It’s time for another round of the tested, trusted, completely objective, never-been-questioned, all-math, no-bias MLB franchise rankings.
First, a change: Rather than span the Wild-Card Era (1995 to present) as we have done previously, the franchise rankings will henceforth cover the past 25 years, a floating time frame that feels right to start this year — 25 for ’25. The scoring system we borrowed years ago from football writer Bob Sturm and tweaked to fit baseball postseason structure has not changed since last year’s edition.
Winning the World Series (WS): 9 points
Losing in the World Series (WSL): 6 points
Losing in the Championship Series (CS): 3 points
Losing in Division Series (DS): 2 points
Losing in Wild-Card Round (WC): 1 point
The scoring system also incentivizes division titles (+1 point) and penalizes prolonged losing cycles, docking teams (-1 point) each time they lose at least 90 games in consecutive seasons.