elly De La Cruz missed three weeks of that stretch with a hamstring injury, but the team has won just six games in 18 tries since activating him off the IL on June 23. Instead of building on their surprise playoff appearance last year, the Reds have taken a pretty big step backwards. The offense has been a huge disappointment, and the pitching staff has had to navigate a ton of injuries. On the bright side, Hunter Greene looked like his usual dominant self in his second start of the season last Friday, holding the Cubs scoreless over seven innings while striking out 12.

For all the disappointments on the Mets’ roster, Juan Soto isn’t one of them; he’s posted a 164 wRC+ with 20 home runs since returning from his early-season injury. Bo Bichette looked like he had turned a corner — from June 3 to July 8, he ran a 145 wRC+ — but minor leg and ankle injuries kept him from starting the final three games of the first half. That means Soto, Bichette, and Francisco Lindor have only been in the lineup together 20 times in 97 games so far. The lineup wasn’t built to lose that many games from its superstars.

It’s easy to improve after losing 119 games, but the Rockies are just four wins shy of their total from last year already, and that has to count for something. Between Hunter Goodman’s continued excellence, and solid debuts from TJ Rumfield, Kyle Karros, and Cole Carrigg, there’s a promising young core emerging here. Unfortunately, that core doesn’t extend to the pitching staff, nor does it include Ezequiel Tovar or Brenton Doyle, the two guys who looked like they were key pieces of Colorado’s future a few years ago.

Unlike the other teams in this tier, the Royals actually had designs on competing for a playoff berth this year. Instead, things have gone completely sideways in Kansas City. After ending the first half in the midst of a five-game losing streak, the Royals are tied for the worst record in baseball at the break. Bobby Witt Jr. is putting up another MVP-caliber season and Jac Caglianone has taken a big step forward, but very little else has gone right. The rest of the lineup just hasn’t been good enough, but the real disaster has been the pitching staff. Over the previous two seasons, the Royals were second in the majors in ERA- and third in FIP-; they’re 28th and 27th, respectively, in those two metrics this year. Injuries to Cole Ragans and Kris Bubic have certainly played a big part in those struggles, as the team lacks the depth to cover for their absence, but it’s not going well.

The Angels already took the dramatic step of dismissing general manager Perry Minasian a few weeks ago. We still don’t know what the ultimate direction of the franchise will be since Minasian’s permanent successor hasn’t been named yet. This awkward transition phase, in which former long-time Cardinals executive John Mozeliak is shepherding the team through the rest of this season, only delays the inevitable (and necessary) rebuild. Until then, fans will have to be satisfied with watching Mike Trout play out the waning years of his career. A more pressing concern is how the team plans to approach the trade deadline. Los Angeles has a few highly-coveted pitchers in Reid Detmers and José Soriano who could bring back a haul of prospects to help jumpstart the rebuilding process.

As recently as June 19, the Athletics had a .500 record and were just a half game back in the AL West. But they finished the first half with a 3-17 record and dropped their last nine games heading into the break. To make matters worse, Nick Kurtz was placed on the IL last week with a thumb injury. He joins Brent Rooker and Zack Gelof on the shelf, sapping the lineup of three of its biggest run producers. What had looked like a promising season has quickly turned into another stinker and another lost year in the build-up to the team’s eventual move to Las Vegas.