Everyone yelling that these 2027 power rankings are a big-market stitch-up should look at who's No. 1. It's the Milwaukee Brewers, the smallest market in the sport, and they aren't No. 1 on one list as a favor. They're No. 1 on MLB.com, on ESPN, on Bleacher Report, on Yahoo, on FanSided, because they won the whole thing in 2026 and nobody can pretend otherwise. If the glamour franchises were rigging the ballot, the easiest place to start would be the top. The top is where the tiny-market champs are parked, unanimously.
So park the conspiracy. There is no "Official 2027 MLB Power Rankings," whatever people are treating this as. In the days after the World Series ended on October 28, at least seven outlets each dropped their own "way-too-early" version, each with a different panel and different results. The specific numbers people are mad about, Brewers 1, Dodgers 2, Yankees 3, Rays 4, Red Sox 6, Cubs 7, Padres 8, White Sox 10, Guardians 11, trace to exactly one of them: MLB.com, written by its staff. That's an opinion column with a number stapled to each team name. Bleacher Report had the White Sox five spots lower. The lists don't even agree with each other.
Now the part MLB.com's panel actually should answer for, and it has nothing to do with market size. They put the Yankees at No. 3 and the Rays at No. 4. The Rays swept the Yankees out of the ALDS and went on to make the World Series, their third Fall Classic appearance as a franchise, in a season plenty of people picked them to finish last in their division. The Yankees watched the rest of October from home. Ranking the team that got swept above the team that did the sweeping is a choice, and it's the kind of choice that hands the bias crowd their best ammunition. The blurb's defense is that the Rays' rotation is shakier looking ahead. Maybe. But you built a ranking where the pennant winner sits below the team it eliminated, and you did it to a small-market team. Own the eye-roll that follows.
The Guardians at No. 11 is the other flashpoint, and it's thinner than the outrage suggests. One spot outside the top ten, with a real question attached: José Ramírez is coming off his first below-average offensive season since 2015, and how he bounces back decides a lot. It's a baseball reason. On a different outlet's list Cleveland sat lower still. If you want to be angry about a team getting short-changed by name-brand voters, pick the Rays.
These projections aren't rigorous, and they aren't official. One of the outlets putting them out flat-out called publishing rankings less than twelve hours after the World Series "a fool's errand," comparing it to judging a painting before the first brush hits the canvas. They're guesses made before free agency and before a single trade, with the labor fight still unresolved. Ranking the Padres eighth while their rotation returns three pitchers with big-league starting experience, Joe Musgrove, Randy Vásquez and JP Sears, with two spots blank, is a guess too. You're allowed to think the guesses are bad. You're not allowed to call them a big-market cabal while the Brewers sit on top of every one of them.
The bias charge is lazy. MLB.com still blew it by telling you the Yankees are better than a team that just proved otherwise with a broom.
