We’re just past the quarter mark of the 2025 season, which means it’s time to hand out some team grades based on what’s unfolded thus far.
This is no way predictive and the grades assigned aren’t meant to suggest that a given team will continue playing as they have thus far. Broadly speaking, these grades reflect performance to date in the context of preseason expectations. Exceed expectations, and you’ll get high marks. Fall well short of them, and you’ll get branded with a D or F. You know how this works.
With the necessary throat-clearing out of the way, here now are our quarter-mark grades for the American League.
While many people expected the A’s to be more competitive this season than the last few seasons, it’s a veritable coup to be over .500 at this point. Not only that, but the A’s are only two games out of first in the AL West and climbed to within one game just a week ago. The power is legitimate behind the bats of Tyler Soderstrom, Brent Rooker and Shea Langeliers and there are enough interesting arms to make this team pretty watchable. We could nitpick on the staying power of this team — the most likely finish is probably fourth place — but this is only a grade for what we’ve seen to this point. The A’s have earned a good mark entering May 12.
If I were an O’s fan, I would be livid after sitting through that rebuild only to be rewarded with this team in Adley Rutschman’s fourth MLB season. Only the Pirates (14-27), White Sox (12-29) and Rockies (7-33) have a worse record than the 15-24 Orioles. Their rotation has been an abject disaster. Entering play Monday, their starters rank 28th in ERA (5.55) and 30th in WAR (0.0). Offseason corner-cutting plus injuries (Zach Eflin and Grayson Rodriguez, most notably) have turned a rotation that looked dicey on paper into one of the league’s worst units. Let’s not let the offense off the hook here either. The O’s rank 23rd with 3.77 runs per game. A well-earned F, this is.
It feels like the whole is less than the sum of the parts. The talent is there for the Red Sox to be one of the best teams in the league, but instead they’ve hovered around .500 a quarter of the way into the season even with Alex Bregman and Garrett Crochet being the difference-makers they were brought in to be. The various Rafael Devers controversies feel completely avoidable. Those are the kind of things that should be kept in-house. The Red Sox aren’t bad. I mean, clearly they’re not. Are they great? They have the potential to be, I think, but things haven’t come together yet. Maybe it will over the next few months. For now though, I give the first quarter of their season a solid C.
Chicago White Sox: C
Look, the White Sox are very bad (12-29), but as the intro says, “these grades reflect performance to date in the context of preseason expectations,” and the White Sox have probably been better than expected. Recent call ups Chase Meidroth and Edgar Quero have a chance to be long-term building blocks, righty Shane Smith looks like a Rule 5 Draft steal, and others like Sean Burke, Jonathan Cannon, and Davis Martin are interesting enough. I’m feeling generous and will give the White Sox a C even though their 12-29 record is identical to their 12-29 record through 41 games last season. Compared to preseason expectations, the ChiSox aren’t that bad.
Even with Emmanuel Clase experiencing a few hiccups, the Guardians are again dominating close games: 8-2 in one-run games and 3-0 in extra innings. Steven Kwan, Kyle Manzardo, and José Ramírez have carried an offense that is a tick below average in runs per game. Cleveland’s rotation is the least imposing it has been in some time, and when you add in a defense that rates below average a quarter of the way into the season, you get a bottom-10 run prevention unit. The Guardians have a winning record despite a negative run differential. They’ve demonstrated a knack for winning one-run games the last several years, so I don’t want to chalk that up to luck. Cleveland does walk a tightrope most nights. Their margin of error is very small. A quarter of the way into the season, they’ve stayed on the right side of those margins.
I was not quite sure what to make of the Tigers coming into this season. I wasn’t sure their “pitching chaos” — manager AJ Hinch’s term — would hold up over a full 162 games, and I had some questions about the offense. A quarter of the way into the season, the Tigers are showing last year’s mad dash to the postseason is no fluke. Former No. 1 overall picks Casey Mize (now out with a hamstring injury) and Spencer Torkelson have leveled up, Tarik Skubal is again pitching like a Cy Young candidate, Reese Olson and the bullpen have been awesome, and the offense is averaging the third-most runs per games in baseball (5.22). Maybe guys like Javier Báez, Dillon Dingler, and Zach McKinstry won’t keep this up all season, but we’re not looking ahead here. We’re looking at the quarter of the season that is already in the books, and the Tigers have been aces.
The bar is higher in Houston due to the standards the organization set over the course of the last decade. The Astros made seven straight postseasons, winning four pennants and two World Series, through 2023. Even in failing to make the ALCS last season, they won the AL West. As such, sitting one game over .500 right now isn’t any more acceptable than sitting in the meaty part of the curve. There are plenty of bright spots, such as Hunter Brown and several relievers, but consistency and winning on the road have been a real concern. When you have the recent resume of the Astros, you look at a C like, “that might be good for some other teams, but that doesn’t cut it here.” Exactly.
The streakiest team in baseball so far this season. The Royals went 2-9 from April 9-19 and then immediately followed it up with a 16-2 stretch. The rotation is four deep in very good-to-elite starters (Michael Lorenzen is a rock solid No. 5 too), the bullpen has been one of the best in baseball, and Bobby Witt Jr. is a star of the first order. He just needs more help. More help in addition to Maikel Garcia, I should say. Garcia’s been awesome. He and Witt have combined for a .873 OPS. The rest of the Royals have a .598 OPS. The outfield as a unit has a .620 OPS. That won’t cut it. The offense needs more juice. To date though, Kansas City has been very good. Streaky, but very good.
The Angels started 7-3 and have been bad since. Sometimes they go longer into the season with the tease job, but the result at this point is generally just the same and it reeks of disappointment. It continues to be a poorly run organization and it now appears the prime of Mike Trout is firmly in the rearview mirror while he sits on the injured list again. The most intrigue remaining this season comes down to what happens at the trade deadline. This just isn’t acceptable in this market. The only thing preventing an F here is how low the bar has been set and that isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.
What a confusing team. There’s talent here, lots of it, but it took their current eight-game winning streak just to get to one game over .500. Byron Buxton is on one of those tears where he looks like the best player in baseball, and the rotation has been so good, especially of late. Carlos Correa has been flat out terrible at the plate though, and Royce Lewis has played only a handful of games since returning from a spring hamstring injury. Getting those two going will be imperative the rest of the way. Similar to the Red Sox, it feels like the Twins should be better than they are. Perhaps the recent eight-game winning streak is a sign they’re on the right track. For now, a 21-20 record a quarter of the way into season is C worth to me.
Aaron Judge is on a historic pace, Max Fried has been worth every penny of his $218 million contract, and Paul Goldschmidt and Trent Grisham have performed at something close to their best case scenarios. The bullpen, especially Devin Williams, has let too many winnable games slip away — the Yankees have lost an MLB-leading six games when taking a lead into the seventh inning — yet they remain atop the AL East at 23-17. At some point they’ll have to find a way to win close games rather than lose them in the late innings. For now, they’re pacing a division despite getting a combined zero innings from Gerrit Cole and reigning AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil.
The Mariners were squarely in A territory, maybe even A+, before getting swept at home by the Blue Jays over the weekend. Still, despite a 4-8 start, the Mariners surged to first place in the AL West with a streak of red-hot baseball for several weeks. At one point, they won 18 of 24 games. With the Mariners, you expect to see them win a lot of low-scoring games due to their pitcher-friendly ballpark and the pitching has been good, but the offense is excellent when adjusted for ballpark setting. They take their walks and hit for power, pushing them to ninth in the majors in OPS despite the heavy penalty for playing half their games in T-Mobile Park. They are tied for fifth in home runs and tied for seventh in steals, too.
Rays hitters did not get the memo that George M. Steinbrenner Field is much more hitter friendly than Tropicana Field. They rank 24th in runs scored per game (3.75) despite playing 28 of their first 40 games at homer-happy GMS Field. Yes, 28 of their first 40 games have been at home. No other team has played more than 23 games at home. The Rays have failed to capitalize on one of the easiest stretches of travel any team will ever have a quarter of the way into the season. Also, it’s getting to be time to put the “the Rays never lose trades” narrative to bed when Curtis Mead (Cristopher Sánchez trade) and Christopher Morel (Isaac Paredes trade) are playing like this, and the Blake Snell trade was a total dud.
The Rangers bought themselves some credit by starting 8-2 and they’ve pitched well for much of the season. A wretched stretch of offense cost their offensive coordinator his job and a reshuffling of the coaching staff, though. At the time, the Rangers had scored two or fewer runs in 11 of 14 games. There’s far too much offensive talent for this to happen. A series win in Detroit pulls them to within a game of .500, three games out of first place and out of D range in the grades here, but it doesn’t mean everything is fixed. The 2023 champs missed the playoffs last season and need to get back to the playoffs this season or else it’ll mark a failure.
Toronto Blue Jays: C
A common theme in the American League is “this team is not as good as it should be,” and the Blue Jays fit the bill. Other than a few hiccups in Anaheim last weekend, the bullpen has been so good in close games, and that’s really kept Toronto afloat. Jeff Hoffman & Co. have nailed down most wins. The rotation has been OK overall, with some average performances and some poor performers (oof, Bowden Francis). Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Anthony Santander have combined for 11 home runs through 40 team games. That is well south of expectations. The Blue Jays have been outhomered 57-30 this season. Really tough to win consistently when you lag that much in home run differential. Credit to Toronto for mustering a 20-20 record despite that, I suppose.
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