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?
We are what we spend our time doing. Our habits tell the world who we are, and for those of us spending our days watching baseball, several implications emerge. We embrace variance, whether we chalk it up to the math or the game’s inherent romance. You can’t predict baseball. That’s why we love it.
As we approach the second full month of action, that variance is at the forefront. The New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies took their high-end payrolls to horrible starts before finally getting hot, while the entire National League Central is a beautiful mess. Meanwhile, most of the American League is yet to get off the mat.
In a few months, a handful of currently sub-.500 teams will make the October dance. We are just the fools trying to guess which ones will be.
I’m not entirely sure whether teams like the Tampa Bay Rays or Chicago White Sox will survive the season in a playoff spot. But as they stave off regression, it’s been fun watching them recalibrate our expectations.
Contender
No. 3 Tampa Bay Rays (32-15, +38 run differential)
Every so often, a team takes on the identity of a particularly important player. Chandler Simpson isn’t Tampa Bay’s best player. But he’s become the face of RaysBall, and as his speed stress-tests defenses, Tampa Bay has found itself with a three-game lead over the New York Yankees for first place in the American League East.
Can they keep it up? Their run differential doesn’t suggest the Rays are the top team in the American League. Their starting pitchers have logged the 10th-fewest innings; their lineup ranks 13th by wRC+. The defensive metrics hate them. Tampa Bay keeps winning anyway.
Part of that can be attributed to Simpson emerging as a quality regular due to his defensive improvements. Jonathan Aranda’s sustained success has provided much-needed potency, and a heavy platoon approach has raised the unit’s floor. On the pitching side, both Shane McClanahan and Drew Rasmussen have given Tampa Bay excellent, healthy innings. Griffin Jax ripped off an impressive five-inning start to cement his transition, and Nick Martinez is pitching like an ace (don’t look at the peripherals).
There aren’t many more fun things to watch in baseball than Chandler Simpson busting it out of the box for a triple.
His 4th now on the season.
His 29.6 ft/sec sprint speed is in the 97th percentile and his 3.97 Home to 1st time is 1st in baseball.
Look at this man run. pic.twitter.com/1YFhIQjoZd
— Running From The OPS (@OPS_BASEBALL) May 16, 2026
We can trust the Rays to find ways to win on the margins. They are almost built to outperform projections and have an elite manager worth a handful of wins, too. The forecast calls for offensive regression, with a team-wide Process+ of 84 (26th in MLB). Even so, the Rays are taking advantage of a weak American League. They’ll likely make the playoffs, and if Tampa Bay gets there, it’ll have multiple high-level starting pitchers, a fun bullpen, and the kind of speed that your older relatives will adore.
Fake or not, the Rays are banking on important wins, putting them in position to buy at the deadline and fortify a roster capable of making noise in October.
The Middle
No. 16 Chicago White Sox (25-23, -11 run differential)
Eight weeks into the season, Chicago is the only city with two good teams. Maybe the Mets can change that after Memorial Day. The Angels… won’t. But for now, the White Sox gave the Windy City its highest-stakes Crosstown Classic in years.
Of course, nobody has played a more central role in this Cinderella story than Munetaka Murakami. Slashing .235/.372/.562 with 17 home runs, Murakami has emboldened his believers in the most entertaining way imaginable. The 0th-percentile Z-contact suggests that this won’t last forever, but if the regression monster doesn’t get around to Chicago until next season, the White Sox have an actual shot at this thing.
Granted, it’s the American League Central, and their playoff odds remain low. But Murakami isn’t alone in his overperformance. Sam Antonacci has been worth a half-win in his first 109 plate appearances. Miguel Vargas and Colson Montgomery are twin flames on the left side of the infield, both boasting wRC+ marks over 135. Their effectiveness has offset the futility we expected from much of the roster and weathered the storm through the bench’s struggles.
Elsewhere, Davis Martin emerged as one of the aces of the early going. He’s pitching to a 1.61 ERA and 2.38 FIP while striking out more than a batter per inning. If you squint, you can see the path to a decent staff behind him. Noah Schultz’s stuff demands optimism, and Sean Burke looks the part of a totally serviceable starter. Grant Taylor, an elite reliever in his own right, may eventually join them in the rotation. There’s enough here to be frisky, even if October remains a pipe dream.
It’ll take a lot more to be viewed as a serious contender and make meaningful improvements to their playoff odds. Still, the Chicago faithful have been waiting far too long for some summertime fun, and treading water with this new cast of characters is worthy of some recognition.
Wait ’til 2027
No. 27 Houston Astros (20-30, -53 run differential)
That sound you hear is a competitive window closing. Once proud, consistent winners of the AL West, Houston looks every bit as bad as its record. I’d reckon that the organizational rot runs even deeper.
As a result of poor management, scandal-based punishments, and years of buying at the deadline, the Astros resemble a late-stage Dave Dombrowski team. Nobody is doubting Yordan Alvarez’s presence. However, he’s no longer sharing the lineup with co-stars. Jose Altuve is aging quickly and Carlos Correa is shelved for the season. Jeremy Peña just returned from the IL but had struggled mightily before his placement. Cam Smith looked like a new man in the first week of the season before crashing back down to earth; the underlying numbers don’t offer much solace.
The reinforcements aren’t coming.
Could Altuve have hit Ohtani’s sweeper, if he used himself as a bat? pic.twitter.com/N3oKzVkmV1
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 6, 2026
The Astros’ farm system is barren, amplifying the roster’s lack of depth and making each injury matter that much more. It doesn’t help that the injury bug has hit Houston hard, starting with a shoulder injury for Hunter Brown in April.
Houston’s pitching has been uniquely poor, almost a half-run worse than the 29th-ranked Washington Nationals by ERA. Tatsuya Imai hasn’t lived up to expectations. Behind him, Mike Burrows has already burned through the goodwill of his offseason optimism.
Simply put, this is a bad roster devoid of levers to pull. A full 10 games under.5oo, it’s worth considering the drastic ahead of the trade deadline.
