While the Pittsburgh Pirates came up with the huge comeback win on Wednesday, they’ve been spinning their wheels of late, dropping 3.5 games behind St. Louis for second place in the NL Central. Before Wednesday’s big win, the Pirates had lost four straight.

This season, however, Toronto has regressed, and with back-to-back losses now finds itself 7.5 behind the second place Yankees and just a half-game up on the cellar-dwelling Red Sox.

In 2024, the Cleveland Guardians won 92 games, last year regressing slightly to 88 although still good enough for a second straight playoff appearance. This season, after a bit of a tough week in which it dropped three of four, Cleveland has turned things around with back-to-back wins and is holding onto first place in the AL Central, a half game up on red hot Detroit.

Since managing just 66 wins in 2022, the Detroit Tigers have slowly been building into a legitimate contender. They upped that total to 78 the following year and then in 2024 finally enjoyed a winning campaign – their first since 2016 – with 86 wins. Last season, they added another win to that total and have now made the playoffs in back-to-back years, ending a nine-year drought in the process.

The Colorado Rockies made a bit of progress in 2024 (if you can call losing “just” 101 games progress), but last season the bottom really fell out. Colorado barely avoided becoming just the third team since 1900 to lose 120 games. Yikes.