FanGraphs Power Rankings: 2025 Trade Deadline Edition

It’s been a few weeks since our last run of the power rankings, and a lot has happened since then. Teams we thought of as contenders are suddenly out of the playoff picture, and the buyers and sellers ahead of this week’s trade deadline are quickly sorting themselves out.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings 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 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 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 — 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.

…

The Blue Jays have gone 22-7 since June 24 and were handed just their fifth loss of the past month on Sunday. When this hot streak began, they were in third place in the AL East and 3.5 games behind the Yankees. Now they’re 5.5 games ahead in the division and own the best record in baseball. A little rest must have helped George Springer; he entered the All-Star break mired in a mini slump, but he’s collected multiple hits in seven of the 10 games since the Midsummer Classic.

While the Blue Jays have been the best team in baseball over the last month, the Brewers have been the better club over the last two — the Brew Crew’s record since May 24 is 37-15, two games better than the Jays. Milwaukee exited the All-Star break with another impressive series sweep over the Dodgers — the first time an opponent has swept a season series against the Dodgers since 2006 (minimum five games) — but ran into a bit of trouble last weekend against the red-hot Marlins. The Brewers will have to bounce back quickly because they have an absolutely massive series against the Cubs this week.

Speaking of the Cubs, they’ve flip flopped with the Brewers atop the NL Central standings a handful of times since the All-Star break. They enter this big three-game series tied in the standings, and while it won’t determine the division winner with two months left to play, it should give us a pretty good idea of which team will be in the driver’s seat down the stretch. The Cubs’ pitching staff allowed 32 runs in their three losses last week while allowing just five in their three wins. Matthew Boyd has been absolutely phenomenal atop the rotation, but the team desperately needs to add some pitching help ahead of the deadline, especially since Boyd seems likely to be dealing with workload constraints after only throwing 51.1 innings combined between the regular season and the playoffs in 2024.

The Mets extended their win streak to seven games with sweeps of the Angels and Giants last week. That hot streak propelled them into first place in the NL East — even with four wins of their own last week, the Phillies couldn’t keep up with New York. Both of these teams recently made moves to bolster their bullpens; the Mets traded for Gregory Soto on Friday, while the Phillies signed free agent David Robertson last Monday. Neither club looks like it’s done adding pieces for the stretch run, and both should be very active ahead of the deadline.

The Dodgers have gone cold in July. And while their pitching staff looks like it’s finally getting healthy — they activated Tyler Glasnow off the IL just before the All-Star break, and Blake Snell should make his return from a shoulder injury this week — the offense is a trickier problem to solve. They’ve scored just 3.76 runs per game in July after scoring 5.61 during the first three months of the season. Even with Shohei Ohtani anchoring the lineup, it’s hard to score consistently when Teoscar Hernández (87 wRC+ in July), Freddie Freeman (78), Mookie Betts (46), and Tommy Edman (25) are all mired in slumps simultaneously.

Injuries continue to plague the Astros. Since the All-Star break, Isaac Paredes, Lance McCullers Jr., and Brandon Walter have all been placed on the IL, bringing Houston’s current IL count to 18 players, the most in baseball by a significant margin. The ‘Stros bounced back from their series loss to the Mariners following the break with a sweep of the Diamondbacks early last week, but they were pretty thoroughly defeated by the A’s in a four-game sweep at home over the weekend. Perhaps all those injuries are finally catching up to them.

Of all the teams in the AL playoff field, the Red Sox might be in the most precarious position. They already made a season-defining trade back in June when they moved on from Rafael Devers, and there are a number of holes on their roster that need to be filled. A pair of series losses at the start the second half disrupted the good vibes from the 10-game win streak that preceded the break, but a series win over the Dodgers last weekend helped them bounce back a little. Despite holding the second Wild Card spot, it feels like they’re sitting on a knife’s edge. Their position in the standings indicates they should be one of the more active teams ahead of the trade deadline, but they’re also committed to giving their youngsters a long look in the majors. It should be a fascinating week in Boston.

The Rangers snapped off a six-game win streak with sweeps of the A’s and Braves last week, and are suddenly tied with the Mariners for the third AL Wild Card spot. Baseball’s best pitching staff has allowed just 2.9 runs per game in July, and the offense has done just enough to earn a 15-6 record this month. Corey Seager has been leading the lineup with a 210 wRC+ in July, and Josh Jung has recorded a hit in all six games since being recalled from Triple-A last Monday. The Rangers and M’s will meet in a huge four-game series in Seattle this weekend.

The Tigers snapped a six-game losing streak on Sunday, but they’ve still lost 12 of their last 14 games. This prolonged slump hasn’t really affected their playoff position, however. They’re still eight games up in the AL Central, and our playoff odds give them a 95.7% chance of making it to the postseason. They had a ton of cushion built up and have only given away a small portion of it during this stretch.

For the second straight season, the Mariners got a quiet trade market moving pretty early, acquiring Josh Naylor from the Diamondbacks last Thursday. That move addressed one corner infield hole, but it can’t be the only addition to this roster; in particular, they desperately need some reinforcements for their bullpen, and they haven’t been quiet about their pursuit of Eugenio Suárez to bolster their third base hole.

The Yankees are facing a pretty dire situation: Aaron Judge was placed on the IL on Saturday with a strained elbow flexor. The hope is that he’ll only be sidelined for a short period to rest his arm before returning as the full-time DH while his elbow heals fully. The Yankees were already active in the trade market before Judge went down — the team added Ryan McMahon to fill their hole at third base on Friday and traded for Amed Rosario to improve their bench depth on Saturday. New York will likely continue to add pieces before the trade deadline, but nothing the team does this week will have as much impact as Judge’s elbow.

The five teams in this tier are all fighting over one playoff spot right now. The Padres currently hold the final NL Wild Card spot and just split a big four-game series with the Cardinals last weekend. The problem for the Friars is that they don’t have the kind of deep farm system that would allow them to act as true buyers this week; there are plenty of holes to fill on their roster, but very few resources to actually fill them. Meanwhile, the Reds are riding a four-game win streak into a big series against the Dodgers; Cincinnati is just a game back of the last Wild Card spot, and it looks like they might be buyers at the deadline.

The Marlins are the hottest team in this tier — they’ve gone 22-9 since June 20 — but they’re also the furthest from San Diego in the standings at six games back. Everyone is wondering whether or not they’ll trade Sandy Alcantara, but their sudden surge might give them pause. I think they’ll see reason and end up selling off what they can, but this hot streak has given us a glimpse of what a good ballclub in south Florida could look like in the next couple of years.

The Cardinals looked like surprise Wild Card contenders for much of May and June, but they’ve gone 7-14 in July and are quickly falling out of the playoff picture. They already designated Erick Fedde for assignment and should be open to trading away a number of the veteran players dotting their roster. This season was always meant to be a bridge to Chaim Bloom taking over as president of baseball operations next year anyway.

I’m not sure what the Royals are up to. On Saturday, they traded for Randal Grichuk to bolster their outfield depth. The very next day, they placed Kris Bubic and Jac Caglianone on the IL with serious injuries. And then late Sunday, news broke that they were signing Seth Lugo to a two-year extension, removing a very valuable piece from the trade market. These moves, combined with their earlier trade for Adam Frazier, make it seem like they’ll be acting as buyers at the deadline. But while the Royals are only four games back in the Wild Card race, they’re behind four other teams in the standings. The injury to Bubic is probably the biggest blow to the team’s playoff hopes — 45-year-old Rich Hill was recalled from the minors last week, and 37-year-old Dallas Keuchel is a likely candidate to fill Bubic’s spot in the rotation. Grichuk and Frazier are fine depth pieces, but they’re not going to significantly move the needle. Taken together, it’s a curious set of moves from a team on the very edge of the playoff picture.

The question of whether the Rays would approach the trade deadline as buyers or sellers appears to have been answered by their pretty quick tumble down the standings. They’ve gone 6-15 in July after being swept by the Reds last weekend and have fallen all the way down to .500. With 22 of their next 30 games coming on the road, including a huge four-games series in New York against the Yankees this week, the path back to Wild Card contention seems too steep for them to climb.

Of the teams that look like sellers ahead of the deadline, The Orioles have some of the most enticing trade candidates available. They’ve already moved Soto, and their roster is filled with pending free agents, none of whom can be viewed as key foundational pieces. Baltimore has an opportunity to reload its roster for 2026, but the challenge will be to find trade partners that are open to short-term rentals but also have prospects who are close to the majors. That’s a tricky needle to thread.

Despite a spirited point–counterpoint between Jay Jaffe and Michael Baumann, the Diamondbacks started their tactical sell off by trading away Naylor and Grichuk last week. They’re likely not done yet either. Suárez is the most coveted bat available on the trade market, and some of Arizona’s veteran pitchers could be on the move as well. By this time next week, the Diamondbacks’ roster will look very different.

The Braves put Grant Holmes on the IL with an elbow injury on Sunday, which means their entire Opening Day rotation has now been sidelined with significant injuries. Things have gotten so bad that they traded for the recently DFA’d Fedde just to eat some innings down the stretch. That said, it isn’t all doom and gloom in Atlanta. Michael Harris II is finally showing some life at the plate; he’s slashed .412/.444/.853 since the All-Star break.

The Rockies won their first two series coming out of the All-Star break, the first time they’ve won back-to-back series since last year. More importantly, their trade of McMahon indicates they’re more open to aiding their rebuild through midseason trades than they have been in the recent past. There aren’t that many other trade chips on their roster, but moving on from some of their older players should give their young prospects opportunities in the majors, at least in theory.