By Tim Britton, Chad Jennings and Andy McCullough Every week, we ask a selected group of our baseball writers — local and national — to rank the teams from first to worst . Here are the collective results. This baseball season defined by parity is approaching its final month.
Barring a righteous hot streak, no team will win 100 games this season, which has not happened since 2014. The division races remain fierce: The Dodgers are fending off the hard-charging Diamondbacks and Padres in the National League West, while the Guardians attempt to do the same with the Twins and the Royals in the American League Central. The Yankees and the Orioles continue to jockey for supremacy in the AL East.
In short, there is great theater ahead. But August presented intrigue of its own, with the postseason picture coming into focus and several contenders moving into better positions. For this week’s power rankings, we highlighted one important maneuver made by each team this month.
1. Los Angeles Dodgers Record: 78-53 Last Power Ranking: 1 Big August move: IF Max Muncy activated from the injured list Our worries derive from our context. Most of you probably didn’t go to bed Sunday night fretting over whether you used the subjunctive mood properly, and most major-league teams don’t spend their summers mindlessly scraping the labels off beer bottles because they’re on pace to win only 95 games.
Advertisement Throughout August, though, the Dodgers have started to resemble.