MLB Lineup and Pitching Changes That Already Must Be Made
The 2023 Major League Baseball season is only nine days old, but why put off until tomorrow what you might be able to fix today?
Based on a combination of offseason expectations, spring training observations and super-early regular-season returns, we've put together a list of changes teams should consider before it's too late.
There's nothing overly drastic here, though. We'll save the "call up the star prospect" cries for another day. And while we love churning out trade proposals, trades involving MLB players within the first month of the regular season are historically quite rare.
Rather, these are relatively minor adjustments that could produce considerable benefits.
We're going with one team (and one honorable mention) from each division, starting in the AL East.
Statistics current through the start of play on April 7.
AL East: New York Must Stop Wasting Its Time with Aaron Hicks
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This is season No. 5 in the seven-year, $70 million deal the New York Yankees gave Aaron Hicks during the 2018-19 offseason.
And, already, it is the fifth straight year that fans in New York are beyond fed up with his lack of production.
He only started two of the team's first six games, so at least he's playing less than last season when he was a staple in LF/CF for more than 100 starts.
Still, he's hitless with three strikeouts in seven at-bats, bringing his triple slash since the beginning of this contract down to .218/.333/.365 with a whiff rate just below 24 percent.
Hicks did steal 10 bags last season, so there was some hope that he would at least be able to take advantage of the new rules that have drastically increased the MLB-wide stolen-base rate.
However, to steal second, one must be able to actually get to first.
When he was competing with Joey Gallo and Miguel Andujar for playing time in 2022, it made sense for New York to keep hoping and waiting for Hicks to miraculously rediscover his 2018 form.
But this year, if Hicks is starting, it means Oswaldo Cabrera is not. And if Hicks is still getting playing time in a few weeks when Harrison Bader (oblique) is back on the active roster, that means both Cabrera and an everyday starter are riding the pine.
AL East Honorable Mention: Toronto must figure out if Brandon Belt needs corrective lenses to address the 12 strikeouts in his first 19 ABs.
AL Central: Cleveland Must Make a Difficult Decision with Zach Plesac
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Dating back to the start of 2021, Zach Plesac has logged 275.1 innings for the Guardians with a 4.67 ERA and a 1.28 WHIP. Those numbers are pretty rough for a guy who is taking the mound every fifth day for what is supposed to be a postseason team.
Plesac rarely gets shelled like he did in his lone appearance of this season—6 ER in 1.0 IP against Oakland. In fact, he had a run of seven consecutive quality starts in the middle of last season.
Since that streak, however, he has made 11 appearances with a 6.27 ERA. And that's not including the 10 earned runs he allowed in 18 innings of work during spring training.
Suffice it to say, he was the weak link in this rotation long before getting lit up by the team that is blatantly spending as little money as possible this season.
It's hard to offer up a suggested change, though, because Cleveland's options are limited.
With Triston McKenzie (shoulder strain) on the IL for possibly the first two months of the season and with top prospect Daniel Espino (knee and shoulder injuries) not having pitched in nearly a full calendar year, the Guardians are already starting one guy (Hunter Gaddis) who likely wouldn't be anywhere near the MLB rotation if the team was healthy.
If Plesac continues to struggle, they could call up 2021 first-round pick Gavin Williams, who fanned nine in 4.1 innings of work for Double-A Akron on Thursday. But he has injury history of his own and probably isn't a legitimate option just yet.
They could give Xzavion Curry a shot, though. He pitched five solid innings in relief of Plesac against Oakland to keep the Guardians in a position to come back and win that game.
AL Central Honorable Mention: Minnesota must figure out its second base situation, as the Nick Gordon/Kyle Farmer platoon is 3-for-25 with no extra-base hits.
AL West: Seattle Must Decide If Jarred Kelenic Can Hit Regular-Season MLB Pitching
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The Jarred Kelenic conundrum has become beyond frustrating Seattle Mariners fans.
Heading into 2021, Kelenic was one of the highest-rated prospects in all of baseball, neck-and-neck with Julio Rodríguez as a top-six player according to each of Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus and MLB.com.
But while J-Rod has blossomed into a very rich star in a hurry, it's still unclear if Kelenic has a future in the majors.
At the Triple-A level over the previous two seasons, he batted .302 with a .974 OPS. Kelenic also raked this spring training to the tune of a .353 average with four home runs.
After yet another slow start to the current campaign (3-for-15 with no RBI), though, he's batting .169 through 152 career MLB games.
Last year, he was batting .140 through 32 team games when the M's sent him back down to Tacoma. Over the next 2.5 months, he batted .289 with 11 home runs and got called back up. He went 2-for-27 before getting demoted again and proceeded to bat .307 at Tacoma with seven home runs and six stolen bases. He returned to Seattle in late September, batting .164 (including postseason) the rest of the way.
It's beyond maddening.
With Dylan Moore (oblique) and Taylor Trammell (hand) both opening the season on the IL while AJ Pollock, Sam Haggerty and Cooper Hummel are all batting even worse than Kelenic, the M's have little choice but to keep letting Kelenic try to find his way at the plate. But if he's still hitting this poorly by the time the calendar flips to May, a Seattle team with high hopes of winning it all this year will need to make a tough call on whether Kelenic is part of that equation.
AL West Honorable Mention: Texas must find more regular playing time for Ezequiel Duran after a spring training in which he nearly led the majors in total bases.
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NL East: Atlanta Must Move on from Marcell Ozuna
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To put it lightly, Marcell Ozuna has not been the star that he presented himself to be during the truncated 2020 campaign.
During that inaugural year in Atlanta, Ozuna batted .338 and led the National League in both home runs (18) and RBI (56), resulting in a four-year, $65 million contract in the offseason.
But it has been all downhill since then.
On the field, he triple-slashed .222/.278/.397 over the past two seasons, and he has gotten out to an even worse start to 2023 with just one hit in his first five games. (At least that lone hit was a home run?)
He has the fourth-highest salary on the roster, but he is routinely buried in the bottom half of the order.
Ozuna is also such a liability on defense in left field that he figures to once again get most of his starts at DH. And, again, he's not hitting well at all.
Off the field, Ozuna has also raised considerable concerns. In 2021, he was arrested on charges of aggravated assault by strangulation and battery against his wife, Genesis Guzman. Police said they witnessed him throw her against a wall and strike here. He was retroactively suspended for 20 games by MLB after charges were dropped following Ozuna's completion of a pretrial diversion program.
Then, in August, he was arrested and charged with DUI, with the conclusion of the case pending.
Because of the combination of salary, performance and legal concerns, trading him might be effectively impossible. And given how much Atlanta is paying him, it probably feels a need to keep playing him.
At a certain point, though, Atlanta needs to just accept the sunk cost and cut ties here.
NL East Honorable Mention: Washington Nationals must replace Kyle Finnegan with Erasmo Ramírez at closer.
NL Central: Milwaukee Must Find More Playing Time for Owen Miller
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Milwaukee didn't exactly break the bank to get Owen Miller from Cleveland, trading a player to be named later for the 26-year-old utility infielder. Combine that with the fact that he was a .231 hitter who averaged one home run for every 67.4 trips to the plate over the past two seasons, and one can appreciate that Miller wasn't a big part of the Brew Crew's plans heading into the spring.
He was one of their best hitters in spring training, though, going 16-for-43 (.372) with a much lower strikeout rate (16.3 percent) than the likes of Brian Anderson (35.9), Luke Voit (31.0) and Willy Adames (34.9).
Granted, that's a very small sample size, and at least Anderson has been mashing the ball thus far in the regular season. But Miller has continued to see the ball well in minimal opportunities, going 2-for-4 with a walk in five plate appearances.
Pull at that string and see what he can do for you on a more regular basis.
With rookie middle infielder Brice Turang and rookie rightfielder Joey Wiemer also out to hot starts, squeezing Miller into the mix is no easy task. The Brewers are in the enviable position of having too many players hitting well to start them all, and they've got one of the best run differentials in the majors because of it.
Still, ride the hot hands while you can, right?
Maybe Miller is gearing up for a breakout year.
NL Central Honorable Mention: St. Louis must call up Matthew Liberatore and put him in the starting rotation.
NL West: Arizona Must Figure out What It Is Doing at Closer
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Arizona had the worst bullpen in the majors last season, according to Fangraphs, and it wasn't even close. So the Diamondbacks brought in Miguel Castro from the Yankees, Andrew Chafin from the Tigers and Scott McGough from Japan in hopes of stabilizing what was a disastrous late-innings situation in 2022.
Thus far, though, it's unclear how Arizona plans to handle save situations.
In spring training, nine different Diamondbacks recorded one save, but none recorded more than one.
McGough was clearly first in line for saves, but in his first appearance, a possible four-out save turned into a one-out hold when he walked two of the first three batters he faced. Three days later, he gave up back-to-back home runs to San Diego's David Dahl and Ha-Seong Kim in handing the Padres a walk-off win.
He did get a two-out save in between those two messy outings, but job security is already a gigantic question mark just one week into McGough's first MLB stint in eight years.
That said, don't read too much into Drey Jameson getting the save on Tuesday. The rookie is much more likely to end the season as the ace of the staff than as the savior of the bullpen. But with McGough, Castro and Chafin each having pitched on each of the previous two nights, they let Jameson get the two-inning save.
It does speak volumes about the state of this bullpen, though, that a long reliever/starter making just the sixth appearance of his MLB career was the best option left at their disposal.
NL West Honorable Mention: The Dodgers must figure out their middle-infield situation so they can quit putting Mookie Betts at second base before he gets seriously injured.
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