MLB's Biggest Winners and Losers from Week 1 of 2023 Season
As soon as it came, there it went. The first week of the 2023 Major League Baseball season is over, leaving us knowing a little more than we did before.
Were there winners? You bet there were winners. But also losers, because all coins have two sides.
We've picked out the teams, people and, oh, let's call them developments that won and lost the opening week of the 2023 MLB season. It's technically a list of 10 split evenly between the two sides, but some slides consist of multiple teams and players.
To kick things off, let's start with the most literal winner in baseball right now.
Winner: Tampa Bay Rays
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Precisely what makes the Tampa Bay Rays a winner is simple: they've won every game they've played so far.
All six of them, to be exact, which is a first for the history of the franchise and a first for any team since the 2016 Baltimore Orioles. And they've made it happen by doing a little bit of everything.
The pitching has been especially on point. Shane McClanahan, Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen each debuted with six scoreless innings, with McClanahan only regressing to six two-run innings his next time. These are big reasons the Rays have a 2.00 ERA as a team.
On the other side of the ball, the Rays lead the American League in runs, home runs and slugging percentage. Arguably the most promising development has been Wander Franco shaking off an injury-marred 2022 season to start hot with a .417 average, five extra-base hits and two stolen bases.
OK, so, the Rays have done all this against the Detroit Tigers and Washington Nationals, who, with all respect, are very bad. The Rays can nonetheless be encouraged by the company they've joined, as seven of the last nine teams to start 6-0 eventually made the playoffs.
Loser: Philadelphia Phillies
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Speaking of the Nationals, they and the Kansas City Royals both finished in last place and lost 204 total games in 2022. Therefore, it tracks that they would be two of the three teams at the bottom of MLB with a 1-5 record.
The other? Not so much, given that it's the defending National League champion Philadelphia Phillies.
Before they got off the schneid with a win over the New York Yankees on Tuesday, the Phillies had started 0-4 for the first time since 2016. Then they promptly got back in the loss column on Wednesday. And with their run-differential sitting at a league-worst minus-24, bad luck doesn't work as an excuse.
The pitching has been downright bad, with the supposedly vaunted trio of Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler and Taijuan Walker deserving a large chunk of the blame after they allowed 13 total runs allowed in their debuts. Another large chunk belongs to the bullpen, which, in a familiar refrain, has baseball's worst ERA at 8.44.
The bats, meanwhile, have produced only four home runs. While this is clearly a case of a powerful offense playing against type in a small sample size, how much better things can get without Bryce Harper for maybe a couple more months and Rhys Hoskins for potentially the whole year is a fair concern.
Winners: Atlanta and the Milwaukee Brewers
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Though neither is quite on the Rays' level, that's really the only bad news anyone can deliver to Atlanta and the Milwaukee Brewers. Both clubs have won five of their first six games.
After losing Max Fried to a hamstring injury on Opening Day, Atlanta has been able to live the good life anyway thanks largely to its core stars. Spencer Strider debuted with nine strikeouts over six scoreless innings, while sluggers Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley and Matt Olson are collectively batting .320/.393/.667 with seven homers.
Not that any of this is especially surprising, of course. Because if there's just one super-team in MLB today, it's surely one that won the World Series in 2021 and 101 games in 2022, and which now has the best championship odds of any team in 2023.
The Brewers, meanwhile, have won five in a row since a loss on Opening Day. And in spectacular fashion, to boot, as they've outscored the opposition 38-12 in the process.
Now's the time to get to know Brian Anderson and Garrett Mitchell, who weren't on many radars coming into 2023 but are now batting a combined .395 with six home runs and 15 runs batted in.
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Loser: Red Sox Starting Pitchers
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The Boston Red Sox have only made one full turn through their rotation. There will be many more to come, and it stands to reason that most of them will be better.
Because, let's face it, it would be hard to get any worse.
Though only one of Nick Pivetta's was of the earned variety, he, Corey Kluber, Chris Sale, Tanner Houck and Kutter Crawford combined to allow 25 runs over 20.1 innings in their debuts. The 27 strikeouts were a silver lining, but not one shiny enough to distract from the 12 walks and 12 home runs.
Sale, the seven-time All-Star, had it especially rough in serving up three long balls and seven runs in only three innings against the Baltimore Orioles in Boston's second game on Saturday. The only thing to credit him for is that he knew he had no excuses.
With James Paxton, Garrett Whitlock and Brayan Bello on the comeback trail from injuries, the Red Sox at least know that their rotation can get deeper. Yet that may not equal substantially better, as neither they nor any of Boston's current starters has pitched anything like an ace in recent seasons.
Winner: Bryan Reynolds
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By all accounts, Bryan Reynolds was a man on a mission even before he grabbed the early major league lead for home runs.
Whereas it took him until his 25th game of 2022 to collect his fourth home run, Reynolds was already there by the Pittsburgh Pirates' fifth game of this season. He indeed bears much responsibility for the Red Sox's pitching woes, as he collected two of his long balls against Crawford on Monday and another against Pivetta on Tuesday.
Thus did Reynolds join Reggie Sanders and Willie Stargell as the only Pirates to ever open a season with four home runs in five games. And, hoo boy, is the timing interesting.
Reynolds' power outburst is coming at a time when his long-term future with the Bucs is up in the air. He notably requested a trade during the offseason, only to get deep into contract extension negotiations that were progressing before hitting a snag. The two sides agreed on an outline of eight years, $106 million, but not on the opt-out Reynolds wants.
Either way, he's only helping his cause. Whether we're talking market or trade, his value is rising.
Loser: Detroit Tigers Hitters
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And now for one from the "Stop Me If You've Heard This Before" file: the Detroit Tigers offense is having a hard time.
It's a plus that the Tigers don't rank dead-last in runs scored, as they did in 2022, but that's only so much comfort relative to their other marks. Namely, a .251 on-base percentage and .552 OPS that rank 30th and 29th, respectively.
The Tigers are specializing neither in avoiding strikeouts nor earning walks nor making hard contact. It also took them until Wednesday to get into the stolen-base column, though it's to their credit that they did so four times when they did.
Youngsters Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson are showing signs of life, but the same can't be said of Javier Báez and Austin Meadows. The Tigers badly needed both to have rebound seasons, so it's discouraging that they're just 6-for-40 so far.
Just as it was only fair to note that the Rays have had it easy, it's likewise only fair to note that the Tigers have had it rough in facing them and the Houston Astros out of the gate. But if these initial returns suggest anything, it's that you can't simply will a bad offense into a good one through coaching and infrastructure.
Winner: Shohei Ohtani
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It must be a day ending in Y, because Shohei Ohtani can be found with eye-popping numbers at the plate and on the mound.
Though it somehow feels like the Los Angeles Angels' two-way star hasn't really gotten his bat going yet, he's rocking a .400 on-base percentage and a pair of home runs. And what a pair it was, as only he and Yordan Álvarez have cleared 430 feet on two different long balls.
As for Ohtani's pitching, simply noting that he's allowed one run over 12 innings in his two starts would be obscuring the full story. He wasn't especially sharp in his second outing, in which he faced the Seattle Mariners and walked four batters and hit two more.
All the same, a 0.75 ERA is a 0.75 ERA is a 0.75 ERA. And should anyone think Ohtani has lost any wattage on his pitches, he's struck out 18 of the 48 batters he's faced for a 37.5 strikeout percentage.
In other words, his march toward his second American League MVP and a contract that could be worth as much as $600 million is well and truly underway.
Losers: José Berríos and Chris Bassitt
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There have thus far been three instances in which a starting pitcher has allowed eight or more runs this season, and two of them have something in common.
They were perpetrated by Toronto Blue Jays.
First up was Chris Bassitt, who got shellacked by the St. Louis Cardinals for nine runs over 3.1 innings on Sunday. The next day, José Berríos took the ball and got lit up by the Kansas City Royals for eight runs over 5.2 innings.
For Berríos, it was an all-too-familiar, all-too-distressing tune. It remains hard to pinpoint specific reasons why he's no longer pitching like the guy who made consecutive All-Star appearances in 2018 and 2019, but, well, he's just not. His latest flop is coming on the heels of a 2022 campaign in which he had the worst ERA among qualified starters.
Yet there's arguably even more cause for worry where Bassitt is concerned. His average fastball was down nearly 2 mph in his debut, with eight of the 10 hits off him registering at least 100 mph off the bat. It was, in a word, ugly.
Winner: The New Rules
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The past week marked the dawn of a new era in baseball, in which the pitches are timed, the bases are bigger and there are no infield shifts allowed.
As a proof of concept, it was mostly glorious.
If the new rules are meant to speed things up, incite more action on the basepaths and help left-handed batters, then so far, so good. Compared to 2022, the average time of game is down 29 minutes and the rate of stolen bases per team game is up 33 percent.
Heck, there haven't even been as many violations of the pitch timer as you might think. They are happening, but Tom Tango of MLB Advanced Media pointed out that they were much more frequent in spring training:
Really the only promise that hasn't yet been delivered on is that of increased balls in play, but the situation is hardly in disastrous territory. As balls in play are only down from 24.4 per team game in 2022 to 24.2 so far in 2023, what baseball fans are getting is about the same amount of action in less time. No wonder they're happy.
Loser: Umpires
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Look, we'll be honest with you. As well as the new rules are working for entertainment purposes, we'd hate to be the ones to have to enforce them. It doesn't look easy.
This said, it's frustrating that umpires aren't batting 1.000 in their enforcement of the pitch timer. For example, there was the weird call in the New York Mets-Miami Marlins game on Opening Day that MLB later admitted to be the wrong one:
There were also the timer-related ejections of Manny Machado on Tuesday and of Tim Anderson on Wednesday, both of which could have been avoided if their seemingly timely requests for time had been granted. Especially in Anderson's case:
Stuff like this was bound to happen, and not just because the pitch timer was always going to require an adjustment period. It's part of a trend of umpires getting more and more tasks put on their plates, effectively lessening their margin for error. The league's next innovation will hopefully make their lives easier.
For example, the automated strike zone is a good idea simply in the abstract and is looking that much more necessary in reality now that umps are suddenly not calling strikes within the zone at their usual rate.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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