MLB Power Rankings, Week 8: Royals crater 12 spots, White Sox defy expectations, and Braves honor their dead
Atlanta reclaims #1 with a 32-15 record and 8-game NL East lead. Kansas City posts the season's worst weekly drop (-12 spots) as their lineup construction around Bobby Witt Jr. collapses. The White Sox surge 8 spots to #14. All 30 teams ranked with injury news and schedule outlook.
Atlanta reclaims the top spot. Kansas City posts the season's worst weekly drop. And somehow the Chicago White Sox are a power-ranking story — in a good way.
The full rankings at a glance
| Rank | Team | Last week | Δ | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Atlanta Braves | 2 | ▲1 | 32–15 |
| 2 | Los Angeles Dodgers | 3 | ▲1 | 29–18 |
| 3 | Chicago Cubs | 1 | ▼2 | 29–18 |
| 4 | Tampa Bay Rays | 5 | ▲1 | 30–15 |
| 5 | New York Yankees | 4 | ▼1 | 28–19 |
| 6 | Milwaukee Brewers | 6 | — | ~25–21 |
| 7 | San Diego Padres | 7 | — | ~25–17 |
| 8 | St. Louis Cardinals | ~9 | — | 24–18 |
| 9 | Pittsburgh Pirates | ~8 | — | 23–20 |
| 10 | Philadelphia Phillies | ~17 | ▲7 | ~25–22 |
| 11 | Seattle Mariners | 12 | ▲1 | — |
| 12 | Oakland Athletics | 10 | ▼2 | — |
| 13 | Cleveland Guardians | ~13 | — | — |
| 14 | Chicago White Sox | 22 | ▲8 | ~.500 |
| 15 | Texas Rangers | 16 | ▲1 | — |
| 16 | Washington Nationals | 21 | ▲5 | ~.500 |
| 17 | Cincinnati Reds | 17 | — | — |
| 18 | Toronto Blue Jays | 13 | ▼5 | — |
| 19 | Arizona Diamondbacks | 19 | — | — |
| 20 | Detroit Tigers | 15 | ▼5 | — |
| 21 | Miami Marlins | 20 | ▼1 | — |
| 22 | Boston Red Sox | 23 | ▲1 | 19–27 |
| 23 | New York Mets | 25 | ▲2 | — |
| 24 | Baltimore Orioles | 24 | — | — |
| 25 | Minnesota Twins | 27 | ▲2 | — |
| 26 | Kansas City Royals | 14 | ▼12 | — |
| 27 | Houston Astros | 26 | ▼1 | — |
| 28 | San Francisco Giants | 29 | ▲1 | — |
| 29 | Colorado Rockies | 28 | ▼1 | — |
| 30 | Los Angeles Angels | 30 | — | 16–31 |
Atlanta Braves — #1 (▲1 from #2)
The Braves took care of two things this week: reclaiming the top ranking, and saying goodbye to the men who made them. 1
Bobby Cox and Ted Turner both passed away in recent weeks. Their first home series back, Truist Park became a proper send-off — the crowd, the ceremony, the No. 6 hats the team will wear in Cox's honor for the rest of the season. Then they went out and kept winning.
Atlanta has now won 14 of 16 series this season, lost just one (to Seattle) and split one (Arizona). They hold an 8-game lead in the NL East. No other team in baseball has managed their kind of sustained series dominance.
The week's biggest risers
Chicago White Sox — #14 (▲8 from #22)
Eight spots. Up. The White Sox. 4
They beat the Cubs in 10 innings on Edgar Quero's walk-off home run, capping a series in which Chicago hit 10 home runs total — bringing their season total to 64, second in all of baseball behind only the Yankees (67). They've reached .500 at the 42-game mark, which, given where this franchise has been, is more than a curiosity.
For bettors and fantasy managers: the White Sox power surge is real and the lineup is built around it. But their pitching remains thin enough that fading them in low-scoring environments still makes sense.
Philadelphia Phillies — #10 (▲~7)
Don Mattingly replaced Rob Thomson and Philadelphia went 13-4. Kyle Schwarber is hitting .322, which is third-best among qualified NL hitters. 25
It's one of the more dramatic in-season turnarounds of the last decade. Whether this is a genuine reset or a hot streak that cools once the opposition adjusts is the key question for June. They've won eight of their last ten entering this week and have climbed within half a game of .500.
Washington Nationals — #16 (▲5 from #21)
Washington briefly climbed above .500 for the first time at this point in a season since 2021. James Wood has been a big part of why. The Nats have beaten up on teams that were supposed to beat them — including the Marlins — and the NL East table is more interesting than most people expected it to be. 1
The week's biggest fallers
Kansas City Royals — #26 (▼12 from #14)
Twelve spots. Down. In one week. 6
Kansas City is one of only two teams this season (along with the Rockies) to have run two separate six-game losing streaks. The offensive construction around Bobby Witt Jr. is failing badly: the 3rd and 4th hitters in Kansas City's lineup have a combined .611 OPS, the worst number in baseball by a significant margin. Witt himself is hitting at an MVP pace. It doesn't matter.
For bettors: the Royals are a fade until they address the lineup depth around Witt. Their run environment is structurally broken.
Chicago Cubs — #3 (▼2 from #1)
A 2–4 week was always going to cost them the top spot. What makes it more worrying: both Milwaukee (4–2) and St. Louis (4–2) gained ground at the same time. The NL Central has no room for a prolonged slump. 1
Toronto Blue Jays — #18 (▼5 from #13)
Jose Berrios, Shane Bieber, Cody Ponce, and Max Scherzer are all on the injured list simultaneously. No rotation survives that. The Blue Jays won the World Series last year; this is what a championship hangover looks like when it's shaped by the injury report instead of a mental letdown.
Detroit Tigers — #20 (▼5 from #15)
The good news: Casey Mize returned and threw six scoreless innings against Toronto, with his fastball velocity fully recovered from the injury. The less good news: there are many more players who haven't returned yet. The Tigers are playing hurt, and it shows. 1
Injury watch
Max Fried, LHP, New York Yankees — Placed on the 15-day IL with a bone bruise in his left elbow after leaving a start vs. Baltimore after three innings. 7 The imaging result is not catastrophic — no Tommy John — but the timeline is unclear. The Yankees are 28–19 and have a postseason spot functionally locked. The rational play is to bring him back slowly and have him healthy in October rather than push for mid-June.
Mookie Betts, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers — Returned from the IL. The Dodgers optioned Alex Freeland to Triple-A Oklahoma City to clear the roster spot. 8 Shohei Ohtani also got two days of rest this week and responded with six hits in three games, including a home run against his former team, the Angels — a detail that Dodger Stadium appreciated.
Clay Holmes, RP, New York Mets — Fractured tibia. He's out for a significant stretch. The Mets lost their closer and then beat the Yankees twice anyway, including a Sunday comeback that has people cautiously using the phrase "turning point." We've been here before with these Mets, but still.
Chase Dollander, SP, Colorado Rockies — The initial injury scare was worse than the result: it's a minor elbow sprain, not a significant tear. Good news for a franchise with very little of it this season.
Alex Verdugo, OF — The Padres released him after a shoulder injury expected to require surgery and end his season. San Diego is 7th in this week's rankings and appears to be moving forward regardless.
Tier breakdown
Locked in (consensus top 6)
Braves, Dodgers, Cubs, Rays, Yankees, Brewers. These six have been first-tier across every outlet for three straight weeks. The Rays are the most statistically interesting: 18 wins in 22 games, and no starter has allowed more than three runs in any of those 22 games. That's rotation depth that playoff teams would pay considerable money to acquire.
Legitimate contenders (7–12)
Padres, Cardinals, Pirates, Phillies, Mariners, Athletics. The Phillies' rise is the most dramatic story in this tier. The Cardinals and Pirates are running 4–2 weeks quietly. The A's fell two spots despite a decent week — just a rankings recalibration.
Wild-card zone (13–20)
The White Sox surge makes this tier genuinely chaotic. Cleveland and Texas are steady. Washington's brief .500 flirtation adds an unlikely NL East subplot. The Jays, Tigers, and Marlins are all falling or stagnant.
Lower third (21–30)
The Mets (+2 despite Holmes) and Twins (+2 on Zebby Matthews' spot-start) are at least moving the right direction. The Giants are on pace for the second 100-loss season in franchise history — the last was 1985. The Angels were the first team to 30 losses and got there by the weekend.
What to watch this week (May 18–24)
- Dodgers vs. Padres — two top-10 teams in the NL West, with Betts just back and the Padres riding a steady stretch. The NL West race has a lot of season left, but this series matters.
- Brewers vs. Cubs — Brewers at 9 games over .500 hosting a Cubs team that just went 2–4. Does Milwaukee put more separation between themselves and Chicago in the NL Central?
- Rays vs. Yankees — Two AL East teams with legitimate postseason profiles testing that rotation depth against each other. Fried's absence changes the Yankees' rotation math.
- Phillies vs. the schedule — Can Mattingly's 13–4 run sustain against tougher opponents? The next two weeks will tell us whether the Phillies' revival is durable or a soft-schedule product.
Rankings aggregated from MLB.com, USA Today, PressBox, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated for the week of May 11–17, 2026.
References
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- 3PressBox: Stan the Fan Charles' MLB Power Rankings, May 18
pressboxonline.com
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