The Unluckiest MLB Teams of 2025: Why the Rangers, Rays and Braves Couldn’t Catch a Break

As the World Series gets set to begin, it's the perfect time to reflect back on the year in baseball.  At RotoWire, we wanted to find who the unluckiest teams of the 2025 MLB season were, so we consulted the experts to create an average ranking of team "luck".  

We used ESPN's Relative Power Index, Baseball-Reference's Pythagorean Luck and TeamRankings' Luck Ratings and blended the average of the three metrics to rate every team in the league from unluckiest to luckiest.

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Breakdown of MLB's Unluckiest Teams

 Rangers Underachievers Despite Dominant Statistics

The Texas Rangers take the crown as MLB's unluckiest team this season by our methodology. Texas finished 81-81 despite allowing the fewest runs in the major leagues and outscoring their opponents by 79 runs over the course of the year. Baseball-Reference pegged Texas as underperforming their Pythagorean record by 9 games, the major's second highest mark, while ESPN placed them at 10 games below their expected record, tied for an MLB high.

Based on these expected statistics, the Rangers should have claimed the AL West title but instead they ended up third in the division and six games out of the final wild card spot. A major culprit was Texas' struggle in one run games, where they went 21-29, the league's fifth worst winning percentage in such contests. Injuries also affected the Rangers, particularly on the position player side where Josh Smith was the only one to appear in more than 140 games this season.

Rays' Falloff: Close Games, Trade Deadline Timing

Tampa's underlying metrics do not ultimately show a playoff team like Texas, but the Rays certainly could have put up more fight in the AL Wild Card race with better fortune.  Tampa ended the season 77-85 with a run differential of +31, making them only one of two teams in the majors to have a losing record but positive run differential along with the Arizona Diamondbacks.  However, the Diamondbacks won three more games than Tampa and only outscored their opponents by six runs, meaning Arizona only underperformed their Pythagorean record by two games whereas Tampa underperformed theirs by seven.

As with the Rangers, Tampa had issues in one run games, going 22-29, but some bad timing around the trade deadline also helped spark the Rays falloff. With 60 games left in the season, the Rays were four games over .500 and only half a game out of the Wild Card with a +66 run differential, but they proceeded to lose four straight games (and eight of nine overall) and executed a mild sell-off at the deadline rather than acting like true contenders. Tampa crawled back to .500 by the second week of September after falling as many as six games under in August, but a 5-13 end to the season cemented a second consecutive losing season for the Rays after five straight playoff appearances from 2019-2023.

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Braves' Injury Fallout and Offensive Collapse

Atlanta came into the year as the betting favorite to win the NL East but could never get off the ground as just about anything that could go wrong around the team did. The Braves pitching staff was mired with health issues as rotation stalwarts Chris Sale and Spencer Strider were each forced to miss a chunk of the season, while four other starters suffered season-ending injuries, leaving zero pitchers on the team who registered a qualified season of innings. Offensive cornerstones Ronald Acuna Jr. and Austin Riley also missed 60 plus games while usually steady contributors Michael Harris and Ozzie Albies posted the worst seasons of their career with the bat.

Throw in a 21-35 record in one run games and the picture of the disaster in Atlanta becomes even clearer. For all these problems, TeamRankings credited the Braves with a -10.23 luck rating, more than 2.5 points worse than the next unluckiest team. Both other models only put the Braves season as a four-game underperformance but that still ranked towards the bottom of the league, as 17 teams finished within 3 games either way of their Baseball-Reference Pythagorean record and 14 teams did the same based on ESPN's expected record.

Other Clubs in 2025 MLB Season

The twelve teams that ultimately qualified for the playoffs appeared all over the board in these rankings.  Boston came in as the unluckiest playoff team, largely due to issues with the team's middle relief. Aroldis Chapman posted a dominant season as the Red Sox closer, but the team still finished tied for fourth in the majors in blown saves with 28. Greg Weissert alone blew nine saves, second most in the league, despite a well-above average 2.82 ERA and Boston's second-best overall bullpen ERA could not help them secure a winning record in one run or extra-inning games.

Among the two World Series participants, Toronto benefited from far better luck than Los Angeles. The Dodgers slightly underperformed their expected statistics, though nothing like the unluckiest teams in the league, while the Blue Jays were one of MLB's biggest overperformers.  Toronto won six more games than expected by Baseball-Reference and five more than expected by ESPN. The Blue Jays performed exceptionally well in close games, finishing with the fifth best winning percentage in one run games and tying with the Miami Marlins for best record in extra-inning games.

Unsurprisingly given their historic comeback from 15.5 games back, the Cleveland Guardians ranked as the year's luckiest playoff team. The 88-74 Guardians became just the fifth team in the last 25 years to make the playoffs with a negative run differential in a non-shortened season. Both Baseball-Reference and ESPN placed Cleveland as an 80-82 true talent team, but strong pitching and success in close games allowed them to make a run despite having only two hitters record an above average season at the plate.

Cleveland tied with Miami as the luckiest overall team in the majors this year based on the metrics examined. Opponents outscored the Marlins by 89 runs, but the team finished 79-83 rather than 72-90 as expected by Baseball-Reference or 71-91 as expected by ESPN. Miami's TeamRankings Luck Rating led the league at +11.55, eight tenths of a point higher than second place Toronto and almost 5 points higher than third place Cleveland. 

While that good fortune did not propel the Marlins to the playoffs, Miami still scored more runs than they had since 2017 and posted a 17-game improvement from 2024. However, luck (in either direction) does not typically carry over year-to-year so don't overreact to teams that defied the numbers this season.