Scorching Hot MLB Takes 2 Weeks into 2023 Season
Nothing screams "mid-April" quite like a few irrational overreactions to what we've seen thus far in the Major League Baseball season.
Fifteen days into the 2022 campaign, the Colorado Rockies had the third-best winning percentage in the majors, eventual World Series combatants Houston and Philadelphia were both sub-.500, Aaron Judge had homered just once, Paul Goldschmidt was batting .146 and José Ramírez was on pace for 270 RBI.
Weird things happen in small samples.
But sometimes, hot starts turn into breakout seasons and unexpected cold spells persist for months.
So who's to say that Luis Arraez can't make batting average history? That Aaron Judge can't break his own record? That Arizona won't win the NL West? Or that the Astros and Phillies are destined to bounce back from disappointing starts for a second successive year?
Get your oven mitts ready, because we're coming in hot with these takes from the early action on the diamond.
Statistics current through the start of play Thursday.
The Pitch Clock Is the Greatest Thing to Happen to Major League Baseball Since 1968
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Once the "Arson Judge" and Carlos Correa offseason sagas ran their course, the pitch clock was all anyone could talk about in the months leading up to Opening Day. And when violations were happening left and right early in spring training, people lost their minds complaining about how it's going to ruin the game and theorizing about the possibility of a World Series ending on a pitch-clock violation.
But here we are, two weeks into the pitch-clock era of Major League Baseball.
And it is just plain awesome.
Not since the mounds were lowered after "The Year of the Pitcher" in 1968 has a single innovation had such an impact on the sport.
Per the Associated Press, through the first 11 days of the regular season, the average length of nine-inning games was at two hours and 38 minutes, down from three hours and nine minutes at the same juncture last season.
It's not like batters are increasingly running up to the plate and grounding out on one pitch or anything. That same AP article noted that the league-wide batting average was .249, compared to .233 at the same point in 2022.
That increased batting average probably has more to do with the ban on shifts than the implementation of the pitch clock. Regardless, the result is more action in a shorter period of time, which is wonderful news for a sport that was beginning to rival golf in its ability to put viewers to sleep on the couch.
Both the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies Will Miss the Postseason
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In the olden days of only two postseason spots per league, it was relatively common to have both the World Series champion and the first runner-up miss the postseason the following year. In fact, it happened in seven consecutive years, beginning with the 1981 World Series.
Since the implementation of the wild-card spot in 1995, however, it has happened just twice: Astros and White Sox missing the playoffs in 2006; Cardinals and Tigers missing the playoffs in 2007.
That 15-year streak is in some early danger of coming to an end, though.
With Rhys Hoskins (knee) possibly out for the year and Bryce Harper (elbow) possibly out until the All-Star break, the Philadelphia lineup isn't all that formidable. Moreover, the Craig Kimbrel experiment at closer is already shaping up to be a complete disaster.
Houston is also sputtering through more than its fair share of injuries, still waiting for José Altuve (thumb), Michael Brantley (shoulder) and Lance McCullers Jr. (forearm) to make their 2023 debuts. Factor in Alex Bregman struggling to hit anything, and the heavy preseason favorite to win the AL West was unable to win any of its first three series against the White Sox, Tigers and Twins.
Granted, both squads started slow last year and turned out more than fine, so I'm struggling to even talk myself into my own hot take here. At the end of play on April 25, 2022, the Astros were 7-9 and the Phillies were 7-10. Even by the end of May, the Phillies were 21-29 before finally catching fire. Plenty of time left to turn things around.
Aaron Judge Is Going to Break His Own AL Record for Home Runs
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One season after becoming the first player in American League history to club at least 62 home runs in a single season, Aaron Judge is already more than on track to do it again.
It took all of two pitches for Judge to mash his first tater of 2023, taking a Logan Webb sinker 422 feet to dead center at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day. He took Ross Stripling yard three days later and had a little Easter Sunday double dip with a pair of solo shots in a win over Baltimore.
That was four home runs in nine games, which extrapolates to 72 in a 162-game season.
While we're not necessarily saying he's going to get to 72, Judge will get to 62 again.
Sure, it's a tiny sample size. Over the course of last season, there were plenty of stretches in which Judge hit at least four home runs in the span of nine games. Heck, he had nine home runs in the span of nine games in late July.
But he didn't start last season anywhere near this well.
Judge had just one home run in his first 13 games in 2022. It wasn't until two full weeks into the season that he started cooking with gas. Yet, he already has a steady boil going this April as he looks to reward New York's $360 million faith in him.
While we're on the subject of AL MVPs, set yourself an alarm for 7:05 p.m. ET Tuesday. That's when Shohei Ohtani is scheduled to take the mound at Yankee Stadium, against whom Judge is 2-for-2 with a home run in their respective careers.
The Oakland A's Are Going to Be Historically Awful
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Let's play a game.
Without looking, how many players on Oakland's active 26-man roster can you name?
Given enough time and do-overs, I could probably get all 26 for teams like the Astros, Dodgers and Yankees. But if you can name more than five A's off the top of your head, you might have some kind of superpower. (That includes fans of the A's, whose superpower is the ability to withstand an inordinate amount of emotional pain.)
Predictably—and, frankly, by design—this team is terrible.
Oakland went all-in on the tank job last March, trading away Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Chris Bassitt and Sean Manaea. It then shipped out Christian Bethancourt, Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino midseason before trading away Sean Murphy, Cole Irvin, A.J. Puk and Cristian Pache this offseason. And now with both Paul Blackburn and Seth Brown on the IL, things have gone from bad to worse.
The A's are 3-9, and two of those wins felt lucky. They scored two in the eighth inning to clip the Angels 2-1 on Opening Day. A few days later, they scored the tying run in their win over Cleveland on a wild pitch on a swinging strikeout that should have ended the sixth inning. Because of that play, it was 3-3 heading into the bottom of the ninth, and they were able to walk it off against James Karinchak instead of facing Emmanuel Clase.
Meanwhile, the nine losses were by a combined margin of 55 runs.
Oakland won 60 games last year, but this team is definitively worse than it was in 2022.
They won't be "1899 Cleveland Spiders" terrible. That team went 20-134, which is a record in futility that will never be broken. But the A's are going to rival the 1962 Mets (40-120) and the 2003 Tigers (43-119) on the list of Major League Baseball's worst seasons of the past eight decades.
We'll put the official prediction at 46-116, and even that might be generous.
The Javier Báez Contract Will Rank Among the Worst (for a Hitter) in MLB History
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We've got to put the "For a Hitter" qualifier in there, because there have been some horrendous pitching deals over the years, including Stephen Strasburg's seven-year, $245 million contract with the Washington Nationals that could go down as the worst contract in the history of professional sports.
But in season No. 2 of Javier Báez's six-year, $140 million deal with the Detroit Tigers, he is already entering Jason Heyward/Chris Davis/Josh Hamilton territory for lack of ROI.
By his 2018-21 standards, Báez had a down year in 2022, but not to a catastrophic, irredeemable degree. He hit .238 with 17 home runs, providing at least some positive value for Detroit. And the hope—especially after he hit .368 for Puerto Rico in the WBC—was that he would rally for a better run through 2023.
However, that has not been the case.
Through 11 games, Báez—who historically has done some of his best work in March and April—has been a disaster, batting .100 with no extra-base hits. He has also already committed a pair of errors at shortstop, hurting the Tigers both at the plate and in the field.
Perhaps the most painful part of this whole contract situation is that Báez has a player option after this season. If he thought he could get more money elsewhere, he could walk away from the final four years and $98 million remaining on the deal.
But that's not going to happen.
For the next half-decade, Báez is going to be a slightly less expensive version of what Miguel Cabrera has been in Detroit over the past half-decade. Except in Báez's case, the frustration will be even greater, because there's no "But, hey, remember when he was an MVP for us?" nostalgia attached.
Tampa Bay Has the Best Starting Rotation in Baseball
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Before the season began, trying to pick the best one-two starting pitching punch in the majors was a tough call.
Atlanta (Spencer Strider and Max Fried), Houston (Cristian Javier and Framber Valdez), Milwaukee (Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff), Philadelphia (Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler), San Diego (Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove), Toronto (Alek Manoah and Kevin Gausman), the Mets (Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer) and the Yankees (Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón) each had a pair of aces that were going in the consensus top 25 among starting pitchers in fantasy baseball drafts.
But look no further than Tampa Bay's Shane McClanahan and Jeffrey Springs for the actual best one-two punch in 2023.
McClanahan has picked up right where he left off when finishing sixth in last year's AL Cy Young vote, allowing three runs in his 3-0 start to the 2023 campaign. His early walk rate (nine in 17.0 IP) is a bit concerning, but aside from that, he's already looking like the All-Star who had an 18-start stretch from mid-May through late-August with a 1.96 ERA.
He's not the surprise, though.
Springs doubling down on his breakout 2022 season by looking like an early front-runner for the AL Cy Young is the surprise.
Springs opened this season with six hitless innings against the Oakland A's, striking out 12 batters. He subsequently logged seven scoreless frames against the Tigers—pitching into the seventh inning for the first time in his MLB career.
And if you want to argue with me on Tampa Bay having the best one-two punch, can we at least agree it has the best one-two-three punch, as Drew Rasmussen has a line of 13.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 15 K through his first two starts? Rasmussen posted a 2.84 ERA in each of 2021 and 2022 and has been mowing down the competition thus far in 2023.
Nos. 4 and 5 in the rotation are currently question marks with Tyler Glasnow (oblique) opening the season on the IL and Zach Eflin (back) recently joining him there. But once those two guys get healthy, the Rays may well run away with the best record in baseball.
Luis Arraez Will Be MLB's First .400 Hitter Since the 1940s
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Here's a fun fact: I started writing this article a few days ago and already had this hot take on the list before Luis Arraez went out Tuesday night and recorded the first cycle in Marlins history.
After that incredible individual performance, Arraez's batting average climbed to .537 (22-for-41).
Yes, it's a minuscule sample size, and there are a couple of others (Matt Chapman, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bryson Stott) currently north of the fabled .400 mark. But that hot start didn't exactly come out of nowhere.
Arraez won the AL batting title last season with a .316 average, and that was merely his third-best season at the dish. He didn't have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title as a rookie in 2019, but he had a .334 average that year and proceeded to hit .321 in 2020.
Among the roughly 250 players with at least 1,000 plate appearances since the start of 2019, Arraez's .320 batting average takes the cake.
He seems to really enjoy playing at Marlins Park, too, where he got hits in 11 of his first 20 at-bats this season.
And given the aforementioned league-wide spike in batting average compared to last year, it's little surprise that Arraez is on track to become the first .370 hitter since Ichiro Suzuki did it in 2004.
In Major League / Negro League history, the last player to hit .400 in a season was Artie Wilson for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948. The last National League player to do it was Bill Terry for the New York Giants in 1930. Those two players and Ted Williams (who hit .406 for the Red Sox in 1941) figure to be mentioned quite often in Marlins broadcasts over the course of the next few months.
The Arizona Diamondbacks Will Win the NL West
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Of all the hot takes, this might be the spiciest.
In the NL West where the Dodgers and Padres are spending like money grows on trees and where the Giants are typically at least somewhat of a factor, Arizona opened the season at +4500 to win the division.
But with the exception of the insatiable Tampa Bay Rays, has any team been better through the first two weeks of the season?
MLB's schedule-makers did the Diamondbacks no favors whatsoever, forcing them to play eight of their first 10 games against the Dodgers with a two-game series in San Diego sandwiched in the middle. Throw in the subsequent three-game series at home against Milwaukee, and that's a 13-game start against which your average non-playoff team would be expected to go something like 3-10.
Lo and behold, Arizona is 8-5, alone in first place atop the division and very much looking the part of a team that belongs in the postseason picture.
In the final three home games against the Dodgers, the Diamondbacks put up 29 runs, beating Clayton Kershaw, Noah Syndergaard and highly touted rookie Michael Grove. And in the subsequent two games against the Brewers, their pitchers started out with 15 consecutive scoreless innings against a Milwaukee offense that had scored 45 runs over its previous seven games.
Arizona started out 18-15 last year before going 17 games below .500 the rest of the way. Plus, it's only a matter of time before the Dodgers wake up, so extreme skepticism is justified.
This team is different, though, with a lot of young talent—Drey Jameson, Corbin Carroll, Gabriel Moreno, Geraldo Perdomo, etc. They haven't finished within nine games of first place in the NL West since winning it in 2011, but this team is gearing up for something special.
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