it's time once again to look at the latest Power Rankings posted by the athletic and see where each team is ranked after yet another week of MLB baseball which teams have dropped off ever so slightly who's propelled themselves to the top of the conversation and let's get involved in everybody's favorite subject right now what's happening to the Houston Astros so let's not waste anytime let's Jump Right In and let's talk baseball [Music] good morning good afternoon and good evening and welcome to let's talk Bas I'm your host Tom skulls and today we are going to look through the Athletics latest Power Rankings it's been a few days since he actually posted him so you know we'll start from the bottom again start from the bottom and work our way up kind of deciding the rankings as as as close to current time as as possible but also you know things like who they got wrong who have they messed up on in terms of their evaluation of uh there's one team we're really going to get stuck into that I think a lot L people will enjoy of certain fan bases so number 30 again is the lowly terrible Chicago White Socks with a three and 22 record um their Detroit Pistons bad they are disgracefully bad it's it's embarrassing to see how bad this team is and I feel for the fans because there's nothing worse than having a bad team and having it coupled with a front office that clearly doesn't care that really is not fussed one way or another about the success of the team um it's it must be really disheartening to be a fan of the white socks right now the same goes for the the Rockies and the Marlins the Rockies with a 7- 19 record the Marlins with a 6 and 20 just it's impressive how much dross this league has managed to propel with us this year you know normally there's the thing is in American Sports there's always a full of teams that are always bad or rather than the same teams being bad there are always bad teams is what I mean and this is no exception the difference is I think there's a lot of people that expected the Oakland A's to be rock bottom and it's actually quite impressive that there are three teams significantly worse than they are and the A's aren't a great team but they're not the worst and they're not awful either you know the A's are 27th on their rankings with the 10 and 16 record they've just come off and taken two games off of the Yankees we'll get into them later on there's a lot of things to get into with that but for the A's you know amid all of what's going on with the turmoil surrounding their move away from Oakland a potential move to Sacramento in the meantime before going to Vegas something we've talked about on this channel before there's something about this team that they seem to be putting in a good effort fo and they're not a they're not a terrible team I'll give them that they're not awful and you know as as the piece says look this isn't great for for the Athletics but at at the time of writing which I think it was two days ago so about April 20 3 days I think it was April 23rd it was the a a 30th out of the 30 teams in contact rate on pitches in the strike zone contact rate on pitches pitches out of the strike zone and contact rate in general and what I've noticed about this team from watching them against the Yankees recently has been they offensively are not great you know Brent Rook is a good player he can help massively but the core of their positivity comes from the pitching side of things and specifically Mason Miller because my God what a pitcher he is he came in in a closing situation against the Yankees not too long ago and he had I think I believe it was vulpe Soo and judge he had to come up against smoked them all 100 miles an hour on on multiple pitches and he just embarrassed him and you watched him and just go come the trade deadline somebody's going to go into a acquire that guy and they're going to get an absolute stud in their team I was so impressed watching him really big fan of what I've seen from him so far and I think if there is a bright spot within this A's team it is him because he is fantastic to watch absolutely brilliant pitcher really suits um modern kind of modern pitchers who prioritize things like the velocity and the M mph of their is and he he just blew he just blew him away there was nothing they could do to handle it up next is the A's with a 10 and 15 record a minus Mike Trout they're an awful team not much not much more to say about them other than you know Mike Trout has has been fantastic this year he's he's on his on his usual Hall of Fame level path you know though and he's just a really really good player really really good the pretty much the only bright spark in this team um yeah it's bad it's bad it's bad it's a lot of these teams are bad and you know like 205 is the Nationals with a okayish record of 10 and 14 which isn't bad in comparison to the other teams that have been on this list but you know CJ Abrams with a 676 slugging percentage has been has been really really good and he's slowly emerging himself as what you you see players and you look at them and go he you could be a really good player you could end up being a star in this league and I think maybe not with the Nationals but at some point that lad is going to be a great player to be involved with and have on your roster you know he was involved in the soo trade he was the centerpiece of the trade when the when the padr took him from Washington and he's developed into a good player he's developed into a good hitter he's um you know he's a top 10 Prospect and he's come up and I think he's specifically at the start of this season he's done really well to kind of show what he's really made of be a really good performer um the only thing is as the piece in the athletic mentions he's a they call it a free swinger so when he when he does make contact it's a good swing and when he doesn't make contact it's going to be a problem but I think that's a thing that comes with most players at Young At young ages also massively fast as well which is always a good I think we're seeing more players like that now who can hit for power but also really quick at 24th the St Louis Cardinals they're in a they're in a bad way the Cardinals are in a bad spot their pitching is I'm not a fan of their pitching stuff at all and I feel like it's going to be a really weird situation for them they're not good at all it was a weird offseason for them I weren't a fan at all 23 the Pittsburgh Pirates they started off in a 9-2 and then regressed back to the pirates with a 2- n stretch um yeah I'm not not involved not involved in the Pirates another team that I can live without they're not making me want to watch them and I know that's bad but I I have a thing for the Pirates where not a soft spot as such but I look at them and go they have the potential to be such a really popular franchise a really popular team you look at that you look at that Stadium they have and it's amazing you look at the the the jerseys they have and the logos they have and it's like it's just it's built to be a super duper franchise and it just feels like every time you're on the CP of it something ruins it and that something tends to be themselves and it's like O'Neal Cruz is a fantastic player but he has a 40.2% strikeout ratio he's he's good but you can tell something isn't quite right and you can tell that he's not with within himself at the moment and I think that feels like a thing for the Pirates where they're good but there's something stopping them from going to another level I think that'll be something they'll need to address at some point and they can't keep being this team that isn't great forever there needs to come a point where the the switches flicked and they just become a all round better outfit the twins are another team that confused me a little bit they've got 11 and 13 record uh the Pirates have a 13- 133 record now the twins of 11 and 13 they dropped down in the Athletics rankings four spots from 18 to 22 in the past couple of days but hitting wise they are pathetic the twins offensively are pathetic nothing going their way whatsoever and yeah you got Carlos K is injured Max Kepler's injured Royce Lewis is injured Matt Wallace has been demoted to the miners I believe it is and when they won the AL Central last year they were an offensively really good team but what made them offensively really good is not what we're seeing now because of the because of the situation they find themselves with with injuries and lack of confidence and whatnot and their team batting average is 195 195 the stat here from the from the athletic piece is of the 13 position players currently on the twins roster more than half of the batting uh more than half are batting below the Mendoza Line and only three of them are above 250 it's the kind of thing to make you take your glasses off and scratch your eyes in amazement because that team is stinking it's just not very good it isn't great whatsoever and maybe and I feel like when they get certain players back it will become a bit better to uh to to look at and you can see the when Kepler comes back when ker comes back when Lewis eventually comes back whenever they may be they'll be a lot better to watch and a lot better to evaluate but right now awful team awful team but what the Twins were last year were exciting and what the 21st Place team on this list the Giants were last year were boring they were dull nothing happened they've revamped their lineup they brought in Blake snail and they haven't really improved all that much they currently sit the 21st on the MLB athletic rankings they have a 12 and 14 record they've gone up in the rankings in recent in recent weeks you've got a team that can't hold on to a lead the ballpen has the second worst erra in the MLB this year offensively they're better just and what I think the positive to look out for is they've got good pitching you know Blake snail hasn't been good at all he's now injured he's on the iil Logan web is an ace he's a fantastic pitcher really really good really good to watch him play whenever we're able to watch him at a reasonable time a notable stat here percentage of inherited Runners that are allowed to score 54% which is the highest in the league the ballpen may even itself out across the season this is a very small sample size yes 14% of the season has gone but at some point it might even itself out it might do no sign of that happening just yet but it will come soon it will come good because that's what happens in this league and in this sport 20th of the Tigers they they're an odd another odd team where I see some bits of them and I'm like okay their ballpen is great their erra is is fantastic the only thing that's keeping them from being top is Zach mckinstry has a 54 ra they're a they're a good team in that regard but not fantastic in any sense of the word I think they're middling I think they're in a division that actually helps them the fact that they're in the central the AL Central helps them not helps them not be terrible because I don't think they are a terrible side but it could the situation they're in helps them massively in in sense of they can perform well and not have to worry about maybe missing out on a Division or something along those lines now now I've just seen the list I've just seen the list tide 18th we'll start with the first one we'll start with the first uh team that is Tide 18th and then we'll move on to the main event tide 18th in the MLB athletic Power Rankings is the 13 and 11 Mets I've been pleasantly surprised by the Mets I think a lot of people have I was listening to the base Bo's dead podcast the most recent one about like Jackson holiday and his rough start and they started talking about the Mets and one of the things that they said was they're playing well and they're picking up good wins against good opposition but they're not really you know they're not doing anything to make you think that in the long term they're going to be good and they're going to be interesting but the Mets don't care they're picking up wins and they might actually become like a a sneak pick for the Wild Card later on in the season if this continues so the Mets I've been pleasantly surprised with the other tied 18th team the Houston Astros who have been horrific this season the Houston Astros have a seven- 19 start they should actually be lower on this list I think the only reason they're not lower on this list is because there's a reputation around them and everyone is kind of going you know what the Astros they'll pull through but they lost uh last night 3-1 to the Cubs I have typed in into Twitter into Twitter just Astros I'm going to come up with a a lot of good stats here that will tell you just how poor they are they have the fourth worst record in the league they have the fourth worst record in Major League Baseball it goes the white socks with 3 and 22 the Marlin 6 and 20 the Rockies 6 and 19 the Astros 7 and 19 and the A's 9 and 16 the bottom five in terms of run differentials go red white socks 8- 85 Rockies minus 57 Marlins - 47 A's minus 40 Astros minus 36 Houston has a problem and we've only just got into May oh my God it's just it's so it's so fun to see I'm going to split this into two different uh categories in terms of how I view it the Astros are a team that is coming towards the end of their cycle and as a fan of the Astros how would I look at this well I'm not a fan of the Astros I don't really care but let's be neutral for this one the things that built their team and built their success are no longer there a lot of good players are not performing to the level they they should be bregman Abu to name just two Jose Altuve is still fantastic but overall they're just not performing to the level that many people expected them to but the pitching is awful the pitching is terrible Christian chavier is on the andry list Fran Balz is on the ilil Justin Verlander is just coming back but it feels like with the Astros it's more of a structural issue within the organization more than anything else and then on the other side of things I look at it as someone who enjoys seeing them terribly they've lost 12 of their last four 15 games and it's delightful it's delightful to see because this is what happens yes this is a team coming towards the of the cycle but they have fallen off so dramatically that even the people like myself who normally Reserve their opinion on the Astros saying things like yes the Astros haven't started well they're notoriously slow starters and they build their way up this time yes there are caveats yes the pitching has been decimated with injuries three of their five starters are injured or have been injured for the for a long period of the start of the season but this is a team that's come coming to to the end of the cycle and yes Altuve is playing well but the magic that they once had forget the scandals aside they were an outstandingly good team the scandals they had were built by people in a certain way those people are gone and it leads me to believe that that certain way they used to build the teams is no longer there leading to you to look to to a situation like this where it doesn't seem to be in a great spot you're spending big money on a closer in Josh haer and you already had a really good closer anyway you then have the situation of the trade deadline I don't know all we're jumping the G but at what point does this team in this front office kind of go this is it this is time keep a couple of pieces but move on a couple of players are they are they sellers are they going to be sellers is this a prediction that we make you know what let's do it let's go out let's go on let's go bold at the trade deadline the Houston Astros are going to be sellers in the market normally they'd be buyers they've got to find someone to take that huge Jose bro contract no one's going to do it Alex bregman what happens with him Justin Verlander I mean do you look at it and just bite the bullet and go we'll get rid one of the best pitches of all time arguably the best pitcher of this generation but what good is he to a non- competing Astros team the same way what good was he in a non-competing Mets team who knows ultimately I think the Astros cycle is over or at the very least is coming to an end and if we weren't so blinded by the expect the expectation we had of previous years we would have known this after the Rangers had beat them when the Rangers beat them in the ALCS last year with such a convincing fashion we should have looked at that and gone hm maybe this is it maybe this is coming towards the end of time but I got to be honest it's really fun to look at and it's really fun to watch 17 16 15 Red Sox Padre's Royals perfectly fine middling teams the Boston Red Sox are the stupidest team that I've ever played the game don't take my word for it listen to Jared carabis and his boys on his Red Sox podcast speak far more glowingly about the stupidity than I ever will we'll speed it along a little bit 14 Mariners 14 the Reds with 14 and 11 13 of the Mariners with 13 and 12 joint 11th the Blue Jays and the Rangers I had a comment my last Power Rankings video about the Rangers and somebody kind of aggressively saying why do people not talk more about the Rangers I'll be honest I'm not quite sure why they don't because they're still a really good team they're the raing Champions and they haven't really shown anything different from last year year to tell you that they're falling away anytime soon there might be better teams in the regular regular season than them 100% but at a 13 and 13 record they're not awful they're inconsistent but they're not a bad team no one's going to be sitting here going why they why is no one put piping them up for a World Series push again because they haven't really shown that level again but could they go far in the playoffs 100% could they win the division 100% it's a weak AL West this year so maybe they do maybe we do need to talk about the Rangers a bit more Diamondbacks are 10th Cubs are ninth the Guardians are eight the power and friendship team where nothing seems to be very good but they seem very good it's really odd Dynamic there seventh of the of the Rays eighth of the six sorry of the Brewers with a 16 and eight St I've kind of been really taken back by the Brewers here I have to say it's theyve really really good they're really really good and I don't know whether it was because they traded Corbin Burns in the in the in the offseason and everyone kind of looked at that and just went ah well that's them that's them give it up it's really good they're second in the majors in batting average on base percentage and third in slugging [Music] [Music] n he