There are still five very important days left in the 2025 regular season, with division titles and wild cards still to be determined, but it’s time to hand out our final regular-season grades for every team.

We’ll have to hedge on a few of these depending on what happens the rest of this week — especially for the Tigers and Mets, who are battling for their postseason lives after looking like shoo-ins for most of the season. It has been a super intriguing MLB season, one that has no real super team (which means, despite some spectacular performances, no team was given an A+ this year, as I think those should be for super teams or a team that wins a ton of games completely out of nowhere) and one with wild swings in the standings throughout the year.

Let’s get into grading it.

The Brewers never faltered. The exclamation point on the best regular season in franchise history — they’ll get there with their 97th win, topping the 96 wins of 2011 and 2018 — was the 14-game winning streak to begin August. Their run differential of plus-173 easily leads the majors, made even more remarkable considering that season-opening four-game series against the Yankees when the Brewers were outscored by 32 runs, and gives them a chance to top the plus-174 differential of 1982’s Harvey’s Wallbangers, the only Brewers team to reach the World Series. Pitching, speed, defense, just enough power: Now let’s see if that formula works in the playoffs.

It wasn’t a completely smooth ride, but as the Mets started to collapse in early-to-mid August, the Phillies pulled away to cruise to their second consecutive NL East title. The offense relied at times a little too much on the wonderful slugging of Kyle Schwarber, but the rotation was outstanding, the defense much improved (especially Trea Turner at shortstop) and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski made two of the most impactful trade deadline acquisitions in Jhoan Duran and Harrison Bader. Even without Zack Wheeler, the Phillies enter the postseason as the World Series favorites, according to ESPN BET.

This grade is contingent on the Blue Jays holding on to the AL East title, which would be their first since 2015. They were 26-28 on May 27, but only the Brewers have a better record since then. The Blue Jays are better than their run differential suggests — several blowout losses have skewed that figure (they’ve lost games by 19, 14, 13 and 12 runs) — but it still feels like there are some smoke and mirrors involved here.

George Springer, at 35 years old, has been their best offensive player with a monster season, and they’ve received solid performances up and down the lineup from the likes of Addison Barger, Ernie Clement and Davis Schneider, while Eric Lauer popped up out of nowhere to solidify the rotation. Still, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette have been excellent, and Kevin Gausman has pitched like an ace since late June with a 2.30 ERA over 15 starts. Their World Series hopes might come down to closer Jeff Hoffman and whether he can keep the ball in the park.

The Mariners, after an up-and-down season that saw their vaunted rotation struggle at times (especially on the road), got hot just when they needed to, winning 15 of 16 games during a September stretch to put them on the brink of their first division title since 2001 and secure just their second postseason berth since then. This can turn into an A- once the Mariners officially clinch the division.

Cal Raleigh, of course, has set all kinds of slugging records as he approaches 60 home runs, but the offense overall has been the key, as it ranks third in the majors in home runs (and will finish tied with the Yankees for most on the road). Julio Rodriguez has surged in the second half to quietly post a 6.5-WAR season while Josh Naylor has been a key deadline acquisition. If momentum means anything, and if the pec tightness that ace Bryan Woo sustained in his last start isn’t serious, the Mariners can reach the first World Series in franchise history.

This could be viewed as a ho-hum Cleveland season, one marred by the gambling investigation into Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, but instead the late surge combined with a Detroit collapse has turned this into perhaps one of the most memorable regular seasons in Cleveland history, if the Guardians can pull out this division title after the odds of doing so were 0.0% on Aug. 25. Is this a good Cleveland team? Honestly, it’s a mediocre one that has been outscored on the season. But the Guardians beat up on the teams they had to (21-6 against the Twins and White Sox), received lights-out pitching down the stretch and, with one win already in this current series against Detroit, have put themselves in place to pull off one of the biggest division comebacks in MLB history.

For three-plus months, this was an A+. On July 8, the Tigers were 59-34, the best record in the majors — and it was no fluke, as they had deployed impressive roster depth and production up and down the lineup, with Tarik Skubal once again on his way to a Cy Young Award. But now? This season could end up as one of the most crushing, not just in Detroit history but MLB history, if the Tigers don’t hold on to the division title or at least a wild card. Both of those are in jeopardy after they first lost 12 of 13 in July and then went 7-18 after their division lead stood at 10.5 games on August 25 (and was still 10 games on Sept. 3). And if the Tigers don’t make the playoffs? Let’s just say this will no longer be a passing grade.

At times, especially in the first half of the season, when they were pounding the baseball and Pete Crow-Armstrong was running around the outfield like an Olympic figure skater and sprinting madly around the bases, the Cubs were tons of fun. Indeed, they entered the All-Star break in first place and with the largest run differential in the majors. The second half was a bit of a slog, however, due to Kyle Tucker‘s injuries and hitting woes, a slump from others in the lineup including Crow-Armstrong, and a Brewers team the Cubs never quite threatened in the division race the final two months. Matthew Boyd‘s second-half fade means rookie Cade Horton might now be the team’s top starter entering the postseason and the Cubs’ playoff hopes might rest on whether Tucker can get healthy in time after a calf injury has sidelined him for three weeks.

The Padres are back in the playoffs for the second season in a row — only the second time that has happened in franchise history (2005-06 was the other) — and we’ll bump this grade up if they can manage to chase down the Dodgers the final weekend of the regular season and win their first division title since 2006. The bullpen has been the team’s strength, leading the majors in win probability added, while the offense got a little better after general manager A.J. Preller traded for Ramon Laureano, Ryan O’Hearn and Freddy Fermin at the deadline. While the bullpen, now featuring Mason Miller as well (although without Jason Adam for the playoffs), can carry the team in October, the rotation with Nick Pivetta, Michael King, Dylan Cease and Yu Darvish could be sneaky good as well, even if Cease and Darvish didn’t have their best regular seasons.

It has been a wild ride for the Yankees — it seems like forever ago that Gerrit Cole went down in March with Tommy John surgery. Aaron Judge is having another historic offensive season, topping a 200 OPS+ for the third time and on the verge of 50 home runs for the fourth time. The Yankees lead the majors in home runs by a big margin — who had a 30-plus-homer season from Trent Grisham on their bingo card? — and Giancarlo Stanton popped up midseason looking like Miami Marlins Stanton. Max Fried and Carlos Rodon have also been a great one-two punch for the rotation.

But mixed in with all these positive results have been a bunch of negatives as well: Sloppy defense and baserunning and, most concerning as we head into October, a wildly inconsistent bullpen that ranks 22nd in the majors in win probability added. If the bullpen can get hot — and there is indeed the depth and talent for that to happen — the Yankees will be tough to beat in the postseason.

Year 1 in West Sacramento provided a lot of exciting developments for the A’s, starting with Nick Kurtz‘s stunning rookie season in which he did his Jim Thome impersonation and had maybe the best individual game in MLB history, going 6-for-6 with four home runs, a double, six runs and eight RBIs. Fellow rookie Jacob Wilson started the All-Star Game and contended for the batting title while Shea Langeliers and Brent Rooker joined Kurtz in the 30-homer club. Throw in the Mason Miller-for-Leo De Vries trade, which hurt the A’s in the short term but could end up looking like an absolute steal in the long term, and the future looks almost as bright as the lights on the Vegas Strip.

Somehow, the Reds are still alive — and we’ll kick this up half a grade if they do manage to clinch that final wild-card spot. The four-game sweep over the Cubs last weekend will go down as the season’s defining series for the Reds if they do make it, with 1-0 wins on Thursday and Sunday nicely summarizing this season as a whole: great starting pitching at times — Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo, Hunter Greene and Brady Singer have combined for 17.7 WAR — and just enough offense. Elly De La Cruz just snapped a 43-game homerless streak in which he hit just .205/.255/.290 and has hurt the Reds at times with 25 errors, but all that can be forgotten if he comes up big these final few games — and perhaps into October.

Yes, the Dodgers should reach 90 wins, and yes, they still lead the NL West, but we’re grading on a curve here — and this has hardly been the easiest of seasons for a franchise where we expect 100 wins every year. There have been more injuries to the pitching staff (again), as only Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Clayton Kershaw will make 20 starts. The bullpen has alternated between bad and terrible, and the lineup has more holes than we’re used to seeing from the Dodgers (though, it still ranks second in the majors in runs). Most importantly right now, however: The rotation is healthy for the playoffs for the first time since 2022, Mookie Betts has found his offense the past five weeks (OPS over .900), Shohei Ohtani is an indomitable force and, you know, anybody’s bullpen can get hot for a month.

If they end up missing the playoffs … well, this probably turns into an “F” in the hearts of Red Sox Nation. It has certainly been a season with enough drama to rival the Big Dig. The Rafael Devers trade will look even more controversial if the Red Sox do miss the playoffs, considering he had a 151 OPS+ at the time of the trade. With many strong performances across the board — Garrett Crochet with a near Cy Young-season; 4-WAR seasons from Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela and Trevor Story; Aroldis Chapman with one of the most unhittable relief seasons of all time; a nice comeback from Lucas Giolito; Roman Anthony‘s sterling rookie season before he went down in early September — it feels like the Red Sox should have locked up a playoff spot by now, but that hasn’t quite happened. It might come down to the final home series against Detroit.

What to make of the 2025 Astros? On the one hand, they lost Alex Bregman in free agency, traded away Kyle Tucker and then lost Yordan Alvarez for more than 100 games because of a broken hand and then an ankle sprain right before they had to play their biggest series of the season — in which they were swept by the Mariners, all but giving the division title to Seattle. The bullpen was great and Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez were great (until that Seattle series, in which both had losses), but the back of the rotation was a mess. And the Astros never did figure out left field after the silly Jose Altuve experiment didn’t work out. Still, here they are, with a chance to win a wild card. The dynasty is still breathing.

Coming off 100 losses, the Marlins were commonly grouped alongside the White Sox and Rockies in preseason predictions as the three worst teams in the majors, so based on those forecasts, the Marlins were surprisingly competitive this season. The odd thing is the offense, long one of the worst in the majors, was a bigger strength than the pitching staff, as the Marlins have scored their most runs since the 2017 team that featured Giancarlo Stanton in his 59-homer MVP season, plus Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich. The rotation struggled with both results and health, so it doesn’t reflect well on the organization that Jesus Luzardo (traded in the offseason to the Phillies) and Trevor Rogers (traded last year to the Orioles) had good seasons with their new clubs while Miami ran out a ragtag rotation.

My favorite oddball statistic of the season: The Diamondbacks have 17 different pitchers with a save, breaking the previous record of 14 shared by the 2021 Rays and 2024 Dodgers. That sort of sums up the chaotic nature of Arizona’s season — one in which the Diamondbacks are somehow still alive in the race for the final wild card, even after trading away Merrill Kelly, Eugenio Suarez, Josh Naylor and Shelby Miller at the deadline. They were 51-58 at the time, so it made sense to trade those players (all heading to free agency) and it’s a testament to the organization that the team has played better since then. Kudos to Geraldo Perdomo for an absolutely stunning season that has him closing in on 7 WAR — which only Paul Goldschmidt in 2015 (8.3) and Luis Gonzalez in 2001 (7.9) have reached in franchise history.

It was a strange year for the Rangers, making them one of the more difficult teams to evaluate. Globe Life Field suddenly turned into the toughest park to hit in in the majors. The Rangers have one of the worst home OPS figures but still went 47-31 because their pitching was so good at Globe Life. They had a middle-of-the-pack road offense but are just 32-46 on the road. Texas looked out of it in early July but then won 11 of 13. A 2-10 stretch in August left the Rangers out of it again, especially as injuries piled up, but then they went 9-1 fielding a team of Triple-A call-ups. They were two games out of the wild card on September 13 but lost seven in a row.

In the end, they significantly underperformed their Pythagorean record despite going 9-7 in extra-inning games. With Jacob deGrom, Corey Seager, Nathan Eovaldi and Marcus Semien chewing up $124.5 million in payroll for 2026, they might not have much choice but to roll out the same core next season.

There have been only a few certainties in the baseball lives of the San Francisco Giants: Willie Mays could run everything down in center field, Barry Bonds was an unstoppable force, and the recent editions of the team will finish somewhere around .500. Buster Posey’s first season as the head of baseball operations produced a Giants team that resembled the previous three teams. They’ll fall short of the playoffs for a clear reason: They went 4-9 against the Dodgers and 3-10 against the Padres, scoring just 31 runs in 13 games against San Diego. Posey did make the big Rafael Devers trade, but Devers, while productive enough, has learned that hitting in San Francisco isn’t quite like hitting at Fenway Park, a ballpark he thrived in.

The Royals hung in the playoff race until the final week despite an offense that just couldn’t score enough runs (only the Rockies and Pirates scored fewer). Despite that, if Cole Ragans and first-half All-Star Kris Bubic had remained healthy, they might have squeezed out a playoff spot anyway. The search for a power-hitting outfielder will continue this offseason as only the Rays received fewer home runs from their outfielders. Maybe Jac Caglianone, after a difficult rookie season, will live up to the hype in 2026, giving the Royals a formidable foursome alongside Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino and the underrated Maikel Garcia.

It was always going to be a tough season for the Rays, playing their home games in a spring training facility and playing a schedule that avoided too many home games in the sweltering heat of the Florida summer. Indeed, the Rays were just a half-game out of first place in the division on July 2 before collapsing the rest of the month under a heavy slate of road games. Junior Caminero has had a breakout year with 44 home runs in his age-21 season, just three behind Eddie Mathews’ MLB record of 47. Losing Shane McClanahan for a second straight season didn’t help and the usually reliable Rays bullpen ranks just 26th in the majors in win probability added.

Yes, it might be another 100-loss season for the White Sox, but it’s still a 20-win improvement with a corresponding 200-plus run improvement in run differential from last year’s embarrassing megadisaster. In fact, a 14-34 record in one-run games in 2025 shows that the White Sox were more competitive than their win-loss record suggests.

Most importantly, they integrated a promising group of rookies into the lineup throughout the season: Colson Montgomery, Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero and Chase Meidroth have each produced more than 1.5 WAR, the first team with four rookie position players with at least 1.5 WAR since the 1946 Reds. Rookies Shane Smith and Sean Burke also held down rotation spots for much of the season. Hey, it’s something to build upon as the White Sox appear headed in the right direction.

New York Mets: C- … or will it be an F?

Let’s put it this way: Even if the Mets manage to pull out the final wild card, a C- grade is the highest we can go just because of the torture they’ve put their fans through — and Mets fans are used to suffering already. If the Mets do complete this late-season collapse and miss the postseason, however, the grade — an F — will be an easy one to give to a team boasting a $340 million payroll.

Remember, the Mets were 45-24 at one point and had playoff odds of 96% on Sept. 2. This month has featured a brutal four-game sweep to the Phillies and two home losses to the awful Nationals this past weekend. Juan Soto has been great with 42 home runs and 35 stolen bases, but the starting pitching collapsed the final two months, leaving the Mets to depend on three rookies in the rotation. Maybe they’ll pull it out still; if not, it will be one interesting offseason in Queens.

Meh. The Cardinals hung in the wild-card race longer than they probably should have for a team that ranks next-to-last in strikeout rate from their pitchers and just out of the cellar in home runs from their hitters. They did learn a few things about some of their young players, but the answers weren’t all good ones: Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman probably aren’t solutions as regulars; Victor Scott II can certainly play center field, but his bat is questionable; Ivan Herrera can hit but his catching days might be over after not playing behind the plate the final three months. The “meh” factor has shown up in the attendance: Excluding the 2021 season when attendance was likely impacted by COVID-19, the Cardinals have their lowest per-game average since 1995 (and that was coming off the strike, so you really go back to 1984 for a lower attendance figure). Chaim Bloom takes over the baseball operations reins this offseason. He has his work cut out for him.

We start with an A+ for Paul Skenes and work backwards from there until we get here. Konnor Griffin, last year’s No. 9 pick, exploded into the sport’s consensus top prospect, reaching Double-A at just 19 years old (and hitting .321 there in 21 games), so that was a huge development for an organization that has struggled to produce hitters. Otherwise, however, the Pirates took a step backward, losing more games than they did in each of 2023 and 2024 as the offense ranks last in the majors in runs scored. Maybe most depressingly, after losing seven games in a row to begin May, the Pirates were 12-26 and out of it before school even let out for summer.

The Angels did some good things. Zach Neto had his second straight 5-WAR season and might be regarded as the most underrated player in the game now. Jo Adell had a breakout year in the power department and the Angels hit a lot of home runs as a whole. They’re also the only team that will have five starters make at least 23 starts. On the other hand, Mike Trout‘s career continues the Ken Griffey Jr. trajectory. With the Reds, we kept waiting for Griffey to have another Griffey-esque season, but it never happened, and it looks like that will be the case with Trout. Bottom line: The Angels had meager expectations and failed to meet even those with their 10th consecutive losing season.

The low point? There was the 24-2 loss on April 20 against the Reds. That had to be it. Or maybe the next day when the Orioles got just one hit in a 7-0 loss to the Nationals. There was a 15-3 loss to the Yankees on April 29 when Kyle Gibson served up five home runs and the Orioles made three errors. There was the 19-5 loss to the Red Sox on May 23 or the tough extra-inning loss on May 24 in the first game of a doubleheader, capping a 3-16 stretch that doomed the Orioles’ season before Memorial Day. That the Orioles have played over .500 since then doesn’t matter much: It has been a hugely disappointing season, with new concerns about the supposed offensive core of Adley Rutschman, Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo, Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad, all of whom have posted a below-average OPS+.

After seven consecutive playoff appearances, this year qualifies as an abject failure, as suddenly the future of the Braves looks a little more complicated. Some of the problems here were self-inflicted: Jurickson Profar‘s PED suspension, bad hitting from much of the lineup, Raisel Iglesias‘ string of blown saves early in the season, another weak bench. Some of it was that the injuries to the starting rotation proved too much to overcome (although the Braves were already struggling before some of those injuries set in). The Braves will certainly be one of the most interesting teams to watch this offseason to see how they address some of their issues.

This is the kind of season that can set an organization back five years, where it kind of feels like the whole organization has given up. Ownership/management punted at the trade deadline, dealing away 10 players. The Twins reportedly just recently fired four of their five scouts in the pro scouting department as well. Following the deadline, the team completely tanked on the field, with only the Rockies owning a worse record in the final two months. All this after payroll was cut following the 2023 playoff season and after last year’s late-season collapse. As always, the Pohlads never disappoint in their willingness to pinch pennies.

After back-to-back seasons of 91 losses, the Nationals were hoping to improve in 2025, maybe even battle for a wild card. Instead, they got worse, with only the Rockies owning a worse run differential. Indeed, since winning the 2019 World Series, only the Rockies have lost more games. This finally cost manager Dave Martinez and president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo their jobs as it became clear a change was needed. Even more distressing, the two bright spots in the first half — All-Stars James Wood and MacKenzie Gore — have been abysmal in the second half, with Wood chasing Mark Reynolds’ single-season strikeout record. Former No. 2 pick Dylan Crews has also struggled as a rookie and the rotation aside from Gore has been a complete disaster. This remains a rebuilding project with the immediate future looking bleak.

It’s not just that the Rockies have lost in every way imaginable. It’s not just that the starting rotation has a chance to post the worst single-season ERA in modern history (since 1901). It’s not just that they made a gallant run at the 2024 White Sox, who set the modern record with 121 losses. It’s all of that and more. The Rockies are going to absolutely shatter the modern record for worst run differential, sitting at minus-405 runs (the 1932 Red Sox were minus-345). At least they lead the league in names that would fit in a James Bond movie: Warming Bernabel, Adael Amador, Nick Martini, Victor Vodnik, Hunter Goodman, Chase Dollander, Dugan Darnell, McCade Brown.