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?
Welcome to September, when the dog days of summer start looking a bit like fall, previewing playoff baseball as the sun sets a little earlier during the 7:10 starts.
For some, it’s already football season. Kansas City Royals fans can rejoice; the Pittsburgh faithful are already preparing for another nine-ish wins. One consequence of the current playoff structure, though, is that only eight teams are more than six games out of a playoff spot with a month left to play. That’s probably something to celebrate, even if the American League Wild Card race is more of a tragic comedy than an action-packed race to the finish line.
Elsewhere, we can start getting ahead on our retrospective grades. Short of a generational September (and some good luck), the New York Mets will be among the league’s biggest disappointments. The St. Louis Cardinals, meanwhile, are a rousing success, no matter how the season ends. Let’s get to work preparing for 2027 by reflecting on some of those fates.
Contender
No. 5 New York Yankees (78-59, +117 run differential)
The New York Yankees have a strong argument to be the best team in the American League, despite having to fight off the Boston Red Sox for the right to host a Wild Card Series. Doing that without the sport’s best hitter is a feather in Brian Cashman’s cap, though we know he’ll be judged only by his ability to bring home a championship.
That isn’t to say New York hasn’t hit real adversity. In Aaron Judge’s absence, much of this lineup has failed its stress tests. Ben Rice’s second half has fallen off a cliff, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. is having a walk year from hell (and still has 3.0 fWAR to his name). Austin Wells has earned the ire that Yankees fans once held for Anthony Volpe, and much of the offense will be platoon-bound against the best bullpens of October. The buttons Cashman has pressed to fix the holes in this roster haven’t necessarily worked, either.
After an electric start, George Lombard Jr. made a bunch of small-sample DRS posts look silly by committing an error in six games. He’s still an electric defender, but his growing pains defensively haven’t helped buoy his profile amidst some Z-contact turbulence. Similarly, neither promising outfield prospect has hit all that much.
Cam Schlittler (NYY) struck out eight and walked five over 5.2 shutout innings pic.twitter.com/8UHyjG2O6P
— Pitcher List Stats (@PitcherListPLV) August 29, 2026
On the other side of the ledger, the Yankees’ pitching has been phenomenal. Cam Schlittler is a safe bet to win Cy Young, headlining a rotation that was elite before his arrival. Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, and Max Fried have persevered through health concerns, combining for three ERAs below 3.25. Bullpen breakouts from Paul Blackburn and Brent Headrick have helped New York hold enough leads to guarantee October baseball, too. A lack of late-inning star power might come back to haunt the Yankees, but with an incredible pitching lab and plenty of arms to choose from, it wouldn’t be surprising if New York found another interesting arm just in time for the playoffs.
Ultimately, a +117 run differential doesn’t happen by accident, and they’ve weathered the storm of Judge’s injury better in the standings than the offensive leaderboards. If Judge returns and gets hot as the weather worsens, nobody’s going to care about some mid-summer slumps.
The Middle
No. 16 St. Louis Cardinals (68-70, -15 run differential)
According to FanGraphs, the Cardinals entered the year with a 9.1% chance to make the playoffs. A hot start made them a fun story in the season’s early going, and they proved to be peskier than most anticipated, given their public commitment to rebuilding. Our collective priors seem likely to win out, with playoff odds hovering around 1.0%, but that shouldn’t diminish their spring success.
St. Louis didn’t return to playoff odds below 9.1% until the end of July. In that time, they’ve accelerated their rebuild, confirmed that top prospect JJ Wetherholt would meet the hype, and positioned themselves as strong sellers at the deadline. The ever-steady Cardinals stayed true to their process, despite sheepish hopes of playoff baseball, and made the kind of sound decisions that had once earned them two decades of competitive ball.
NL Rookie Run Value Leaders pic.twitter.com/CBc2HhuFeo
— Thomas Nestico (@TJStats) August 29, 2026
As such, the rest of the season may very well be a wash. Between overexposed pitchers and post-debut Joshua Báez facing the realities of Major League Baseball, the roster has its holes. None of that will detract from the optimism St. Louis has earned.
September will thus be about celebrating the emergence of Jordan Walker and figuring out which pieces are going to be contributors to a team with its sights set on a postseason berth sometime soon. Quinn Mathews should get an extended look, and a rather anonymous front-end of the bullpen could make a name for itself down the stretch.
Essentially anything from here on out is productive. Most information is for a rebuilding team. And as Chaim Bloom continues to leave his fingerprints on the roster, it is becoming clear that this succession plan was a successful one.
St. Louis is feisty enough to take a series from anyone, and it would be of little surprise if they dented a playoff hopeful’s chances at an inopportune time. Their October dreams being dashed shouldn’t be seen as anything more than confirmation that, in a written-off season, those dreams still existed.
Wait ‘Til 2027
No. 24 New York Mets (61-76, -53 run differential)
If you had only been exposed to the Mets through social media clips and national push notifications, you’d think that the season that spun out of orbit with a 12-game losing streak was further battered by injuries and punctuated with lowlights destined for the spotlight New York brings.
It turns out that would get you most of the way there.
Poor injury luck, a massive Bo Bichette slump, and the bottom falling out of the early-season rotation all but sentenced the Mets to one of the five-or-so worst records in the sport. With the newly introduced lottery system, there was at least a glimmer of hope that at the end of the tunnel, a top pick might make this sorry summer worthwhile.
The Mets might screw that up, too.
New York has played well since the trade deadline, scuffling in recent days but posting a 14-12 record in August. It could be just enough to screw with their ping-pong balls, and with luxury tax penalties docking them 10 slots if not in the top six selections, another nightmare scenario has emerged. The Mets could very well play themselves into the 19th pick, offering David Stearns no solace for the most stressful season of his career.
Aside from the doomsday scenarios, there are still interesting developments in Flushing worth talking about. For one, Nolan McLean remains a budding ace, and Christian Scott looks like a legitimate mid-rotation arm. Jonah Tong might be back in the bigs after some recent dominance, and there’s room for guys like Daniel Duarte, Nate Lavender, and Jefry Yan to pitch themselves onto the 2027 big-league roster. Even Kodai Senga, recently seen as a DFA candidate, has made himself useful as a leverage arm. For those brave enough to keep watching, New York has held up its end of the bargain.
“Nolan McLean: Ace in the making.”
—Gary Cohen 🔥 pic.twitter.com/tONxaUdiXG
— Just Mets (@just_mets) August 29, 2026
On offense, a handful of performances could change the math on the Mets’ offseason. Jared Young, sans a meniscus tear, has admirably filled in at first in ways that Mark Vientos and Jorge Polanco could not. Bichette has taken admirably to third, rookie Carson Benge might have the best arm in baseball, and Francisco Lindor is back above water. Like it or not, many of the Mets from this dismal season will be back next year, and projecting 50th-percentile luck probably makes them a fringe-playoff contender.
As the season winds down, gathering information for next season will become increasingly important. The team had already waived Luis Robert Jr. to save a few bucks and get Nick Morabito more playing time. A.J. Ewing has a slump to break out of, and a few more arms could have late-inning cameos. The soft tank is on, but there’s still enough star power to ruin somebody’s day, no matter who you’re rooting for.
Nobody is happy in Metsland. There’s still time to find new, more creative ways to disappoint, even if the wins and losses don’t really count until next spring.
