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?
Flipping back and forth between first and second amidst the internal struggles of our trio to compare the Dodgers and Brewers—two contenders of the same league with similarities few and far between in how they were built—the Dodgers get our attention this week despite slotting in behind the Brewers once again.
The connection between all three highlighted teams is clear, with the Dodgers’ adversary in last season’s World Series refusing to lay down early in what has been an otherwise dreadful campaign given the lofty standards set ahead of it. All things considered, the Blue Jays ought to be thankful for the mediocrity of the AL East final playoff spot chase, which allows them to still be in the thick of things. Lastly, we have the San Francisco Giants and all their dysfunctionality, left with the role of trying to play spoiler down the stretch.
Contender
No. 2 Los Angeles Dodgers (87-57, +155)
Even in the middle of their more disappointing moments of the second half, there was always a feeling the Dodgers would prevail in the race for a top-2 seed in the National League, earning that much-important bye. Part of that feeling came from the assumption the talent level would rise to the occasion, but a decent chunk of it also came from the awareness of a particularly soft schedule down the stretch for the reigning back-to-back champs. Other than one series against the playoff-contending division rivals Padres, the Dodgers play all sorts of struggling clubs in the National League and are bound to take advantage of this.
The Dodgers enter play on Tuesday in the middle of a five-game winning streak, and after weeks of uncertainty, we finally seem to be getting some clarity on Shohei Ohtani’s two-way status down the stretch. It seems Ohtani will play out the year as a hitter alone, invariably a disappointing update, but one whose negative impact shouldn’t be blown out of proportion given the talent already featured in this Dodgers rotation. Both responsible for quality starts in wins over the Nats last week, veterans Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow get tasked with a bigger role in supporting Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tarik Skubal at the top of this rotation. And whenever you say these four names out loud as members of a single pitching staff, it doesn’t feel right, certainly speaking louder than any words could on the ceiling of this club.
One week of play isn’t enough to embrace a potential trend, but in similar fashion to last season, a hitter who seems intent on fulfilling the notion that arriving late is better than not at all, Mookie Betts is off to quite the start in September. In fact, Betts is the only Dodger to leave the yard multiple times this month, driving in a team-leading 11 RBI, five more than any other hitter. Although Teoscar Hernández doesn’t have quite Mookie’s stats in this period, he is another Dodger flourishing following an underwhelming campaign in his own right, also the protagonist of the Dodgers’ most recent win. On top of all of this, they just got one of the better catchers in the game back from a big injury in Will Smith. While he has yet to get hot since his return, Smith’s presence alone provides a boost for the pitching staff down the stretch.
The Middle
No. 14 Toronto Blue Jays (72-73, -39)
A couple of weeks ago we were here discussing the Blue Jays and their chances of a reversal in fortune down the stretch. While the ground they have picked up since isn’t anything outrageous, the idea of the reigning AL champs squeezing their way back into the postseason is impactful enough for us to revisit this team’s current standing. The notion that a single division could send four teams to the postseason sounds, for lack of a better word, ludicrous. Yet, with less than a month before the end of the regular season, it’s up to a single team—the Toronto Blue Jays—to make that happen, possessing relatively favorable odds to do so.
Currently one game below .500, the Jays are right there with the likes of the Guardians and Rangers for that final playoff spot. Other than a head-to-head battle against the Rangers, the Jays have quite a soft schedule down the stretch, having already played all of their games against the Rays, Yankees, and Red Sox. Assessing this playoff chase, an exercise one should always keep in mind when evaluating teams like the Jays, Rangers, and Guardians is that their opportunity is largely affected by circumstance. Whoever prevails here will simply have screwed up less but will also likely still be lacking in comparison with virtually any other playoff team. Outlining the frustrations that might come with this team, after inching closer to the Guardians—taking two of three in a series against them early last week—the Jays have lost some momentum by failing to sweep the Royals with a Sunday loss before dropping one against the Athletics.
The loss against the A’s hurts even more when you look at who was starting for the Jays, none other than Cy Young candidate Dylan Cease. It’s the nature of the third Wild Card team in any league in most seasons: more than a dominant team, it will simply be the one who screws up less, and on that path, the Jays will need a bit more from their stars to take this over the finish line. Cease’s importance to a rotation that got thinner at the deadline is massive, and ending the home run drought at home was only step one for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who has been lacking this entire campaign. The corner infielder power hitter actually carrying this lineup, Kazuma Okamoto, remains one of the team’s most productive hitters this month, but even he may need to raise his game if Toronto is to get where it wants to go.
Wait ‘Til 2027
No. 27 San Francisco Giants (60-85, -74)
An avid fan of the Giants or not, there is a high number of specific recent developments somehow involving this franchise that might have found their way to your timeline in recent days—the first of them being the former Giants star Jeff Kent ranting on the state of the game and the overinfluence of analytics and all the things we’ve heard a million times before from a specific section of former players. The second thing is that, ignoring the state of his team, Rafael Devers has kicked off September like a man on a mission—the former Red Sox star has homered six times in eight games, which represents half of the Giants’ home run total for the month.
We mustn’t also forget a strong contender for game of the season to kick off last week, when the Giants, in a game in which Rafael Devers left the yard (big surprise), found themselves bested by the Pirates by the score of 13-12. San Francisco managed to lose a matchup despite securing multiple five-run innings. That game kicked off a week with the Giants dropping multiple series against the bottom of the barrel in the National League, bested by the Pirates and more recently the Mets.
Back to the topic of Devers, his individual quest to do something never before seen in a Giants uniform is probably the most attractive quality of this team down the stretch—that and the possibility of spoiling the hopes of division rivals. With multiple series against the Dodgers and one against the Padres, the Giants could feasibly help keep the reigning back-to-back champs from earning a playoff bye and keep the Friars out of the postseason altogether. As far as Devers is concerned, though, leading the league with 36 doubles and possessing 35 long balls after this terrific start to September, he could become the first Giant ever to hit 40 doubles and 40 homers in the same season. I know what you’re thinking: what about Barry Bonds? The answer is nope: 40 apiece was something that the former 7-time MVP never touched—38 doubles and 46 homers in his first season with the Giants were the closest Bonds ever got.
