By Tim Britton, Chad Jennings and Kaitlyn McGrath
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.
All right, enough fooling around. There are less than three weeks left in the regular season, and these games are starting to carry real weight and significance. These wins and losses really mean something.
The Mets got red-hot last week to stay very much in the hunt. The Royals swept the Twins over the weekend to take control of a wild-card spot. The Red Sox failed to sweep the White Sox — after being swept by the Mets — and the Diamondbacks narrowly avoided being swept by the Astros, affecting the bottom of each league’s playoff race.
It’s mid-September, and it’s time for Power Rankings to carry that same sense of urgency and importance.
We did this back in April, when it was way too early and a just-for-fun kind of thing. This time, we mean it.
Each team’s MVP. Go!
Record: 86-58
Last Power Ranking: 1
One-month MVP: Mookie Betts
Five-month MVP: Shohei Ohtani
Is Ohtani the frontrunner for National League MVP right now? We’d put the chances at, oh, something like 50/50? As in, once he gets to 50 homers and 50 steals, the race might as well be over. A year after Ronald Acuña Jr. made history as the sport’s first 40/70 player, Ohtani is doing something even more remarkable. And he’s doing it for a Dodgers team confronted with an unexpected amount of adversity. Los Angeles lost Betts and Max Muncy for significant stretches and Freddie Freeman for a shorter one. Its rotation still requires sorting out. (Ohtani can’t help there until next year.) But as usual, LA is still at the top of the NL — because Ohtani is the NL’s best hitter. — Tim Britton
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