2026 MLB Power Rankings: Every Contender’s Biggest Surprise This Season

This is it. With one week remaining in the regular season, the National League playoff field looks nearly complete. The Brewers, Dodgers and Braves have already clinched their respective divisions, while the Cubs, Padres and Phillies are jockeying for wild-card seeding while hoping to hold off the Diamondbacks, who haven’t been eliminated yet but are four games back of the final wild-card spot. In the American League, meanwhile, much is yet to be determined. The Rays, Yankees and Red Sox are the only teams who have already clinched a spot in the playoffs. Tampa Bay can clinch the AL East as early as Tuesday. The other AL division races are much tighter. In the West, the Rangers lead the Astros by one game for the division lead. The Guardians also lead the White Sox by one game in the Central. As we wait to see how it all shakes out, our final regular season power rankings below include every team’s biggest surprise of the year. (Note: Only teams within five games of a playoff spot entering the final week of the season were included in our rankings.) Do they belong on this list? No. This is the most disappointing team in baseball. Technically, however, they’ve yet to be eliminated from the playoff race. They’re five games back in the AL West, though, so it won’t be long before this debacle ends. Cal Raleigh going from MVP contender last year to a below league-average hitter with the worst batting average in the sport was the biggest surprise (a terrific final month won’t change that), but it’s worth pointing out that the entire offensive operation was a disaster, and a talented rotation didn’t do nearly enough to make up for the lineup’s spiral. The biggest surprise is that Adley Rutschman is no longer on the team. But in terms of on-field production, Gunnar Henderson — who combined for 20.2 bWAR his last three seasons — being a league-average hitter in his age-25 season is the most shocking part of this discouraging season in Baltimore, especially coming off his standout World Baseball Classic. Things are starting to crumble in Toronto. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. left Sunday’s game with back stiffness. Dylan Cease is getting an MRI on his shoulder. The Blue Jays dropped both of their series last week while fighting for a playoff spot. Not good. Guerrero finally went deep at the Rogers Centre, but he is currently sitting on nine home runs for the season in what has been the worst year of his career. He entered Sunday with the 12th-lowest slugging percentage among all qualified MLB hitters, which is almost incomprehensible. But it’s not just a lack of power hurting the reigning AL champs on offense. As a team, the Blue Jays went from having the highest on-base percentage in MLB last year to the fifth-lowest this year. If I told you the Astros’ pitching fWAR leader this year was someone who pitched in Japan last season, you might assume it’s Tatsuya Imai, the guy who signed for three years and $54 million before the season. But if you’ve watched any Houston baseball this year, you know that’s not true. Instead, it’s a player who signed a minor-league contract before the season. Peter Lambert, who pitched for NPB’s Yakult Swallows last year, has thrown more innings than any Astros starter this season and provided a semblance of stability to a rotation that desperately needed it. The AL West-leading Rangers had one All-Star this year. Corey Seager? Nope. Jacob deGrom? Surprisingly, no. Wyatt Langford? Try again. It was Jacob Latz, who has 30 saves this year and has emerged as a key piece of an otherwise uninspiring Texas bullpen. Latz has the same WHIP as Jacob Misiorowski (0.81) and the same batting average against as Mason Miller (.144). Things have started to spiral in September, but the big surprise is that the White Sox — after losing more than 100 games each of the last three seasons — are in this position at all to contend for a division title. No one expected things to flip so quickly. Specifically, an offense that ranks sixth in MLB in home runs has been a major stunner (even taking into account the recent downturn). Nolan Arenado’s go-ahead grand slam Sunday helped keep the Diamondbacks’ hopes alive, as slim as they may be. FanGraphs currently gives them a 5.9% chance to make the playoffs. The biggest surprise is not their offense but their pitching staff, which was expected to be among the worst in the sport but instead ranks 12th in MLB in ERA. Specifically, rebound seasons from starters Eduardo Rodriguez (2.89 ERA) and Michael Soroka (3.45) stand out. It’s not nearly the same as last year’s extraordinary division comeback, but the Guardians are doing the Guardians thing. On Aug. 16, they were six games back in the AL Central. Now, they have a one-game lead entering the season’s final week. The good surprise? Parker Messick has the third-lowest ERA among all qualified AL starters and is a legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate who will likely also receive Cy Young votes. The bad surprise? The Guardians are doing all this despite Jose Ramirez being a below league-average hitter for the first time in more than a decade. (Worth noting: He has looked a lot better lately.) It was a bad week on the field for the Red Sox, who dropped series in Texas and Tampa Bay, but they also punched their ticket to the postseason. So, considering where they were early this year after firing their manager, there’s plenty of reason to celebrate. It’s not a surprise that the Red Sox have a good rotation; it is a surprise that the best pitcher of the bunch might already be rookie Payton Tolle, who leads all qualified Boston starters in strikeouts, fWAR, WHIP and expected ERA. Late last year, Zack Wheeler had a blood clot removed in his shoulder and then a rib removed during thoracic outlet decompression surgery. The procedures ended his 2025 season and threatened to derail the end of his sensational career. Instead, at 36 years old, he hasn’t missed a beat. Wheeler has bounced back to again be one of the best arms in baseball — all the more important now, with Jesus Luzardo’s shoulder giving the standout left-hander trouble at a bad time. What if I told you Shohei Ohtani had a .953 OPS as a hitter and a 1.79 ERA as a pitcher in the first half…and two months later wasn’t the MVP favorite? Pete Crow-Armstrong was obviously an immense talent already, but what he’s doing this year — and the way he has improved his plate discipline and selectiveness while only getting more powerful at the plate — is extraordinary. He’s producing one of the greatest seasons in Cubs history. What a late-season run. The Padres have won 14 of 16 games to not only put themselves in prime position to make the postseason but also to potentially host a wild-card series if they can outplay the Cubs and Phillies over the season’s final week. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill are heating up, but neither has been the team’s best hitter this year (min. 300 plate appearances). In a career year, that honor belongs to Ty France, who leads the Padres in every slash-line category (.301/.366/.519). Entering this year, Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, Hunter Brown, Jacob deGrom and Max Fried were among the top contenders for the American League Cy Young Award. And none of them will win it. Cam Schlittler was coming off an encouraging rookie season, but his swift development into the unquestioned ace of the Yankees’ staff has been the biggest surprise. Now, he’s the runaway favorite to earn MLB’s top pitching honor — and might even receive MVP votes. The second-lowest ERA among qualified starters since the trade deadline belongs to the Braves’ Tyler Mahle, who is making Atlanta’s seemingly quiet deadline look a lot more impactful in retrospect. Mahle has a 1.28 in eight starts since the deadline and has gone at least six innings in seven of those outings. He doesn’t have the strikeout stuff you’d desire from a postseason standout, but right now he looks like the best option to start a Game 2 after Atlanta ace Chris Sale. The big surprise on the pitching staff this year was All-Star Justin Wrobleski, and the fact that he’ll be pitching out of the bullpen come October (barring a starting pitching catastrophe) is a reminder of the Dodgers’ embarrassment of riches on the staff. The big surprise on the offense is that both of the Dodgers’ corner outfielders — Kyle Tucker and Teoscar Hernández — were below league-average hitters for most of the year. That’s no longer the case, though, as both are playing their best baseball at the right time. The Rays’ offense has the highest batting average in MLB, their starting rotation ranks third in ERA, and they’re trending toward winning their first division title in five years. Any of those facts would constitute a surprise for a team that was projected to finish with a losing record this year. But the biggest surprise of all might be 31-year-old closer Bryan Baker, who had a 4.06 ERA last year and is now an All-Star closer with the most saves in the sport. They’ve already set a franchise record with 98 wins as they barrel toward their first ever 100-win season. That’s probably the team’s biggest surprise considering, yet again, they were overlooked and underestimated entering the year. Both the offense (hi, Jake Bauers) and the pitching staff have their fair share of surprises, but Jacob Misiorowski going from intriguing rookie to the best pitcher in baseball in just one season might stand out more than anything.