MLB Power Rankings: It’s Houston’s world and we’re just living in it
The Houston Astros continue on unchallenged in this week’s MLB Power Rankings.
With over two full months of baseball in the books, the MLB standings are still a muddled mess. Eighteen of the 30 teams are at .500 or below. Few teams have been exceptionally awful, leaving a half-dozen teams within two games of the even-water mark. That’s parity like you read about.
The compact standings will make for an interesting trade deadline, with fewer teams completely out of the playoff hunt. One team that is not out of the hunt is the Astros. Houston is making a joke out of what was supposed to be one of the toughest divisions in baseball. They are the rightful owners of the top spot in the latest MLB Power Rankings. Were there any shakeups in the rest of the top five? Read on to find out.
San Diego Padres 23-37
Last week: 1-4
Last rank: 29
In the first year of his $83-million extension, Wil Myers has been worth exactly 0.0 WAR through his first 58 games of the season. I’m no sabermetrics guy personally, but that’s not the type of number any team wants to see from their franchise player over a third of the way into the regular season. Myers has been so bad defensively that he has cancelled out his 12 home runs and .798 OPS.
Myers will not be the Padres mercy representative in the All-Star Game this year. That honor may go to reliever Brad Hand who leads the team in WAR and is striking out 11.8 per nine.
San Francisco Giants 24-37
Last week: 2-4
Last rank: 26
Here’s a bit of breaking news. The San Francisco Giants are not very good. Shocking, really. All kidding aside, the Giants are not a franchise that any MLB fan would ever expect to see over 10 games below .500. They are simply too well run to be this bad.
In hindsight, the Giants may wish they had passed on Jeff Samardzija and used that money to add a bigger bat in the outfield than an aging Denard Span. Samardzija’s $90-million contract is already an albatross. He is destined to become the Melvin Upton of pitchers.