Every week, the Pitcher List team will publish an update to our power rankings, highlighting three teams among the different tiers of contention. As always, the full rankings can be found at the bottom of this article, but where’s the fun in that?
No sport makes a mockery of small sample sizes quite like Major League Baseball. For the first few months of the year, we are left guessing as to what’s real and what’s merely a funny quirk of variance. The truth is, it takes a lot longer than 60 games to see through the fog of war. Hell, even the statistics after 162 games leave room for interpretation.
That’s annoying for us laypeople enduring Eric Byrnes CarShield commercials. But for the sport’s decision-makers tasked with changing the fates of their franchise in July, it’s a career-defining obstacle course.
In a National League that is increasingly crowded, pandemonium awaits. Between soft-selling and opportunistic buys in the middle of the pack and an arms race at the top, an early-summer hot streak could shape the second half. Yet, it seems like half the teams scrambling for the final Wild Card spot could fall out of it quickly. Whether the stats are sticky or not, teams will have to make real decisions based on them soon, making June’s action all the more important.
Contender
No. 1 Atlanta Braves (45-21, +116 run differential)
I’m not quite sure how they do it. I’m not quite sure they know how they do it. But for the eighth time in nine years, the Atlanta Braves will play October baseball.
They have long been expected to be relevant again; reports of their demise after 2025’s stumble were greatly exaggerated. Even so, Atlanta has exceeded every expectation. The Braves have the best record in baseball, backed by the fourth-best Process+ and the second-ranked ERA. The usual suspects are playing a big role. Chris Sale is pitching to a 2.23 ERA and Matt Olson has 17 home runs while playing every day.
What’s elevated the Braves, though, is role players exceeding expectations and incredible bounce-back campaigns. That conversation begins with Bryce Elder, whose 2.66 ERA and 3.46 FIP have given the baseball world a problem to solve. He has one above-average pitch by PLV and throws it 25% of the time. The control is good but not great, as is his luck. He’s allowed more than three earned runs once in 2026.
Elder isn’t alone on the comeback trail. His resurrection has been mirrored by Michael Harris II, who is running the same wRC+ as Olson (140) and has already posted 50% more fWAR than last season. Paired with Dom Smith having a career year, this lineup is well-equipped to handle Austin Riley’s struggles.
Michael Harris II clears the bases with this double and gives the Braves the lead late💪
(via @MLB )pic.twitter.com/69YwsSDGs5
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) June 7, 2026
Atlanta still has some levers to pull. Spencer Strider’s upside looms in the background, and budding stars Drake Baldwin and Spencer Schwellenbach are shelved on the IL.
Week after week, the Braves have minimized questions about the structural flaws in their roster. It wasn’t that long ago that preseason projections gave Atlanta an outsized chance to win a title. Why not 2026?
The Middle
No. 15 San Diego Padres (33-31, -18 run differential)
The San Diego Padres are built to win one-run games. They have the best reliever on the planet and the best non-closer bullpen behind him. But bullpens can’t blow leads if they don’t have them, and this offense is remarkably incapable of getting ahead.
San Diego is slashing .214/.289/.355 on the year—each of those is last in baseball. The culprits aren’t hard to identify. The Padres have invested the world in Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado. The former has just one home run through a third of the season, and his wRC+ is still 27 points higher than the latter. Machado’s .169 average is indicative of both bad luck and modest decline. He’s fortunate that the under-the-hood metrics don’t spell doom, but his 2026 results are trending towards one of the worst contracts in the sport.
Nearly everyone in this lineup has fallen into an early-season trough. Jackson Merrill hasn’t rebounded as expected, and Xander Bogaerts seems further down Machado’s path. There are eight players on the active roster with at least 100 plate appearances. Just two of them have been above average. It’s untenable, and it has shrunk the margins on a pitching staff that was never going to have enough horses in the rotation.
Fortunately, the Padres have banked enough wins to remain within a game of a playoff spot, despite losing eight of their last 10 games. There’s a world in which San Diego adds a bat (or three) at the deadline, and its biggest stars return to form. Until the Padres look more like they do on paper, though, there’s little reason to elevate them from the hodgepodge of unimpressive teams filling the middle of the standings.
Wait ‘Til 2027
No. 23 New York Mets (29-36, -5 run differential)
Fun fact: On June 10, 2024, the New York Mets had a 12.1% chance of making the playoffs, per FanGraphs. On June 8, two years later, their odds sit at 22.9%.
The New York faithful have done this song and dance before. There was no way the Mets would be truly out of the race this early, not with so many opportunities to provide false hope left in the second half of the year. This time, they have an underwhelming crop of National League teams to thank, including a San Diego squad that they beat twice over the weekend.
If you squint hard enough, you can see the path to a playoff spot. Francisco Lindor and Francisco Alvarez are on the way back. Jorge Polacno may be behind them. Bo Bichette has a formidable track record, the pitching has held up its end of the bargain, and rookie outfielders Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing have injected much-needed speed and contact to an often lifeless lineup.
Carson Benge’s MLB ranks since May 1st (min. 140 PA):
1.3 fWAR (T-12th)
.316 AVG (5th)
25 R (T-2nd)
.377 OBP (T-14th)
150 wRC+ (T-10th)Top-15 player in baseball for nearly six weeks now. Wild! pic.twitter.com/Qjk4KilCnR
— jack (@Jolly_Olive) June 8, 2026
That isn’t to say any of this is likely; 22.9% is still the ninth-best shot in the NL. A more reasonable outcome is that New York sells its expiring contracts for spare parts and intriguing prospects. There’s always a market for the likes of Brooks Raley and A.J. Minter. Freddy Peralta may be the best starter dealt this summer. David Stearns can get creative and help shift odds in the Mets’ favor for 2027, should Steve Cohen be smart enough to keep him around.
The rest of this season, though, will probably be about the players vying for next year’s playing time. Jared Young has been a godsend at first base since returning from a meniscus tear, and journeyman Austin Warren looks like a keeper in the bullpen. New York is getting good starts from Nolan McLean and Christian Scott while massaging Jonah Tong’s arsenal, and Clay Holmes looked fantastic before a leg injury paused his season.
New York embraced uncertainty and flexibility when it blew up its core last winter. Things haven’t gone well for the Mets, but as they fight for the right to be soft buyers instead of sellers in July, they must also weigh the cost of losing prospect capital in a potentially lost season.
