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.Every baseball season is full of butterfly-effect decisions and subsequent consequences. A micro-movement in a muscle influences a pitch, which influences a swing. Now another round of decisions: the read of the defender, the speed of a runner, the structural integrity of an ankle. An inning is born from the collective dance of a hundred moves.The innings grow into games, inviting more decisions: pitcher rest, a day off for an outfielder. A week, and the scope broadens: a lineup shuffle, a demotion, a trade, a “Dad grew up in New York because Grandpa got DFA’d by the Braves.”We’ve had over a month of decisions now. Which in-season move has been the most important for each team? Or, to avoid existential overwhelm, we’ll limit it to: “consequential to this year’s baseball season.”
Back on top, where they should probably stay for the rest of the season … unless their annual rash of pitcher injuries catches up with them. They have a better pitching staff on the IL, including in the bullpen, than most teams have had on their active rosters in a decade.The good news for them is that they’re still hitting. They’ve won eight out of their past nine games, and they did it in games where they scored 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 15 runs. They could win those games with Blake Snell throwing with his right arm or 43-year-old Ian Snell making a few starts.
Here’s how well this season has been going for the Padres: They lost their franchise center fielder to an injury, but their production didn’t suffer at all. Tyler Wade kept the seat warm and made a convincing argument that he should keep getting starts when Merrill returns, sliding over to left and taking at-bats from Jason Heyward.
I dare you to find an article from 2024 about Javy Báez that wasn’t some version of
“WTF are the Tigers gonna do about this guy?” The answer, apparently: “Move him to center field and watch him thrive.”As of Monday night, Báez was tied with reigning Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal for the most bWAR on the team. More than the resurgent Spencer Torkelson, All-Star Riley Greene, or any other position player on the squad. He’s hitting over .300, and has more than acquitted himself on defense at a new position — and not a “I dunno, man, maybe he can play there” corner-outfield spot, either.
I think the Justin Steele injury is more consequential (double it up if Shota Imanaga
ends up missing significant time), but I’m trying not to use an injury if an actual capital-M Move is available. In this case, it is: the Cubs broke camp hoping that Shaw could lay claim to the third-base job for the foreseeable future. He didn’t (.535 OPS), so rather than let him work it out at the big-league level, they shipped him back to Triple A to let him work it out there.
If that seems like a move that isn’t very noteworthy, that’s the point. Trivino was the first player on the active roster to lose his spot for performance reasons. Before Sunday, the Giants’ biggest transactions were Casey Schmitt and Tyler Fitzgerald going to the IL. Besides those injuries, the Giants’ roster has been remarkably static, a huge difference from the DFA carousel and minor-league yo-yoing of previous seasons.
There’s so much going right in the Mariners Cinematic Universe that it almost seems spiteful to focus on a negative development, but this one is too big to ignore. The whole idea behind the 2025 Mariners was that they had a rotation of the gods, and if they could just find a few hitters, they’d steamroll the league. Now, they have Jorge Polanco doing a Barry Bonds impression, and Cal Raleigh is leading the AL in homers, but their best pitcher is hurt.
Ketel Marte’s IL stint was actually the most important move, but the Lawler conundrum is more interesting. The shortstop prospect is hitting .357/.441/.643 in Triple A. Current shortstop Geraldo Perdomo is in the middle of a transition from “nice player” to “franchise cornerstone.” When it comes to second base, Marte already is a cornerstone, with the contract extension to prove it. There’s no room.Arizona Diamondbacks
2001 Ssssssssssssss Ave.
The last time we saw McCullers, it was the 2022 World Series, and he was almost like a trade-deadline acquisition for the Astros and something of a secret weapon for them in the postseason. Though he didn’t pitch that well in the World Series, the Astros might not have gotten there without him. He earned his ring, and he paid for it with his right elbow.
The Guardians have the third-best record in the AL, so it sucks to say their biggest move has been giving up on a guy. But Triston McKenzie wasn’t just “a guy” — he was, not so very long ago, a dark-horse AL Cy Young Award candidate.But about every good move in Cleveland happened before the season started, so here we are.In 2023, McKenzie opted to avoid Tommy John surgery, hoping that rest and rehab would do the trick. The irony: He would have been fully recovered by now. Instead, he had a bad 2024 that bled into a bad 2025.Adding insult to injury, McKenzie’s salary this year was $1.95 million — less than they’re paying Trevor Stephan, who hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since 2023 due to … Tommy John surgery. Even at that discount, no other teams took a waiver flyer on McKenzie, so he’s off the 40-man roster, optioned first to Triple A, and then to the ever-mysterious “Development List.”
When Noelvi Marte went to bed on April 19, his batting average was .083, his OPS an abysmal .237. He had already been optioned to the minor leagues once (albeit briefly) and his third season in the big leagues seemed on the brink of being even more disappointing than his second — a difficult challenge, since last year featured an 80-game suspension for a positive test for Boldenone. OK, so maybe not more disappointing, but look: It was not going great for our pal Noelvi.Twenty-four hours, five hits and 10 total bases later, his
plummet had hit a trampoline. His batting average jumped to .316, his OPS to .929, and his five-hit game was part of a
wild 24-2 win over the Orioles. Since then, Marte’s big comeback has been a load-bearing wall for a Reds offense that hasn’t otherwise been great.
Despite a slow start, it’s been a relatively stable season in Kansas City thus far, from a roster-construction standpoint. It took a little digging, but I think I found something: The Royals were 4-3 with Canha in the lineup before he went on the IL. By the time he got back, they were 8-14 and utterly languishing near the bottom of the AL Central standings. Then on April 19, Canha returned, and lo and behold: The Royals are now 20-16.Canha has been worth 0.0 bWAR for the season in 15 games played. I don’t fully understand how WAR is calculated, but I think I have some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence here (the best kind) to indicate that the calculations are wrong.
The Brewers have made two trades already, but neither one has been all that interesting. You could make the case for the Quinn Priester trade (from Boston) as the move here, since he was really great in his first three starts with the Brewers, but he has given up 12 runs in 9 1/3 innings in his two starts since. Daz Cameron is hitting .167 (and it has only been six at-bats).
I’m currently in the middle of a re-read of Robert Coover’s 1968 novel, “The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.,” which might be my favorite baseball novel ever. Not only is Gunnar Hoglund the perfect name for a starting pitcher on the ol’ Haymakers, but now I’m thinking about what kind of dice roll it would take on the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart to move an entire franchise to a placeholder city. That’s gotta be six triple-threes in a row.
It will take some time before we know if it’s the most consequential move, but certainly the most shocking one came in a series of moves within the last week. With the Rangers’ offense at or near the bottom of the league in most categories, the team demoted first baseman Jake Burger to Triple-A, fired offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker and put center fielder Leody Taveras on outright waivers.If nothing else, it’s a message that this level of stink will not be tolerated.
Most impactful in-season move: Activating Royce Lewis from the IL? For all the shortcomings on the field this year, it isn’t as if the Twins haven’t been making moves. Go on, check out this
list of transactions from April. If Luke Keaschall hadn’t fractured his forearm, he might have been the answer here, since he went 7-for-19 with five stolen bases in his seven games.So maybe, hopefully, it’s the return of Lewis, who was activated from the IL Monday. When he’s been healthy, there haven’t been many more exciting players in the league. But before this week, he had played a total of 152 games in 2022-24.
The Cardinals are currently a ham sandwich with untoasted wheat bread, two slices of ham and no condiments. If you’re bullish on them, you can use deli ham instead of the prepackaged stuff, but you’re never going to make it exciting. Not without cloning Brendan Donovan.
Most impactful in-season move: Putting the Roberto Clemente signage back up in right field?It’s hard to say which of the almost-zero moves has been the biggest one. Sure, it’s
interesting that the Pirates have, at various points this season, sent David Bednar (87 career saves, two-time All-Star) and Jack Suwinski (338 games with the Pirates from 2022-24) to the minor leagues, but has it really made any difference?Was it “calling up (first overall pick in the 2021 draft) Henry Davis”? Eh. They’ve done that before, both in 2023 and 2024 (Davis is hitting .143 this time around; lower than his career .188 batting average).
The last time I did these, the Angels were off to a fast start. It’s been a while since I’ve checked in on them, but I’m sure everything is just fine in Angels land, and … oh, dear. That regress-calated quickly.
The biggest move of 2025 has its roots in 2023, back when the Angels traded Quero and Ky Bush to the White Sox for like … five minutes of Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López (before letting both go to Cleveland on waivers).By the start of this year, Quero was ranked No. 53 on Keith Law’s
list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. He got the call in mid-April and has hit in a very un-White-Sox manner, with a slashline of .340/.446/.404. And hey, look at this: an actual White Sox entry in the Power Rankings instead of firing off some cheap jokes to match the team’s effort (if that’s what you came for, just scroll on down to the Rockies).
Last season, the Chicago White Sox went 41-121, which was the worst season in modern baseball history. This year, they’re 10-25, which means they’re on pace for a 46-116 season. That’s still historically awful. Yet every week, our intrepid writers start their power-ranking ballot by putting the Rockies 30th. They’re one of the only teams in baseball history with the potential to keep the White Sox out of last place, and they’re doing it so convincingly that they’re getting every single 30th-place vote.
