USA Today’s Weekly MLB Power Rankings

If you’ve been reading these check in posts you know that lately I have been speaking of a bias against the New York Yankees in these rankings and this week we finally get to test my theory. In case you missed it or you’re new to the blog, welcome by the way if you are, I have said many times that it feels like the folks over at the USA Today are simply waiting on the Yankees to fail. The team has a 6-1 week or a 5-2 week and they barely move up the rankings or don’t move at all while the New York Mets can have a similar week and be the week’s “biggest rise.” Well the Yankees finally had a bad week, and at the worst possible time mind you, so now we get to put my theory to test. Let’s see if the Yankees free fall out of the Top 15 after the Red Sox series.

After taking a butt whooping at the hands of the Boston Red Sox over the weekend before giving a couple games away to the Los Angeles Dodgers the Yankees dropped one spot to the 15^th position. Not bad actually given the week the team had. Meanwhile in the rest of the American League East the Boston Red Sox occupy the 4^th spot while the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays occupy the 7^th and 8^th spots respectively. Meanwhile the Tampa Bay Rays finished the week where they began it, 24^th overall on the rankings.

The biggest rise of the week went to the Seattle Mariners who rose four spots to finish the week #12 overall while the biggest fall of the week went to the Cleveland Indians who fell just one spot (along with a few other teams including the Yankees) to the #5 position at possibly the worst possible time to do so. Oh well.

The Top Five teams according to the rankings are the Chicago Cubs, the Washington Nationals, the Texas Rangers, the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians. Meanwhile the five worst teams in the league according to these rankings are the #26 Cincinnati Reds, the #27 Arizona Diamondbacks, the #28 San Diego Padres, the #29 Atlanta Braves and the #30 Minnesota Twins. Pretty predictable, these ten teams have been on opposite sides about all season long it feels like.

If you want to see the complete list and/or see your team and where they rank up head over to the USA Today and check out the complete list and power rankings. Oh and by the way, about my theory I talked about in the first paragraph of the blog post, maybe I was wrong. Just dropping one spot isn’t the worst thing in the world. Frankly, I expected more to be honest.