Power Rankings: New No. 1, new entry in top 5

The Trade Deadline is behind us. The pennant races are coming into focus. Everybody’s staring at the away scoreboard. It’s starting to get serious. It’s a perfect time to return to the Power Rankings, our first installment since the day after the Deadline. Some teams are hot -- looking at you, NL West -- and some teams are creaky, but the fact remains: More teams are still in the race than not. And everything’s changing every day.

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.

1. Orioles (previous: 2)
Season high: 1 | Season low: 5
Their loss on Sunday dropped them into a tie with the Yankees atop the AL East, but they still became the first team in baseball to reach 70 wins over the weekend. (That was the first time they’d done that since 1979.) While we’re playing the history game, 70 wins is already 18 more than they had the entire season in 2021, and 23 more than they had in 2018. You’ve come a long way, Orioles.

2. Phillies (previously: 1)
Season high: 1 | Season low: 8
The Phillies just finished up a miserable West Coast trip and are now 7-15 since the All-Star break, though there really isn’t much reason to fret: They are still eight games up in the NL East and still are tied for the best record in the National League. They also have a nice little homestand with the Marlins and Nationals this week. They had plenty of rope to play with, and they really haven’t used all that much of it.

3. Yankees (previously: 5)
Season high: 1 | Season low: 7
In Yankees fans' dreams, you can’t ask for much more than a Sunday in which Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton homer, and Juan Soto homers twice. (This is now Stanton’s 13th 20-homer season, by the way.) That finished up a somewhat-wobbly 5-4 homestand for the Yanks, but one suspects they’re about to hit a whole bunch more homers: They get three games against the White Sox this week.

4. Dodgers (previously: 4)
Season high: 1 | Season low: 6
Well, River Ryan is definitely a Dodger now. After a terrific start with the Dodgers, the rookie has gone down with right forearm tightness, joining Walker Buehler, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Emmet Sheehan as Dodgers starters on the IL. (That doesn’t count Shohei Ohtani, of course.) It really is quite wild that their leader in innings is … the perpetually injured Tyler Glasnow.

5. Brewers (previously: 6)
Season high: 5 | Season low: 19
The Brewers are like that guy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: No matter what you do to them, it’s just a flesh wound. Despite losing their manager and the best pitcher, despite injuries to so many of their key players (including Christian Yelich), despite a perpetually fraying rotation, they just keep charging forward … and winning. They’ve got a 7 1/2-game lead in the NL Central and, for what it’s worth, they’re only 1 1/2 games behind the Phillies for the best record in the NL -- and all of baseball.

6. Guardians (previously: 3)
Season high: 2 | Season low: 21
The Guardians fought back from a scary doubleheader sweep on Friday to split the series with the Twins in Target Field and now are back at 3 1/2 games up in the division. Considering that if the Twins would have swept the series they’d be in first place right now, the Guardians have to feel as if they’ve dodged a bullet. The two teams won’t play again until mid-September.

7. Padres (previously: 7)
Season high: 7 | Season low: 21
It was a legitimate surprise to learn that Jackson Merrill could come up late in a close game and not homer. The rookie’s monster homer on Saturday to give the Padres a win over the Marlins was his fifth game-tying or go-ahead homer in the eighth inning or later this season, including four in the previous 10 games. Alas: He struck out in the ninth on Sunday and the Padres (finally) lost.

8. Twins (previously: 12)
Season high: 8 | Season low: 23
As always, when Byron Buxton is healthy, the Twins win. Their run of late has coincided with having Buxton in the lineup, and he hit two more homers in the loss to the Guardians on Sunday. In seasons where he has played 89 games or more -- this is now only his fourth -- this has actually been his best one.

9. Diamondbacks (previously: 15)
Season high: 9 | Season low: 19
Ketel Marte has been so hot the Diamondbacks had to give him a day off on Sunday just so he didn’t set the stadium on fire. (He also had a minor ankle contusion.) Over a stretch in which the Diamondbacks went 20-6, Marte put up the following line: .367/.443/.811, 13 homers, 30 RBIs. He leads the Majors in both homers in RBIs over that time span.

10. Royals (previously: 9)
Season high: 6 | Season low: 24
On the 13th anniversary of his first game in the Majors, Salvador Perez -- that 13 years went by fast, didn’t it? -- hit a two-run homer and started a fantastic double play in an 8-3 win over the Cardinals. If the Royals make the playoffs this year, as they are currently positioned to do, it will be their third postseason appearance since Perez arrived. The number of playoff appearances they made in the 13 years before he got there? Zero.

11. Astros (previously: 8)
Season high: 6 | Season low: 26
Before Sunday’s game against the Astros, Red Sox manager Alex Cora said, about Yordan Alvarez: “For me, he's up there with Judge. Very, very, very similar to David Ortiz.” High praise! Alvarez thanked Cora by hitting yet another homer against the Red Sox on Sunday, and he now has eight homers in 15 career games (including playoffs) at Fenway.

12. Mariners (previously: 10)
Season high: 6 | Season low: 21
It really is pretty incredible that Seattle hadn’t hosted a “Sunday Night Baseball” game since 2004 before Sunday night against the Mets. Here are some humans who played in that game: Jamie Moyer, Ichiro Suzuki, John Olerud, Edgar Martinez, Frank Thomas, Sandy Alomar Jr. and Paul Konerko. It’s fitting that Julio Rodríguez came back for this one: One of the primary reasons the Mariners are back in the first place is him.

13. Braves (previously: 11)
Season high: 1 | Season low: 13
One of the more fascinating questions down the stretch will be whether the Braves can hang on to reach the playoffs for the seventh consecutive season. The next week-and-a-half will be pivotal for them: They’re headed to a West Coast trip for seven games against the Giants and Angels before coming back to host the first-place Phillies.

14. Red Sox (previously: 14)
Season high: 11 | Season low: 22
The Red Sox have been buoyed by their surprising rotation most of this year, but it’s starting to collapse on them. Heading into Sunday, since the All-Star break, the Red Sox had surrendered 44 home runs, 10 more than any other team since the break. They had a 6.02 ERA since the break, second worst in the Majors. (Only better than the White Sox, of course.)

15. Mets (previously: 13)
Season high: 10 | Season low: 25
It’s increasingly clear that the Mets will be carried by, or imploded by, their offense. They had one of the best offenses in baseball during their hot streak that shot them into the Wild Card chase, but they went into a shell over the weekend. Their little boomlet may be over: Heading into Sunday night, they had lost eight of their last 14, scoring an average of 1.8 runs in those eight losses.

16. Cardinals (previously: 16)
Season high: 12 | Season low: 27
The Cardinals have had some key young players step forward this year, particularly Masyn Winn and Alec Burleson, but the primary issue with their offense has been the struggles of Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. Goldschmidt homered on Saturday, but it’s Arenado who has finally started to raise his game. He’s hitting .351 in August, though it should be noted he has been very Wade Boggs about it: He has only three extra-base hits, and no homers, this month.

17. Giants (previously: 21)
Season high: 12 | Season low: 23
Fun fact: The three teams with the best records in the Majors since July 26 are all in the NL West … and none of them are the Dodgers. The Giants (after the Padres and Diamondbacks) have been relying on their rotation, and it hasn’t just been no-hit wizard Blake Snell: Even Robbie Ray has been excellent since finally starting his season after recovering from Tommy John surgery.

18. Pirates (previously: 17)
Season high: 9 | Season low: 25
Is it time for the Pirates to shift into next-year mode? Their playoff odds have fallen to below 2 percent with their recent losing streak, and their rotation seems to be running out of gas. If you’re on the Paul Skenes-for-Cy-Young train, you might want to hop off soon: You have to wonder if the Pirates will shut him down at some point if they fall too far out of the race. That said: Those Andrew McCutchen homers at Dodger Stadium on Sunday were pretty freaking awesome.

19. Cubs (previously: 22)
Season high: 8 | Season low: 22
Are we sure the Cubs are out of the playoff chase? They’ve won four in a row and eight of their last 10, and they’re now in third place in the NL Central and only three games out of the final Wild Card spot. Also, even though they just finished up their final games against the White Sox, they have one of the easiest schedules in baseball over the season’s final stretch.

20. Rays (previously: 19)
Season high: 9 | Season low: 24
The Rays took a flier on Dylan Carlson, the one-time top Cardinals prospect who had hit a wall with the team and was shipped away for the roster spot (and reliever Shawn Armstrong) at the Deadline. So far, that flier has paid off: He has a .385 OBP and two homers in eight games for the Rays, including the game-tying single in the Rays’ 2-1 win over the Orioles on Sunday.

21. Reds (previously: 20)
Season high: 11 | Season low: 25
Are you excited by the Padres’ rebound from their difficult 2023 season? Maybe your 2025 team is the Reds. The Padres famously were miserable in one-run games last year before reversing that trend this year; the Reds are 10-21 in one-run games this year, the second-worst record in baseball (better only than the White Sox, of course).

22. Rangers (previously: 18)
Season high: 4 | Season low: 22
When the Rangers won the World Series last year, it didn’t seem like some sort of out-of-nowhere thing: They had a ton of young talent, spent smartly to improve the roster and seemed to have a solid foundation. But now that they’re eight games under .500, it should be noted that, if they can’t get over .500 by season’s end, they’ll have notched only one winning season since 2016: last year, when they won that World Series.

23. Nationals (previously: 23)
Season high: 20 | Season low: 27
James Wood is figuring it out. Heading into Thursday, he was batting .380 (19-for-50) with eight extra-base hits and 12 RBIs in his previous 14 games. He’s still striking out too much, but he’s also walking at a higher rate than the league average. He’s going to be a full-on superstar sooner than you think.

24. Tigers (previously: 24)
Season high: 7 | Season low: 24
The Tigers already didn’t have a great offense, but it really imploded when Kerry Carpenter went on the IL months ago with a lumbar spine stress fracture. It’s too late to make a difference in the playoff chase, but it should be noted that he is about to return: His rehab in Triple-A Toledo seems to be going well. He’s key to everything this team wants to do next year and down the line: It’d be nice to see him back and raking before the season’s out.

25. Blue Jays (previously: 25)
Season high: 8 | Season low: 25
Until Daulton Varsho homered in the fourth inning of the Jays’ loss to the A’s on Sunday, the Blue Jays had gone, get this, 0-for-their-last-32 at-bats. It sure looks like it’s going to be the Jays’ first last-place finish since 2013.

26. A’s (previously: 26)
Season high: 20 | Season low: 30
Congratulations to the A’s, who, with their 50th win on Sunday, matched their season total for 2023. Now, that may speak more to how terrible last year was than how inspiring this one is, but nevertheless: In the final season in Oakland, there has been legitimate, clear improvements. You know they’re 20-13 since July 1, right? That’s the best record in the American League in that time. Really!

27. Angels (previously: 27)
Season high: 24 | Season low: 28
Can the Angels avoid losing 90 games? They’re on pace to lose 91, which would be the most losses this franchise -- which hasn’t exactly been awash in glory over the last decade or so -- since … 1999. If they lose 93, which is certainly possible, it would be the most they’ve lost since 1980.

28. Rockies (previously: 28)
Season high: 27 | Season low: 29
How many Rockies do you think have put together 20-20 seasons? The answer is five. Larry Walker, Ellis Burks, Dante Bichette (who did it twice), Carlos González and … Brenton Doyle! The 26-year-old Gold Glover reached the mark with a homer against the Braves on Saturday. Bichette and Walker reached the 30-30 mark: Doyle still has a chance.

29. Marlins (previously: 29)
Season high: 23 | Season low: 30
Jake Burger had 10 homers in 72 games before the All-Star break. With another homer on Sunday, he now has 12 in the 22 games since the All-Star break. Since the ASG, he has roughly the same OPS that Ted Williams had his entire career. Keep this up for the next 15 years, Jake, heck, you’ll be in the Hall of Fame!

30. White Sox (previously: 30)
Season high: 28 | Season low: 30
The White Sox finally let Pedro Grifol go, a merciful ending of Grifol’s tenure, surely for both team and manager. They let him and his team end their 21-game losing streak before letting him go, and, of course, the White Sox have now started a brand new three-game losing streak. They have to win 13 games to avoid having the worst record since the 1962 Mets. Fun fact: The White Sox have won only 14 games since … May 21.

Voters: Nathalie Alonso, Anthony Castrovince, Mark Feinsand, Alyson Footer, Will Leitch, Travis Miller, Sweeny Murti, Arturo Pardavila, Mike Petriello, Andrew Simon, David Venn.