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.
First Place: Los Angeles Dodgers (90-59)
Top Position Player: Max Muncy (4.2 fWAR) Top Pitcher: Yoshinobu Yamamoto (4.3
fWAR)
Perhaps even more clearly than last season, there is a bit of a disconnect between the expectation of how the Dodgers will look come playoff time and their actual record — the latter has been on par with the other two division leaders in the National League for most of the season, not quite lapping the league like the former has been since the offseason. It should be noted that the Dodgers have managed to build a little cushion over Atlanta as of late though, entering the week with a three-game lead in the loss column. It’s understandable how we got here, especially after they made up for the absence of starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani in the playoffs with the addition of Tarik Skubal at the deadline.
Speaking of baseball’s unicorn, the biggest development recently over in Chavez Ravine has been the IL placement of Ohtani with right-biceps inflammation, one of many issues bothering Ohtani for quite a while now. Considering he has already resumed baseball activities, expectations are that he should be back in the lineup come the end of the regular season. The main question is how much these nagging issues will affect Ohtani’s ability to hit in the playoffs — a hobbled-up Ohtani, below his recent standard, still managed to hit 30 homers and accumulate a 142 wRC+ this regular season, both good enough to lead this potent lineup.
Ohtani isn’t the only high-profile hitter currently missing from the Dodgers lineup; they are also without Andy Pages, absent with a fractured hand. That being said, the reigning back-to-back champs are also confident about the return of Pages come playoff time, which would technically leave this lineup at full strength — actual full strength depends on Kyle Tucker’s recent hot stretch carrying over after an incredibly underwhelming first year with the Dodgers. Moving over to the pitching side, the rotation that already dominated last year’s postseason gets the boost of Skubal — once again with both Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell fresh off campaigns in which they seldom pitched in the regular season, combining for just 18 starts.
Second Place: San Diego Padres (81-68, 9 GB)
Top Position Player: Fernando Tatis Jr. (4.8 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Mason Miller (3.5 fWAR)
Potentially the hottest team in the National League right now, the San Diego Padres, as the Yankees recently learned on a trip to Petco Park, possess quite the dangerous team. Since that series with New York, all the Padres have done is win, taking advantage of a soft part of the schedule by sweeping the Nationals and Giants. The NL is so strong that even with this productive run, San Diego is only three games up on Arizona in the loss column for the final Wild Card spot — these two teams are set to play on the final weekend of the season.
The Padres have flourished with the improved form of Fernando Tatis Jr., possessing a 25-14 record since the start of August. Running a lot more than your average team, in large part thanks to the aggressiveness of Tatis — who leads the league having been caught stealing 13 times — the Padres have the rare distinction of possessing three different players with at least 20 stolen bases. Tatis is joined by Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts to make up that dangerous trio on the basepaths.
A key boost to the Padres’ playoff chances comes in the recent return of Nick Pivetta. Just a season ago, Pivetta was outperforming former Yankee Michael King and current AL Cy Young candidate Dylan Cease to be the ace of this staff. It’s a position he more or less slots right back into, although it should be noted that King has kicked things up a notch — and even more importantly, the former Yankee has been healthy the whole year. Overall, this is a sneaky, quality team, and it wouldn’t be a surprise seeing them give any NL division winner a run for their money if they can hold off Arizona.
Third Place: Arizona Diamondbacks (79-71, 11.5 GB)
Top Position Player: Gabriel Moreno (4.4 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Eduardo Rodríguez (3.2 fWAR)
Guess how many baseball teams currently have not one, not two, but three separate players with an fWAR of 4.0 or higher. That distinction belongs to the Chicago Cubs and the Arizona Diamondbacks. Interestingly, in the middle of the Diamondbacks trio, you won’t find the player who you could argue is Arizona’s most talented hitter, Ketel Marte. After an unexplained absence during a series against the Red Sox that led to him being placed on the Restricted List, Marte has returned to action — while his numbers in September aren’t anything special, his availability dramatically affects the makeup of this lineup.
If you’re wondering how the Diamondbacks got here with a subpar performance from a star hitter and their highest-paid player, Corbin Burnes, basically missing the whole year, it’s been a mix of breakout performances and bounce-back campaigns. Moreno, who had already established himself as a reliable catcher, is producing career-high hitting stats across the board, while Eduardo Rodríguez is having the greatest season of his career by a wide margin in year No. 11 as a big leaguer.
Circling back to Burnes, the former Cy Young winner made his return to the big leagues recently, still on a tight leash. The potential to get Burnes and Marte producing at a high level in the playoffs could make this Arizona team a dangerous one. However, before even thinking about that, they have to run down the Padres, an ungrateful task given how San Diego is playing.
Fourth Place: San Francisco Giants (62-88)
Top Position Player: Rafael Devers (3.4 fWAR)*
Top Pitchers: Logan Webb (3.1 fWAR)
*Technically, Luis Arraez is still in the number one spot at 3.8, but he was traded to the Phillies at the deadline.
After years of unsuccessfully trying to lure a superstar to the Bay Area, the Giants found their man in Rafael Devers. Leaving aside the positive impact of this move for the Yankees, particularly given what Boston took to get rid of him, one player alone has a very limited impact on the fate of a team.
Sure, there are many specific flaws we could point to as to why this team is so close to the bottom, but there are too many to go through them all. Ultimately, it’d be shortsighted to focus on the down year from Logan Webb, for instance, or other specific letdowns for a team whose process seems to be in question.
No matter how you look at it, the reviews around Tony Vitello’s first year as a manager in the big leagues are far from flattering. To call bringing in a skipper without any big-league experience a risky move is an understatement. It’s fair to say that the Buster Posey regime is already under heavy scrutiny.
Last Place: Colorado Rockies (55-94)
Top Position Players: Jake McCarthy (2.8 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Kyle Freeland (1.1 fWAR)
Something that Mike Tomlin said on a broadcast during Week 1 of the NFL season, quoting a former player, noting that “the Browns is the Browns,” stuck in the back of my mind. That could easily apply to the Colorado Rockies in Major League Baseball, a franchise that has been at the bottom of the barrel for too long to be genuinely optimistic about a rebuild project — at least before seeing promising signs to back that up.
It’s 2026, and Kyle Freeland is still showing up as their most productive pitcher. The injury to Chase Dollander, who has been a rare, exciting young arm to take the mound at Coors Field, certainly hurt this team’s outlook in 2026. But their primary problems remain the same, and a solution doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.
