Power Rankings: Early-season surprise team surges into Top 10

When the Mets are playing well -- and the Mets are playing very well right now -- no fanbase loves their team more, or is more aggrieved when the rest of the baseball world does not take appropriate notice. It’s actually wonderful: Fandom is meant to be experienced in the extremes. Who signs up to care about a sports team moderately? To care that much is to display your love in the purest form.

Not surprisingly, the Mets, on a scorching run that has featured series wins over the Reds, Braves, Royals, Pirates and Dodgers, went flying up our Power Rankings this week. They’ve been one of the more pleasant surprises in baseball so far, and a lovely antidote to the mess that team was last year. Will they remain hot next week, coming off a 10-0 loss to the Dodgers in the series finale on Sunday? Will they be too high, or too low? These rankings, as always, are compiled from rankings from MLB.com contributors whose names you can find at the bottom of this (and every) piece, but the words are mine. If you dislike the rankings, yell at all of us. But if you dislike the words, feel free to yell at me.

• MLB standings

1) Braves (previously: 3).
Season high: 1 | Season low: 3
Welcome back to the No. 1 slot, Braves: One suspects our voters will regret ever having you anywhere else. How much of a machine are the Braves at this point? Ronald Acuña Jr. has just one measly homer; Austin Riley is hitting .259 with only two homers; Max Fried has a 7.71 ERA; Spencer Strider is out for the season; Sean Murphy has played exactly one game. And they’re still 14-6, tied for the second-best record in baseball. They’re making this look a little too easy.

2) Yankees (previously: 2).
Season high: 2 | Season low: 7
DJ LeMahieu is beginning his Minor League rehab stint this week, and he could return as early as next weekend. Which begs the question: Where’s he going to play? Oswaldo Cabrera has been a revelation in the early going, outslugging Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres, Anthony Rizzo and Anthony Volpe. LeMahieu may have to return to being the super-sub he was when he first came to The Bronx and play a little bit of everywhere to get on the field.

3) Orioles (previously: 4).
Season high: 3 | Season low: 5
Someday, in 15 years or so, Colton Cowser is going to be an established MLB veteran, lining up milestones to mark his illustrious career, and he’s going to reach, like, his 1,500th hit. Some rookie who is currently seven years old is going to not realize it was his 1,500th hit and thus throw it into the stands. A 50-year-old Craig Kimbrel is going to have a big, big laugh.

4) Guardians (previously: 10).
Season high: 4 | Season low: 21
The Guardians have lost just one series this season (to the Yankees) and had a glorious week, winning three out of four at Fenway and then breezing past the A’s at home like they barely noticed the A’s were there. They get three more against the Red Sox in Cleveland this week before an absolutely fascinating three-game set in Atlanta over the weekend. They do seem to be playing a little over their head right now -- they’re second in MLB in runs despite being 11th in OBP and 13th in homers -- but they’re about to get a chance to prove themselves against the No. 1 team in our rankings.

5) Brewers (previously: 7).
Season high: 5 | Season low: 19
The Brewers asserted some authority over the previously crowded NL Central with a road sweep over the reeling Cardinals, and what was most impressive is that they did it rather easily despite not bludgeoning St. Louis with runs the way they have everyone else so far this year. They scored just two runs on both Friday and Sunday, but their pitching -- and, specifically, their bullpen -- made those two runs hold up each time. They have a chance to make a similar statement with four games in Pittsburgh this week before an intriguing weekend series at home against the Yankees.

6) Dodgers (previously: 1).
Season high: 1 | Season low: 6
All weekend, the Dodgers would not stop saying, to anyone who would listen, that they were not the least bit worried about their sluggish start, in which they’d lost three in a row and five of six against the Nationals and Mets, all at home. As if to prove how easy it is to say that when you have the stars this team has, they went out and trounced the Mets on Sunday thanks to another dominant Tyler Glasnow performance and Shohei Ohtani’s fifth homer as a Dodger. Even with their wobbly 13-11 start, they’re still the only team in the NL West with a winning record, and they’ll head into a nine-game road trip with a lead in the division and the comfort of knowing, in a pinch, they can always just remember that their lineup starts with Betts/Ohtani/Freeman.

7) Phillies (previously: 8).
Season high: 4 | Season low: 8
The Phillies did precisely what you are supposed to do when you have a 10-game homestand against the Pirates, Rockies and White Sox: They rolled to the tune of an 8-2 record. For all the worries about their offense in the early going, the vets are starting to warm up, and their 14-8 start turns out to be their best since 2018. Look out, by the way: Trea Turner’s batting .348.

8) Royals (previously: 6).
Season high: 6 | Season low: 24
Losing two of three against the Orioles is nothing to be ashamed of, even if the first of those losses ended a nine-game home winning streak. There’s more going on here than just a little hot streak: Their four lineup stars -- Salvador Perez, Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino and MJ Melendez -- have combined for more home runs (18) than six teams have in total.

9) Cubs (previously: 11).
Season high: 9 | Season low: 12
Was Sunday Kyle Hendricks’ last stand? Facing one of the worst offenses in baseball, Hendricks, who came into the game 0-2 with a 12.71 ERA, actually lowered his ERA … but still got shelled for four runs in four innings in a 6-3 loss. Hendricks is notoriously a slow starter -- he’s now 3-12 in March/April starts since 2019 -- but you can’t blame the Cubs for starting to run out of patience: With Jameson Taillon back and Justin Steele’s return just around the corner, Hendricks’ hold on a rotation spot is looking awfully wobbly.

10) Mets (previously: 24).
Season high: 10 | Season low: 25
And here are your Mets, the hottest team in baseball until Sunday’s wipeout against the Dodgers. They have essentially been good at everything over the last fortnight, with their rotation putting up a 1.84 ERA before Adrian Houser’s Sunday outing. The offense is getting contributions everywhere, even from Starling Marte, who appears to have put last year’s disaster behind him. There was still bad news here, though: Francisco Alvarez tore a ligament in his thumb and will be out until June. Welcome back, Tomás Nido!

11) Rangers (previously: 5).
Season high: 4 | Season low: 11
Is it time to worry about the rookies? Evan Carter and Wyatt Langford, two of the preseason favorites for AL Rookie of the Year, have just two homers between them (both of them Carter’s) and are batting a combined .219. Though that’s still a more pleasant start to the season for a Rangers rookie than Jack Leiter experienced in his MLB debut on Thursday.

12) Blue Jays (previously: 19).
Season high: 8 | Season low: 19
Remember when the Jays had a triumvirate of young talent in Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Alejandro Kirk and Bo Bichette that was the envy of baseball? They have a combined four homers -- one fewer than teammate Daulton Varsho -- and are hitting .216 collectively. This did not stop the Jays from having a 4-2 week, including a taming of the Yankees monster with two wins against them at home.

13) Reds (previously: 12).
Season high: 12 | Season low: 15
Something to watch in the ongoing “Elly De La Cruz is rapidly figuring all this out” storyline: Elly walked five times in the final two games of the Reds’ series against the Angels this weekend. That gives him a total of 12 for the season, already a third of his entire season total in 2023.

14) Red Sox (previously: 17).
Season high: 14 | Season low: 22
Tanner Houck’s “Maddux” against the Guardians on Wednesday -- nine innings pitched, zero runs, three hits, zero walks -- was Boston’s third shutout of the season. That’s only two fewer than the Red Sox had in all of 2023.

15) Diamondbacks (previously: 14).
Season high: 10 | Season low: 15
It continues to be one of the quirky little baseball factoids that while the 2023 Diamondbacks famously reached the World Series despite being outscored, the 2024 Diamondbacks have the third-best run differential in the National League … and have a losing record.

16) Rays (previously: 15).
Season high: 9 | Season low: 17
One of the bright spots for the Rays early on has been outfielder Richie Palacios, a 26-year-old journeyman they acquired for Andrew Kittredge in January. He has put up a .429 OBP and actually batted third against the Yankees on Sunday.

17) Tigers (previously: 13).
Season high: 7 | Season low: 20
Other than Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter, the young Tigers hitters haven’t quite gotten it going, but you know what’s keeping them afloat? A surprisingly fantastic bullpen, which has put up an MLB-best 1.65 ERA, led by closer Jason Foley, who has yet to give up an earned run.

18) Padres (previously: 18).
Season high: 14 | Season low: 19
Fernando Tatis Jr.’s home run off Yariel Rodríguez on Friday was his sixth of the season and the 112th of his career. That puts him one short of … Fernando Tatis Sr., who hit 113 in his 11-year career. (It has taken his son only slightly more than four seasons to get there.)

19) Mariners (previously: 21).
Season high: 11 | Season low: 21
The M’s missed an opportunity, for a few hours anyway, to hold first place by their lonesome with an extra-inning loss at Coors Field on Sunday, but the four-game win streak that preceded that loss brought back some good vibes to Seattle. As usual, it was driven by Julio Rodríguez, who went 9-for-19 over those four games. It’s still strange that he hasn’t homered yet, though.

20) Pirates (previously: 9).
Season high: 9 | Season low: 25
The wheels came off for the Pirates this week with a miserable six straight losses. The culprit was a vanishing offense, which scored a total of nine runs in the six games. The only offensive highlight last week was Andrew McCutchen’s 300th homer, but otherwise, McCutchen’s season has been rough: He’s hitting .173, and that homer is one of his three extra-base hits.

21) Astros (previously: 16).
Season high: 6 | Season low: 21
One of the oddities of the Astros’ miserable start is the fact that they currently have two of the top seven players by FanGraphs WAR in the Majors: Jose Altuve is in third and Kyle Tucker is in seventh. Neither of those gentlemen is in any way responsible for the team’s 5.10 ERA, second-worst in the game.

22) Giants (previously: 23)
Season high: 17 | Season low: 23
The Jordan Hicks experiment continues to work. The longtime reliever -- who attempted to make it as a starter in St. Louis and failed spectacularly -- now has a 1.61 ERA in five starts after giving up just one run in five innings on Sunday. Look under the hood a little, though, and this might have been his most wobbly start: Not only did he walk four batters, but he struck out … none. For a pitcher who throws as hard as Hicks does, it remains remarkable how few batters he strikes out: He has 18 K’s in 28 innings so far this year. That’s the lowest rate of his career by far, but to this point, it continues to hold up.

23) Twins (previously: 20).
Season high: 13 | Season low: 23
Fun fact! Only three teams in baseball history have had lower than a collective .200 batting average over a full season: The 1884 Wilmington Quicksteps, the 1884 St. Paul White Caps and the 1884 Kansas City Cowboys. (Offensively, 1884 was a rather slow year, it seems. Two teams that season didn’t hit a single homer.) This season, there are two teams hitting under .200 so far, and the Twins are one of them, at .195. (The White Sox are the other.)

24) Cardinals (previously: 22).
Season high: 18 | Season low: 24
In his second at-bat of the season, on March 28, Paul Goldschmidt hit a 401-foot home run off Tyler Glasnow. That remains his only extra-base hit of the season: Since then, he has 13 singles and is hitting .179. He is not the only reason the Cardinals’ offense is struggling right now, but he may be the primary one.

25) Angels (previously: 25.)
Season high: 24 | Season low: 26
How is Mike Trout evolving as he reaches baseball middle age? It looks like he might be sacrificing a little of his previous all-around on-base mastery for power: He has more extra-base hits than singles so far, something he has never come close to doing before. It’s leading him to the lowest OBP of his career but also a slugging percentage that stands with his best seasons.

• The certain Hall of Famer hitting like a GOAT again

26) Nationals (previously: 26).
Season high: 26 | Season low: 27
The CJ Abrams era has arrived: The linchpin of the Juan Soto trade is stealing bases as usual, but he also, amazingly, led the Majors in slugging heading into Sunday, thanks to six homers, three triples and four doubles. He is going to have a 30-30 season at some point -- maybe as soon as this year.

27) A’s (previously: 30).
Season high: 27 | Season low: 30
The A’s have been a little better so far than many anticipated, thanks in large part to a lockdown bullpen, but their breakout star from 2023, second baseman Zack Gelof, has sputtered out of the starting gate, hitting .202 and striking out in more than a third of his plate appearances.

28) Marlins (previously: 28).
Season high: 23 | Season low: 29
The win over the Cubs on Sunday secured, at last, a series that they didn’t lose: It was a four-game split at Wrigley, which is counting as progress. There’s still plenty of bad news here, though: A.J. Puk, with left shoulder fatigue, became the latest young Marlins starter to hit the injured list. A trip to Atlanta this week is unlikely to provide them that elusive first series win.

29) Rockies (previously: 29).
Season high: 28 | Season low: 29
The Rockies are off to one of the worst starts in franchise history, but Sunday was something of a silver lining. Even though what looked like a walk-off HR in the bottom of the 9th was negated by fan interference, they still managed to bounce back and beat the Mariners in the 10th in the opener of a doubleheader.

30) White Sox (previously: 30).
Season high: 28 | Season low: 30
It is not easy to find positives in the White Sox offense, but here are a couple: Gavin Sheets and Paul DeJong. The two men are responsible for more than half of Chicago’s homers, and Sheets, in particular, has taken a big step forward: His .373 OBP is 100 points higher than last year’s.

Voters: David Adler, Nathalie Alonso, Anthony Castrovince, Doug Gausepohl, Will Leitch, Travis Miller, Sweeny Murti, Arturo Pardavila, Manny Randhawa, Andrew Simon, David Venn.