2022 MLB Playoffs: American League Power Rankings Entering Postseason
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With two days remaining in the Major League Baseball regular season and all 12 playoff spots clinched, we posted our final National League power rankings of the regular season Monday.
I based my power rankings off two questions:
'Who would I least want to play this October? And which team am I the most scared of?'
Now, let's partake in the same exercise with the six teams entering the American League playoffs, starting at the bottom and rising towards the top.
6) Tampa Bay Rays (86-74) — The Rays are a team that I'm almost always high on. For the fourth straight preseason, I picked them to win the American League East this past spring.
Littered with injuries in 2022, the Rays just haven't seemed to click the way they have in years past. It just doesn't seem to be the Rays' year. Since completing a sweep of the Boston Red Sox September 7, Tampa has won just one series.
The Rays may not make a deep postseason run this fall, but their young players will benefit from getting playoff reps that will serve the club well moving forward.
5) Toronto Blue Jays (91-69) — The Blue Jays have clinched the top American League Wild Card spot and are heating up at the right time, but two things make me more fearful of playing the Mariners than the team from the north.
First is how the two teams have performed against teams with records above .500. The Blue Jays are 44-48 against clubs with winning records. The Mariners are 38-33 against winning clubs and really showed what they are capable of doing in a playoff series, when they took two of three from the red-hot Atlanta Braves in mid-September, and ran through the Cleveland Guardians, taking six of seven games from the American League Central champions a week earlier.
4) Seattle Mariners (87-72) — The second reason I would rather play the Blue Jays than the Mariners is this postseason carries more weight for Seattle. The Mariners will be making their first postseason appearance in 21 years later this week. Led by their soon-to-be American League Rookie of the Year Julio Rodriguez, they are hungry to make a statement that the Mariners are here to stay.
I also prefer the Mariners' pitching staff over the Blue Jays'. José Berríos, who the Blue Jays gave a seven-year, $131 million extension to last winter, is having his worst big league season, posting a 5.23 ERA and 1.42 WHIP. He was supposed to be the ace of the Blue Jays' pitching rotation.
The frontline starter the Mariners recently acquired and extended — Luis Castillo — has been excellent in big games with his new club, drawing jealousy from Yankees fans that wanted their club to trade for the 29-year-old star.
Like Tampa, this probably won't be the year for the Mariners, but it's a year the club hopes is the beginning of the golden era of Seattle baseball.
3) New York Yankees (98-61) — The Yankees won their second American League East title in 2022 and looked like the team to beat for half of the season. Then the Yankees ran into the Houston Astros, losing five of six, giving fans little to no confidence that the Bronx Bombers would be able to get past the Astros' roadblock in the postseason. The Yankees have never beaten the Astros in a postseason series.
It feels like it will once again be the same story with the Yankees in 2022: very good regular season team that will fail to win the final game of the season. It doesn't help that their bullpen is falling apart, either.
2) Cleveland Guardians (90-70) — The Guardians pose the greatest threat to the Astros, in my opinion. Cleveland has a very good pitching rotation and the best closer in the American League, with a premier setup man. The Guardians have the lowest strikeout rate in all of baseball and beat teams by slapping the ball in play, forcing their opponent to make mistakes in the field. The Guardians have an elite defensive team in the field and are unlikely to beat themselves.
At a time when the league has swung heavily into three true outcomes, the Guardians, with baseball's 28th-highest payroll, are zigging while the rest of the league is zagging, valuing contact-hitting, base-running and defense over putting together a lineup of sluggers that can't field.
Since Labor Day, the Guardians are 22-6. The young club is peaking at the right time and is managed by perhaps the sport's best skipper, Terry Francona. If anyone besides the Astros wins the American League this October, it will be the Cleveland Guardians.
1) Houston Astros (104-56) — Homefield will run through Houston in 2022, and the Astros are the American League favorites once again. The Astros have made it to the American League Championship Series five years straight and have the American League pennant three times during that stretch.
Given their experience and 2022 regular season dominance, no team scares me more than the well-rounded Houston Astros.
