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?
Apologies for the delays in publishing this week’s edition of the Power Rankings. Here we are to talk exclusively about the National League, which I guess we can all agree on has been the more entertaining of the two leagues this season. Are the Dodgers going to cruise through the rest of the season as the undisputed top team in baseball? Could a sturdy Cardinals team pay the price of a strong division and league this season? Lol Mets.
Contender
No. 1 Los Angeles Dodgers (60-32, +164 run differential)
It’s not normal for a team to have a replacement option as talented as Dalton Rushing to replace an injured Will Smith. While there have been some hiccups with his defensive work, the production with the bat generates excitement regarding this player—one can’t help but ponder what the future of his development looks like once Smith is back, simply blocked out of playing time anywhere he turns. Rushing was the star of the Dodgers’ most recent victory, showing the magic of baseball in a 7-6 win against the Rockies that saw the best team in the sport play potentially the worst one in a tightly contested, thrilling matchup. Sticking with the offense, someone who is finally showing signs of the player the Dodgers thought they were signing is star outfielder Kyle Tucker. While his season numbers remain vastly underwhelming, Tucker has turned it on as of late, recording 14 hits in the last 37 at-bats, a mark good for a .978 OPS.
How shocking it is to realize that the Dodgers have the best record in baseball with their big offseason additions failing to live up to expectations for the most part, Tucker and the recovering Edwin Díaz, on his way back from a lengthy absence. Carrying on the Díaz talk, the Dodgers haven’t felt his absence largely because they had the previous offseason’s star closer on the market moving back to that role and pitching at the height of his abilities. Scott, who was on a Kenley Jansen 2017 K-BB ratio run before allowing a pair to the Rockies in a blown save on Monday, has been otherwise magnificent this season. If Díaz can get back to full health, that late-inning duo could carry an extra layer of dominance that last season’s championship team did not have.
One would be forgiven for pondering if the Padres’ recent skid has a lot to do with their underperformance, or is it simply a byproduct of too many games in a short period against the Dodgers? In between a series against the Athletics in which they took two out of three, the Dodgers beat the Padres six times in eight games, building what’s currently a 14-game lead in the NL West with a new team hovering around .500 in second place, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Comfortable inside their own division, the Dodgers can’t afford complacency in the race for the best record in the National League, with both the Brewers and Braves having terrific campaigns.
The Middle
No. 8 St. Louis Cardinals (47-41, +12 run differential)
It feels a bit harsh to call a team ranked number 9 as part of the middle, but the reality is that for all of the positive things we could and will say about the Cardinals, they don’t fit the bill of contender status for tier 1 of this list. In fact, if the playoffs started today, St. Louis wouldn’t even get a ticket to the dance—the Cardinals are victims of a lopsided Major League Baseball this year, with a far stronger field of contenders in the National League side than the American League.
Highlighting the Cardinals’ recent performance here is about rewarding competitiveness versus the elite clubs, more so than simply an outstanding run of wins. Over the last week, St. Louis played two of the strongest teams in baseball and more than held its own, securing a series win away from home against the Cubs and Braves before heading off to Milwaukee for yet another tough challenge against the NL Central leaders.
Twice in this successful week against playoff contenders, the Cardinals reached double digits in runs scored, and at the root of this success was a player who was tailor-made for the Cardinals in Nathan Church. After impressing last season in Triple-A with a .329/.328/.524 line, Church got a shot in 2026, and since the start of last week, he leads the team with three home runs, taking his season total to eight. One of the breakout players of 2026 and the National League leader in RBI, Jordan Walker is the only other Cardinals hitter with multiple long balls during this period.
On the pitching side of things, the difference in run support when Michael McGreavy and André Pallante—the Cardinals’ two top starters this season—remains outlandish. Pallante and McGreavy had similarly productive starts last week, but Pallante moved to a 10-5 record with 17 runs of support in a blowout win over the Cubs, while McGreavy took the loss, receiving a single run of support against the Braves, and is now 3-7 on the season.
Wait ‘Til 2027
No. 26 New York Mets (38-53, -160 run differential)
I don’t know about you, but for a decent part of the early season, I kept telling myself that the Mets weren’t this bad. They weren’t this bad; I said it twice to really hammer home the point. Weeks went by, and now, on their second manager, it looks like they are, in fact, this bad. Somehow, a team with Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, and Bo Bichette cannot get their act together and sits near the bottom of the food chain in the National League—near, if you want to be generous, a club with a negative 160 run differential.
It’s a shame because if not for Ohtani’s existence and the lack of support around Soto in the Mets offense, Soto could be the odds-on favorite to win NL MVP, doing his fair share and then some by leading the league in several key offensive categories, including OBP (.414) and SLG (.570). The other stars of this club are letting him down, though. Without Pete Alonso, the Mets’ whole infield, and also the DH position, have grown allergic to power, with none of its starters boasting an SLG at or above .400. Lindor left the yard a team-high two times since the start of last week, but did so with a batting average hovering around the Mendoza line, hardly a promising sign for the switch-hitting shortstop.
Bichette doesn’t corner the market on disappointing major offseason acquisitions in this club, as Freddy Peralta has already managed to surpass the number of runs he allowed in the entirety of last season, 59 to 54. Even when the Mets took a series from the Braves recently, they did so with some deflating news, including a poor Peralta start and not one, but two blowup outings from Devin Williams, whose 1.652 WHIP is beyond imaginable.
