There are now just two weeks remaining in the 2025 regular season. October is right around the corner, which means everyone has understandably started looking forward to the playoff picture and what next month might have in store. But while that's all well and good — and we certainly can't wait for what might be the most wide-open postseason in recent memory — we're not ready to close the book on this 162-game marathon just yet.
This week's MLB Power Rankings are still ordered by overall team success and talent — with apologies to the Colorado Rockies for the umpteenth week in a row — but rather than simply telling you which teams are playing well and which teams aren't, we're going to take this time to hand out some (fake, at least for now) hardware.
We'll decide MVPs and Cy Youngs at a later date. For now, we wanted to hand out a Most Improved Player award for each team. It could be an unheralded rookie bursting on the scene, a former bust finally taking the leap or even a veteran changing the narrative about their career. Because even the Rockies of the world aren't entirely without success stories this year.
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30. Colorado Rockies
Hunter Goodman
Not a ton has gone right for Colorado this season, but hey, at least they seem to have found their catcher of the future. Goodman looked lost at the plate in his first two big-league seasons, with an xwOBA under .280 and a K rate hovering around 30 percent. This season, though, the whiffs are trending in the right direction, and he’s doing serious damage: Goodman is slashing .279/.325/.532 this year with 30 homers in 130 games, and while the defense isn’t great, it’s at least good enough to leave him back there without killing your pitching staff.
Of course, Rockies fans have seen flashes in the pan like this. Coors Field has a habit of creating fluke seasons out of thin air – just look at Michael Toglia last year. But Goodman doesn’t have as many of the alarm bells that Toglia did in his profile, and he’s still just 25.
-Chris Landers, FanSided.com
29. Chicago White Sox
Colson Montgomery
At first blush, Montgomery feels like a strange inclusion here, a former first-round pick who began the season as a consensus top-50 prospect. The transition to the Majors is rarely seamless, but are we really surprised when those players hit the ground running?
We should be when they pull off this stark of a 180. Montgomery looked exposed at Triple-A both last year and this year; he fell from MLB Pipeline’s No. 9 overall prospect ahead of 2024 to No. 39 ahead of 2025, largely due to concerns about his ugly strikeout rate. It was an open question whether he could make enough contact to survive at the big-league level.
Turns out it doesn’t matter how much you whiff if you do this kind of damage whenever you make contact. Montgomery isn’t just surviving, he’s thriving as a rookie, with an .819 OPS over his first 57 MLB games. Combine that with rock-solid shortstop defense, and suddenly a major question mark has turned into a major building block.
-Landers
28. Washington Nationals
MacKenzie Gore
It’s easy to forget about MacKenzie Gore being part of the Juan Soto trade because of how great James Wood and C.J. Abrams are, but Gore has taken a leap forward this season. HIs 4.14 ERA through 28 starts might not say that, especially since that mark is actually slightly higher than last year’s 3.90, but a deeper look into how he’s pitched would suggest he has actually improved a great deal.
Gore has been awesome outside of some brutal clunkers. Gore has allowed a total of 70 earned runs this season, 27 of which have come in four starts. There’s no excuse for Gore pitching as poorly as he did in those outings, but that’s roughly 40 percent of his earned runs coming in just four starts. Unsurprisingly, he’s allowed three earned runs or fewer in 22 of his 28 appearances, 26 of which covered at least five innings. Gore has had his blow-ups, but for the most part, he’s been far more consistent than he had been in the past. This, combined with a career-best 27.4 percent strikeout rate and a career-best 8.8 percent walk rate makes it clear that he’s taken a leap forward, even if his second half hasn’t been nearly as fun as his All-Star first half.
-Zachary Rotman, FanSided.com
27. Minnesota Twins
Austin Martin
This might be the single toughest entry in our rankings, if only because Minnesota shipped out nearly everything proven at the Major League level at the trade deadline. But amid the ashes of what was the Twins roster, at least one success story has emerged: Austin Martin, a former top-five pick with the Blue Jays back in 2020.
For a while, Martin seemed destined to be a bust: He struggled through the Minors, and when he finally got a taste of the Show last season, he didn’t exactly make a great first impression (.670 OPS). But the vision is starting to come to fruition this year, with Martin putting up a .785 OPS while serving as a solid defender at several different positions. He’s doubled his walk rate, and his .375 xwOBA suggests the underlying numbers support this breakout. The Twins may have found their next Willi Castro here.
-Landers
26. Pittsburgh Pirates
Dennis Santana
Perhaps I should’ve expected this. Dennis Santana, a fringe MLB-reliever for the first seven-ish years of his big league career, pitched really well for the Pittsburgh Pirates down the stretch of the 2024 campaign after the team had claimed him off waivers, posting a 2.44 ERA in 39 appearances. I assumed he’d revert back to his previous form (I mean, he had a 6.26 ERA in 2024 before the Pirates got him), but all he’s done instead is improve.
The right-hander has a 2.29 ERA in 63 appearances and 63 innings of work this season. He doesn’t strike out too many, but he’s done a great job limiting walks and getting chase out of the zone, leading to weak contact. What’s been most impressive about Santana is that he’s pitched extremely well in high leverage, recording 13 saves and 13 holds while blowing only a pair of save opportunities. There isn’t much for Pirates fans to cheer about, but Santana is a rare exception.
-Rotman