Every day, Pinstripe Alley offers updates on what the Yankees’ top American League opponents are up to through the Rivalry Roundup. The AL East is well-trodden ground there, but with the final month of the season just ahead, we’re going to take a peek around MLB as a whole and check in with each of the other five divisions. Who’s surprising? Who’s underwhelming? Who’s simply mediocre at the moment? Read on and find out.
Note: All records and stats are for games played as of Tuesday morning.
First Place: Los Angeles Dodgers (82-55)
Top Position Player: Andy Pages (4.0 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Yoshinobu Yamamoto (4.1 fWAR)
The rich got richer at the trade deadline, adding two-time American League Cy Young Tarik Skubal in a deal with the Detroit Tigers, giving the Dodgers arguably the deepest starting rotation in baseball — when healthy, that is, which has been basically never. And yet, despite that, Los Angeles has been merely treading water for the past two months: they followed up a 13-11 July with a 13-14 August that included a stretch in which they lost eight out of nine, including seven straight. They’ve dealt with quite a few injuries: Shohei Ohtani has not yet returned to the mound, Andy Pages has been on the shelf since August 22nd with a left hand fracture, Roki Sasaki, Blake Treinen, and Edwin Díaz aren’t expected back until the middle of the month, and catchers Will Smith and Dalton Rushing were just activated from the injured list last night.
None of this matters, though. The Dodgers have a commanding lead in the division, a quartet of healthy aces in Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Skubal, Tyler Glaswow, and Blake Snell, a small army of arms on the mend, and a lineup that, even with down years from Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker, and Teoscar Hernández, still ranks second in the league in OPS+ (110) and fourth in runs/game (4.89). Until anyone says otherwise, they are the team to beat, not just in the National League West, but in all of baseball.
Second Place: San Diego Padres (73-65)
Top Position Player: Fernando Tatís Jr. (3.8 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Mason Miller (3.1 fWAR)
In the days leading up to the trade deadline, speculation ran rampant that the Padres were going to be sellers, with the Yankees trying to pry one of Adrian Morejon or Mason Miller from them in order to bolster the team’s bullpen. That, ultimately, did not come to pass, as the Padres decided to push all their chips into the middle of the table and add at the deadline instead, bringing in Robbie Ray and Casey Mize to reinforce the rotation and Luis Renfigo to lengthen the lineup. Those moves turned out to be the right move, as the Padres went 17-11 in August to put them squarely in contention for the third Wild Card spot.
How did the Padres manufacture that strong month to bring them right back into the thick of the playoff hunt? Although the lineup has, on the whole, been underachieving this season — Father Time is coming on fast for Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts in particular — Tatís Jr., Jackson Merrill, and Ty France have been dominant of late, posting wRC+ of 146, 136, and 138 in the month of August, respectively. Their pitching staff, meanwhile, has been strong of late, with Randy Vásquez (2.57 ERA in August), Walker Buehler (3.16 ERA), Michael King (2.21 ERA), and Ray (3.42 ERA) doing just enough to hand leads to one of the most dominant bullpens in baseball — a recipe which has given them the best ERA in baseball in August, 3.04. In truth, they probably have been overachieving a bit, but at least they’re doing so at the right time.
Unfortunately for them, however, Renfigo’s season is done after tearing his ACL and MCL in Tampa Bay.
Third Place: Arizona Diamondbacks (73-66)
Top Position Player: Corbin Carroll (4.4 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Eduardo Rodriguez (2.9 fWAR)
After a middling August in which they went 15-14, the D-Backs have lost a tiny bit of ground to the Padres, and have fallen back into the third place in the division and out of the third Wild Card spot (albeit just barely). That being said, if there’s any team in a position to make a run down the stretch, it’s Arizona. Six starters, including trade deadline acquisition Lars Nootbar, have an OPS+ above 100, and three players — Corbin Carroll, Gabriel Moreno, and Geraldo Perdomo — are in line to finish the season with at least 4 fWAR. Their pitching staff, meanwhile, looks to get Corbin Burnes, Michael Soroka, and Zac Gallen back from the injured list, even if Gallen has not been his All-Star self since he was a Cy Young finalist in 2023, he’s at least a starting pitcher… and the D-Backs are currently low on those.
Of course, none of these are the real story in Arizona right now. At the moment, everybody is focused on long time second baseman Ketel Marte, who recently returned to the team after going AWOL for the fourth consecutive season. While Arizona is definitively a much better team with him than without him (even though his 108 OPS+ is a far cry from his career baseline), this is a story that will cast a shadow over the team for the rest of the season — and, given the fans’ and team’s response, until he gets traded this winter.
Fourth Place: San Francisco Giants (57-81)
Top Position Player: Luis Arráez (3.8 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Logan Webb (2.9 fWAR)
There is perhaps no better indication of just how bad the season has gone for the San Francisco Giants than the fact that the player who accrued by far the most fWAR for them was batting cleanup for the Philadelphia Phillies last night (Rafael Devers comes in at a distance second with 2.5). Not surprisingly, their offense has been absolutely atrocious since sending Luis Arráez to Philadelphia and Heliot Ramos to the Bronx, with their 88 wRC+ in August fifth-worst in baseball. Between the trades and the injuries to Matt Chapman, Willy Adames, and Harrison Bader, they have exactly two hitters who can truly be feared, Devers and the rookie Bryce Eldridge, while Drew Gilbert and Jung Hoo Lee have been simply average too just-above-average.
The pitching staff has been better, but only slightly. Due to a flood of injuries and deadline departures, out of the six starters and five relievers that Baseball-Reference lists as the team’s “main” pitchers for the year, only two, Logan Webb and Landen Roupp (the latter of whom leads the league in losses) are currently on the active roster. Somehow, their 4.23 ERA and 2.8 fWAR in August only ranks in the bottom third. Still, it’s not enough to salvage what has been a disastrous campaign for the Giants, who are somehow making the pre-John Harbough New York Giants look like geniuses in comparison after refusing to move on from much-maligned first-year manager Tony Vitello.
Last Place: Colorado Rockies (52-86)
Top Position Player: Hunter Goodman (2.6 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Kyle Freeland (1.1 fWAR)
And somehow, the Giants aren’t the worst team in their own division. That distinction belongs to the Colorado Rockies, who are barely holding off the Athletics and Angels in the race to the bottom of the Major League Baseball standings. And yet, their disaster season represents a major step up from their 2025 campaign, and not just because they have already guaranteed that their final record will be significantly better than last year’s 119-loss season: between Hunter Goodman, Kyle Karros, and T.J. Rumfield, they have at least three players who look like they can be part of the solution, and not further parts of the problem. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
Outside of that, the season has pretty much been a disaster. Tomoyuki Sugano and his 5.23 ERA has been their best starter, while Jordan Romano — he who blew two saves against the Yankees earlier this season — has been their most consistent reliever. Now in his fourth full season, 24-year-old shortstop Ezequiel Tovar has taken a major step back for the second consecutive season, and his 47 wRC+ is by far the worst among qualified hitters. Mickey Moniak has been good as the designated hitter, but he is a free agent at the end of the season.
