Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- One MLB outlet ranks a last-place team ahead of a playoff contender this week, sparking debate over methodology.
- The team ranked last has outperformed expectations with strategic adjustments and a recent sweep of its higher-ranked opponent.
- This shift challenges long-held perceptions and hints at a potential rebuild gaining momentum faster than anticipated.
Let's start with a little blind resume game. If you had to rank the two teams below based on their performance so far this season, which one would you have higher?
Team A | Team B | |
|---|---|---|
Record | 14-18 | 10-21 |
Run differential | -7 | -35 |
Team ERA (rank) | 4.07 (15th) | 4.01 (12th) |
Team wRC+ (rank) | 85 (28th) | 78 (30th) |
Team A seems like the pretty clear choice, with a substantially better win-loss record and run differential. And yet, in their latest MLB power rankings which dropped on Thursday morning, ESPN had Team B at No. 25, with Team A at No. 30. Pretty surprising ... until you discover that Team A is the Colorado Rockies, while Team B is the New York Mets.
In some ways, I do empathize; as someone who helps put together FanSided's own weekly power rankings — in which the Rockies checked in at No. 27 most recently, two spots ahead of the Mets — it can be a tough task this time of year to balance what's happened so far in a limited sample with what you think will happen over the course of a long season. But seriously, what are we doing here? Has Colorado been so bad in recent years that the Worldwide Leader decided to just stop watching them entirely?
If they had tuned in, they'd know that these Rockies are a far cry from the record-setting incompetence of 2025. They're actually, dare I say it, not that bad — and continuing to place them behind a Mets team that's shown zero signs of looking anything like a contender this season is just revealing a big-market bias more than anything else.
ESPN's latest MLB power rankings are way too harsh on the Rockies
Start with the fact that the Rockies just swept the Mets at Citi Field this past weekend, holding New York's league-worst offense to four runs over three games. It's never a good idea to overreact to head-to-head results, especially in a sport like baseball, but what exactly are we doing here? If a team has a better record, better underlying metrics and just won three straight on the field, exactly what are we relying on to claim that the other team is superior?
Do the Mets have more talent on paper than the Rockies do? Sure, no arguments there. But outside of Juan Soto, all that talent is currently having a miserable time at the plate, with Francisco Lindor, Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr. on the IL and Bo Bichette, Marcus Semien and top prospect Carson Benge struggling mightily.
If you want to argue that the Mets will, by the end of the 2026 season, have a better record than the Rockies, be my guest; again, the talent is there. But if you're just ranking off of names on paper, or preseason expectations, what exactly is the purpose of a power ranking? The Rockies have, straight-up, been a better team than New York to date, and while it might not be as fun to rubber-neck, that's worth paying attention to in its own right.
For the first time in a long time, things are looking up in Colorado
Colorado isn't particularly good. They're now four games below .500 after a loss to the Reds on Thursday afternoon, and they have a negative run differential. But simply being mediocre is a major improvement when the bar is set at "quite literally the worst baseball team in the modern era" — and if you haven't paid attention to the Rockies except to gawk at their loss total last season, you might be surprised to learn that there are some signs of life here.
The front office finally got a long-overdue overhaul over the winter, with Paul DePodesta — he of Moneyball fame, although that was a long time ago now — replacing the departed Bill Schmidt, a Rockies lifer who had been with the team since the late 90s and had allowed the game to pass him by. Colorado is now taking steps to modernize their scouting and player-development operation, and while it takes years for those sorts of changes to bear fruit on the field, you can already see the ways in which small tweaks to their approach have helped them get the most out of their players this season.
That shows up in strategy, where the Rockies have been on the cutting edge of things like the new ABS challenge system. It also shows up in what sort of profiles the team prioritizes: Colorado's bullpen throws gas, with one of the highest average fastball velocities of any team in the league, while they've also shown an improved understanding of things like pitch sequencing and platoon advantages. This is, at long last, a reasonably intelligent baseball team in the year 2026, helping to unlock former top prospect Chase Dollander and a selection of veteran castoffs like Tomoyuki Sugano.
They appear to have a keeper in catcher Hunter Goodman, and they took a worthy flier on former top prospect Edouard Julien — now revitalized with another chance at being an every-day player. If other young guys like Ezequiel Tovar, Jordan Beck and Kyle Karros can start making strides, they might have something here with plenty of young bats (like first-round pick Ethan Holliday) matriculating through the Minors.
And again, simply not beating yourself is a massive improvement. Heck, it's more than the Mets can say for themselves right now. The Rockies are still at a talent deficit, but if you watch them these days, you'll see a team that knows what it wants to do and can at least play competent baseball. You won't be able to keep using them as the butt of the joke for much longer.
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