The Opener

1. Shohei Ohtani fired five no-hit innings and walloped his 50th homer to become the first slugger to hit 50 in back-to-back seasons since Alex Rodriguez in 2001-02, as the Phillies defeated the Dodgers, 9-6.

2. Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez, who was crushing the ball to the tune of a .369/.462/.569 in the three weeks since he returned from an extended injury absence, badly sprained his ankle stepping on home plate and will be out … a while. How long a while? So glad you asked. "I'm not going to give you days, weeks, what we're going to do next,” Astros manager Joe Espada told reporters. “You're just going to have to sit down and wait." OK then!

3. The Diamondbacks have won four in a row, including the first two games in a series against the Giants, to position themselves as the top threat in the NL wild card race. They are 1.5 games back of the Mets (and have the advantage in the tiebreaker that kept them out of October last year). Snakes alive, as a wise man once printed on a sheet of paper.

   ---

The Rebuild Rankings: What does 2025 mean for 2026 and beyond?

So, yes it’s September, and all eyes are on the postseason picture. But before we go full tunnel vision, we thought we would spare a thought for the also-rans. Which teams should feel OK or even good about their seasons when they pause on the golf course this October, gaze out over the treetops and take a longer-term view?

It’s time for the Rebuild Rankings. With fewer full tanks and a lot of wild card contention cosplay, this is an imperfect name these days. But essentially what we want to do is look at teams that wound up thinking about the future more than the present and gauging the success of their season on those terms. So we’ll be looking at 11 teams that are clearly out of postseason contention — sorry Braves, sorry Orioles, you just failed miserably at winning, you’re not included here but we’ll surely cover you at some point.

This is a renewal of an exercise I’ve done before, with a Bandwagon twist. It’s not scientific, but there’s at least some spreadsheeting involved. For each of these teams, I’ve tallied the number of top 100 prospects per MLB Pipeline, and the number of players in their first three MLB seasons who posted at least one WAR (Baseball-Reference, in this case) in 2025. Those are the “Promising Players.”

There are of course many degrees of promise and prospect-dom, and many more degrees of intrigue and fun. So the rankings reflect my subjective understanding of just how upward the arrow is pointing heading into the offseason, while Hannah provides a reason to care about, or even actively watch, each of these teams as they play out the string1.

– Zach Crizer

1. The A’s

Promising players: 9 | Top prospects: 3

Forget about limiting things to the young players or the also-ran teams. The A’s just have one of the most exciting lineups in baseball, full stop. It’s a top 10 unit by full season numbers, and a top five group in the second half thanks to Nick Kurtz, Jacob Wilson, Tyler Soderstrom and Shea Langeliers.

They’re going to need to figure out pitching — no small ask in their temporary home — but keep an eye on weirdly effective lefty Jacob Lopez and 22-year-old Luis Morales. A top prospect with seven strong starts under his belt, Morales has what looks like a diabolical two-plane sweeper.

Reason to Bandwagon: This one is almost too easy. Granted, it’s against the spirit of this exercise to cite a dude who was the main subject of an entire issue not two months ago, but we have a lot of bad teams to say something nice about so sometimes you gotta take the low-hanging dinger dude. Which is to say, here’s Nick Kurtz hitting a home run 493 feet — the furthest in over two years.

Oh, also it was a grand slam. Scroll to the last slide here for a close up of teammate Lawrence Butler instantly having the perfect reaction while watching from second base.

As of writing this, Kurtz has 32 homers on the season. In 2019, Pete Alonso set the rookie home run record at 53. Then, uh, 2020 happened. But since 2021, the most home runs by a rookie was Ryan Mountcastle with 33. With a dozen games to go, I bet Kurtz can match that. It’s at least something to watch for.

2. Miami Marlins

Promising players: 7 | Top prospects: 4

This feels like a team learning to win in fits and starts. A summer surge has cooled down, yet there are very positive takeaways. No team has gotten more plate appearances from 28-and-under bats, and Miami’s youth have played respectably. A few, headlined by Kyle Stowers and blazing hot second-half debutante Jakob Marsee, look like reasons to believe in better days ahead.

Reason to Bandwagon: Probably the fact that this bit — while funny and delightfully Billy Eichner-esque — does not actually comport with the current state of the Marlins.

Miami has shown flashes this season of a nice little core with four position players of at least 2.0 FanGraphs WAR — which is, incidentally, double what the Cleveland Guardians, for instance, have. Those players are: Stowers, Xavier Edwards, Otto Lopez, and Marsee (who has accrued that in fewer than 50 games). They are all 27 years old or younger and none of them are even arbitration eligible yet.

3. Chicago White Sox

Promising players: 7 | Top prospects: 4

Look, the 2025 White Sox aren’t good by any possible definition of the word, but they’re doing the thing they’re supposed to do. They’re sifting through acclaimed trade acquisitions to see what they have and making sure each of their 26 major-league roster spots is available to the most intriguing young player they can find.

Catcher Kyle Teel (acquired in the Garrett Crochet deal) looks like an all-around contributor, plucky middle infielder Chase Meidroth (also from the Crochet deal) has exceeded expectations and shortstop Colson Montgomery is uh, hitting homers (seriously, 18 homers in 47 hits). Ideally he would hit something else too, but it’s a start.

On the pitching side, the surefire future contributors are harder to pin down, but they have done well with Rule 5 pick Shane Smith and waiver claim Mike Vasil. After historic misery in 2024, this counts as a leap forward.

Reason to Bandwagon: The White Sox entered September on something of a tear — a six-game win streak and a 9-2 stretch. Then they lost five in a row. But! They’re still above .500 for the month of September and if they could keep it that way, it would be their first month with a better than .500 record since May 2023, when they went a rip-roaring 15-14. Root for the Sox to end the season on a note of respectability!

4. Kansas City Royals

Promising players: 2 | Top prospects: 2

Just like the solar system, the Royals are stars and voids. They should feel great about Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia and a pitching program that keeps helping guys improve — have you heard of Noah Cameron and his 2.98 ERA? Then they should help everyone else feel good about that by acquiring someone, anyone, who can play corner outfield and wield a major-league average bat. Maybe that’s Jac Caglianone, but the 2025 results don’t attest to it.

Reason to Bandwagon: I’m probably not breaking news to Royals fans but Vinnie Pasquantino might be the last good tweeter. During the All-Star break, he live-tweeted the Home Run Derby, which was both fun and meant he was watching exhibition baseball during his only chance in a six-month span to think about something else. Truly inspiring or sicko shit, depending on your perspective.

I particularly enjoyed this, which is exactly the sort of self-deprecating insight I want from professional athletes on social media:

One more because I, like Vinnie Pasquantino apparently, never pass up an opportunity to reference the funniest moment in baseball history:

Now, how do we get him to make the jump to Bluesky?

5. Pittsburgh Pirates

Promising players: 6 | Top prospects: 5

You could convince me the Pirates should be ranked higher based on the legitimately thrilling corps of pitchers they have on hand. You’ve heard about Paul Skenes. Now they have Bubba Chandler getting a taste of the bigs, with Mike Burrows, Carmen Mlodzinski and others showing promise in more extended looks.

But the malaise around this team starts all the way at the top with owner Bob Nutting still clutching the pursestrings. We still have absolutely no evidence they can develop (or sign) a good position player. Their 28-and-under bats have posted an MLB-worst .219/.296/.335 line, and one-time building block Ke’Bryan Hayes improved immediately upon getting traded away.

Reason to Bandwagon: I challenged myself to make this about a position player and not just regurgitate Skenes hype — although maybe we don’t talk enough about MLB’s endemic problem of buzzy young players owing the bulk of their 20s to bad teams unwilling to build around them. Since they don’t have a single position player who’s accrued even 2.0 fWAR this season, I did the next obvious thing and went to Andrew McCutchen’s social media accounts.

First up, Cutch meeting the fan who caught his 241st home run, which moved McCutchen ahead of Roberto Clemente for third all time among Pirates home run hitters:

And now for something that captures the spirit of this team. Cutch congratulating Hayes on his first home run… after getting traded away from the Pirates:

6. Washington Nationals

Promising players: 3 | Top prospects: 3

Dismissing the front office and manager midseason gives some indication of how things are going in Washington. This should have been a step forward season with James Wood, CJ Abrams, Dylan Crews and company all finding their footing in the majors. Instead, only Wood showed any flash of excellence, and that has faded hard in the second half. Running nearly a 40% strikeout rate, he has just three homers and a subpar 84 wRC+ since the break.

Reason to Bandwagon: CJ Abrams’ base running. Last year in July, FanGraphs wrote about how his speed and aggression on the basepaths, which had been an asset in 2023, had become a liability in 2024. In 2025? Back to asset, baby 😎. (Although, not exclusively.)

I noticed this while trying to make sense of why he, and not Wood, is their most productive player despite a 110 wRC+ to Wood’s 125 wRC+. It’s the result of a very unique distribution of value:

According to Baseball Savant, Abrams has been the sixth-most valuable baserunner this season.

This is just good entertainment:

7. St. Louis Cardinals

Promising players: 5 | Top prospects: 4

The Cardinals are lacking in true top-end talent. Masyn Winn looks like a mainstay at shortstop, but it’s premium defense with a merely OK bat. Ivan Herrera hits like crazy, but injuries and competition have bumped out from behind the dish. They’ve divvied up an above-average 690 innings among 28-and-under pitchers, who have looked too late-era Cardinals, striking out a paltry 19% of batters.

Reason to Bandwagon: To be honest, I (like Effectively Wild) have not paid much attention to the Cardinals this season. The conversation Ben and Meg have in the early part of that episode about why the Cardinals are uniquely uninteresting right now is incredibly valid! They’re sort of pre-setting up for a rebuild. And it’s asking a lot of fans to buy into that particularly nascent stage of a competitive window. That said, while next season figures to be a step back on the field, it sounds like there will be a definitive expansion of the front office under Chaim Bloom. So, bandwagon the Cardinals for being one of the few places hiring skilled workers these days? Bandwagon the Cardinals, you might be working for them soon?

8. Tampa Bay Rays

Promising players: 2 | Top prospects: 2

Having gone through this exercise, I’m somewhere between baffled and impressed that the Rays have managed to scrape together something close to a .500 record. Junior Caminero (44 homers) and Jonathan Aranda (142 wRC+) are obvious cornerstones in the lineup who put together loud full-ish seasons, but wow is there not a lot else happening here. Their next most valuable under-28 hitter was Jose Caballero, who they traded to the Yankees. Their younger starting pitchers regressed badly (Shane Baz) or got traded away (Taj Bradley).

Top shortstop prospect Carson Williams is only 21 games into his major-league career and we won’t draw conclusions from rough early numbers, but there’s going to be some pressure on him to perform in 2026 to start building a bridge to whatever is next.

Reason to Bandwagon: In April, I wrote about the Rays’ groundskeepers adjusting to life in the elements after hurricane damage to the Trop forced the team to relocate to the Yankees’ Spring Training facility for the season. It gave me a great respect for all groundskeepers and especially the Rays’ crew. They are the second team on this list playing their season in a minor league ballpark, but I have a lot less ire for the Rays’ situation than what John Fisher intentionally did to the A’s. Kudos to the club for making the best of this year.

9. Minnesota Twins

Promising players: 1 | Top prospects: 4

This was not intended as a rebuilding season, but it decidedly became one in Minnesota, where a brutal sell-off left behind a few strong pitchers, Byron Buxton and a bunch of not-so-young-anymore players who haven’t reached their potential. The bright spot in this second half has been second baseman Luke Keaschall, a dynamic hitter who looks like a top-of-the-order staple.

Walker Jenkins, a top outfield prospect rapidly approaching the majors, has the potential to change the outlook. Yet he has suffered from the same sort of mind-boggling injury proneness that afflicts the rest of this franchise’s recent hopes.

Reason to Bandwagon: Despite missing time for a concussion and a rib injury, Byron Buxton has played in more games this season than he had since 2017 and eclipse 100 games in back-to-back seasons for the first time in his career. That relatively robust playing time has allowed him to tally 31 home runs so far and, with 11 games to go, 24 stolen bases. It would take a concerted effort, but he could reach 30-30.

10. Colorado Rockies

Promising players: 3 | Top prospects: 2

If rebuilding baseball seasons are about hunting for one good man … the Rockies found one: Hunter Goodman. The 25-year-old catcher has belted 30 homers and batted .277. That’ll play!

The problem is that rebuilding baseball teams need more than one good man.

Reason to Bandwagon: The Rockies need just one more win with 11 games to go to avoid tying the 2024 White Sox’ modern record of 121 losses.

11. Los Angeles Angels

Promising players: 3 | Top prospects: 2

The Angels, who never appeared to be threatening the postseason, have given significant run to five pitchers aged 34 or older, none of whom they traded at the deadline. Why!?

This is a season without a point.

Reason to Bandwagon: I’m not going to sugarcoat things. If this is the type of headlines Mike Trout is generating, it’s tough going for Angels fans:

The specifics — that Trout will play the most games he has since 2019 while accruing less than 2 WAR, other than 2020 and when he’s played fewer than 30 games, this will be the first season since he debuted in 2011 that he was not named an All Star — paint an even grimmer picture. Then there’s this quote from the article above: “I’ve got (five) more years on the contract,” he said. “That’s what fuels me.”

Ooooffff.

Here’s the best I can do: manager Ron Washington’s quadruple bypass surgery seems to have been successful, and the experience convinced the 73-year-old to quit smoking and start eating a little healthier.

“I’m stress free,” Wash told the media. Might have to stay away from the Angels to keep it that way.