One month of an MLB season isn’t enough to draw any conclusions other than how teams have played over their first 25 or so games.
That doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from how teams have started the season though.
The Chicago Cubs have flown out of the traps to show that they are quite happy to shoulder the expectations of being favourites to win the National League. If there’s a 17-6 start you can believe in, it’s this one put together by the North-siders.
Jake Arrieta’s continued brilliance was noted here last week, but the player who has really shone so far is Dexter Fowler. It was a big surprise when he re-signed with the Cubs in the off-season as it looked like he was bound for Baltimore. The Cubs wanted him back as their lead-off hitter and to cover centrefield to allow Jason Heyward to play is natural position in right field.
That couldn’t have gone much better so far. His .431 Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) is ridiculously high, suggesting he’s finding a bit of good luck with balls finding holes, so we shouldn’t expect him to keep up this pace, yet he’s a great fit for this lineup and should continue to have a good season for the Cubs.
The NL East unsurprisingly is led by the Washington Nationals and New York Mets. Neil Walker has had an eye-catching first month in a Mets uniform thanks to his 9 home runs; however the man he replaced, and who’s now with the Nationals, Daniel Murphy has also had a strong start with his new team. As with Fowler, consideration of Murphy’s batting line of .365/.426/.576 has to take a high BABIP into account (.408), yet it’s good to see him getting off to a positive start.
As expected, it’s been the pitching staffs that have led the way for the Mets and Nationals. Stephen Strasburg has looked excellent in the first five starts of his final season before hitting free agency, whilst the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard – despite taking a loss against the Giants on Sunday – has been dominating.
The big surprise has been the 15-10 start put together by the Philadelphia Phillies. No one’s expecting them to keep it up and it’s case of enjoying it while it lasts for Phillies fans, especially with the early form being shown by young starters Aaron Nola and Vincent Velasquez. They have also gone 7-5 against the Nationals and Mets so far, so if they can show some better form than expected and take some further wins off those two teams, they could have some influence on deciding if one of the Wild Cards heads to an NL East team or not.
Meanwhile the NL West is currently a three-way tie with the Colorado Rockies, San Francisco Giants and LA Dodgers all on .500 records. Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story have combined for 21 home runs so far for the Rockies. Story has racked up a mountain of strike-outs in the process so there may be some concern that he’ll get too homer happy and have too many poor at-bats to make the longballs add up to much. It’s a long season though and we’re now going to see pitchers making adjustments in how they pitch to him, so let’s see if Story can counter that.
In the American League it’s the White Sox who are joining the Cubs to make Chicago the place to be for baseball in the early going. All of the fuss around Adam LaRoche’s retirement has very quickly been forgotten following an 18-8 start. Few saw this coming and that would suggest it’s not likely to last, yet we saw how the Minnesota Twins were able to keep in the AL Central hunt last year despite all evidence pointing to them fading away (that seems to have started in April 2016).
The White Sox have an excellent 1-2 punch in Chris Sale and Jose Quintana, they’ve started well despite Jose Abreu struggling through April, and their record includes 3-0 sweeps against the Blue Jays and Orioles so you can’t put it down to beating up on bad teams. Let’s see where they are in another month’s time – Mat Latos in particular looks ripe for regression – before making writing them off too quickly.
As for writing teams off, should we start penning an obituary for the Rodriguez, Sabathia and Teixeira era in the Bronx? The Yankees are not playing well and when it’s older players such as Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira that aren’t contributing much, you do have to question whether it’s just a slow start or an inevitable decline from an ageing core. Aroldis Chapman will be back from suspension soon to join Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances in a formidable bullpen trio in the recent Kansas City Royals mould, but how far can that take them when they don’t have the Royals’ fielding ability to help keep games tight?
The Yankees’ slow start will be all the more galling for the Boston Red Sox’s charge to first place in the AL East. Their offence is really firing at the moment and David Price’s 6.14 ERA is misleading in the extreme as to how well he is pitching. What isn’t so obvious for Boston is whether the rest of the pitching staff will be able to back up Price and the batting lineup to keep the strong start up.
Equally questionable is who wants to win the AL West. Although the Texas Rangers are reigning champs and lead the way with a 14-11, they don’t look like a team that will break away from the pack and everyone but the Houston Astros is closely in pursuit at this stage.
The Astros look a classic case of a team that brilliantly jumped ahead of schedule in 2015 and may now take a step back before moving forward yet again in 2017. They’ve allowed more runs than any other team in the AL (124 over 25 games, basically 5 per game) and Carlos Gomez is one of several regulars in the batting lineup that has battled injuries and poor form so far.
It’s unlikely they can recover from an 8-17 start to get back into the play-off race, but we’ve seen in recent years that MLB can throw up plenty of surprises.
