MLB's Biggest Winners and Losers from Week 1 of 2024 Season
One week of baseball is barely a drop in the bucket of a 162-game season, but it's more than enough data to declare a few early winners and losers.
After all, once October rolls around, we'll be making all sorts of sweeping judgments about players and teams as a result of fewer games than this.
Already in this small sample size, we've seen a no-hitter, a 14-run inning, a three-homer game...and a few very well-paid players who can't get on base to save their lives.
There are also several teams out to surprising starts, both of the impressive and depressing variety.
Winners and losers are presented in no particular order, aside from oscillating between W's and L's.
Winner: Ronel Blanco, Houston Astros
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Houston's first series against the Yankees was an outright disaster. The Astros were swept at home in a four-game set with a different reliever taking the L each night, including prized offseason acquisition Josh Hader, who pitched three full innings in the series for no apparent reason, since not a single save situation arose. (And then when there was a save situation Tuesday, he blew it.)
Game No. 5, on the other hand, was mighty special.
Ronel Blanco isn't even supposed to be in Houston's rotation. If literally any of Justin Verlander, Luis Garcia, Lance McCullers Jr. or José Urquidy weren't on the IL, the 30-year-old would be in the bullpen—if he was on the MLB roster at all. But in the fifth game of the season, Houston had little choice but to hand the ball to Blanco and hope he could help the club snap out of its opening funk.
He did much more than that, tossing a no-hitter in a 10-0 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.
Blanco walked the leadoff hitter on five pitches, which seemed like an ominous start. However, he retired 26 in a row after that, mostly on strikeouts or groundouts as Toronto struggled to even make solid contact, let alone get on base.
Not too shabby for a guy who had 58.1 innings of MLB experience prior to making history.
Though, for Houston, this is almost becoming too common.
The Astros have tossed four of MLB's seven most recent no-hitters, including Game 4 of the 2022 World Series against the Phillies. Cristian Javier started that one, as well as the team no-no they had against the Yankees a few months prior. And then Framber Valdez threw a no-hitter against the Guardians on August 1 of last year.
Loser: Anthony Rendon, Los Angeles Angels
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Anthony Rendon came under quite a bit of fire this offseason for comments he made about the baseball season being too long and about baseball being just a job and not a top priority for him.
Well, he might want to make hitting more of a priority, and it might take the entire 162-game season to salvage this terrible start he has gotten out to through the Angels' first five games.
They've been using him in the leadoff spot for some strange reason. You have to go back to the end of 2015 to find the last time he was put at the top of the lineup. Yet, there he was, stepping into the batter's box as the very first hitter of a 2024 regular-season game played on U.S. soil.
Striking out swinging on a pitch right down the middle.
It was quite the sign of things to come, as Rendon entered Wednesday hitless with one walk in his first 20 plate appearances.
That's an .050 OPS, which almost doesn't seem possible from an MLB hitter, let alone one getting paid $38.6 million this too-long season for a job that isn't a top priority.
At least he did make a pretty slick barehanded play at third base in Tuesday's win over the Marlins. He had two deep flyouts after that, so maybe it sparked something.
Winner: A Select Few Yankees Hitters
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As a whole, the New York Yankees haven't exactly been a murderer's row of slugging prowess.
Heading into Wednesday's game against the Diamondbacks, Aaron Judge was batting .125 with nary a home run.
Alex Verdugo (.143), Gleyber Torres (.174) and Anthony Rizzo (.182) weren't doing much better, each with zero home runs and one RBI, just like Judge.
And while Giancarlo Stanton does at least have one dinger, it was a solo shot in the ninth inning of a game the Yankees already led by five runs, and he otherwise has gone 2-for-19 with 11 strikeouts.
At least Juan Soto, Anthony Volpe and Oswaldo Cabrera have picked up the slack, going a combined 28-for-63 (.444) with four home runs and 14 RBI during that 5-1 start.
With Soto, it's no big surprise. The .517 OBP in those first 29 trips to the plate is a bit excessive, but his ability to do that is why the Yankees gave up so much to get him for what might be just one season.
With Volpe and Cabrera, however, this feels like a massive development.
Both of those young hitters were expected to be key pieces of the offensive puzzle in 2023, but they struggled mightily. Volpe was able to join the 20 HR/SB club as a rookie, but he only hit .209 with .666 OPS. Cabrera was even more disappointing, batting .211 with a .574 OPS while bouncing all over the place in a utility role.
No one particularly expects either one to keep this up and vie for the AL batting crown, but New York's quest to win the AL East becomes much more doable if those two are going to at least post an OBP north of .300 this year.
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Loser: The Other New York's Offense
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Preseason expectations for the New York Mets weren't great, with the various win total odds all putting the NL's N.Y. squad right in the vicinity of a .500 campaign.
Scoring runs wasn't supposed to be the problem, though. Rather, with Pete Alonso playing out his final year before free agency alongside the likes of Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil, the offense was supposed to be what buoyed a highly questionable starting rotation.
Thus far, however, their only "offense" was the offense McNeil took to Rhys Hoskins' hard slide in the first game of the season.
The Mets scored just eight runs during their 0-4 start, including a 10-inning shutout at the hands of the Detroit Tigers, squandering what had been a remarkable effort on the mound until that implosion in extra innings.
They scored six of their eight runs in one game yet never even led in that one after immediately falling behind 3-0 in the top of the first inning in game No. 2 against Milwaukee.
Alonso has been OK, and both Francisco Alvarez and Starling Marte have gotten out to solid starts. Each of those three has homered, as has Brett Baty. But Lindor, Nimmo and McNeil are a combined 3-for-44 with no runs, extra-base hits or RBI, which has been just plain brutal.
When our Joel Reuter put together position-by-position rankings of every team's projected starter last month, Nimmo was No. 2 among left fielders, Lindor was No. 2 among shortstops and McNeil was just outside a strong top 10 among second basemen. They'll each inevitably bounce back to some extent, but you really couldn't ask for a much worse start than that.
Winner: Arizona's 3rd-Inning Opening Day Barrage
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It was readily apparent long before Opening Day that this was going to be another rough year for the Colorado Rockies. They suffered 103 losses and finished 20 games out of fourth place in the NL West last year, and, if anything, that gap between Colorado and the rest of the division only grew wider during the offseason.
However, it's a shame they couldn't even make it through three innings before showing everyone how unserious they were about contending in 2024.
Arizona led 2-1 when Geraldo Perdomo stepped to the plate as the first batter in the bottom half of the third inning. He got a single, as did Ketel Marte after him. And after Corbin Carroll walked to load the bases, four more Diamondbacks got hits before the first out of the inning was mercifully recorded. Arizona made it almost all the way back through the lineup before recording another out on a sacrifice fly.
When Zac Gallen finally returned to the mound some 34 minutes later, his 2-1 lead had turned into a massive 16-1 cushion.
All nine Snakes came to the plate twice during that 14-run bonanza. Perdomo, Marte, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Christian Walker and Gabriel Moreno each recorded two hits during the station-to-station type of inning you rarely even see in a slow-pitch softball game.
The only Diamondback who didn't record at least one hit in the inning was Carroll, who walked twice and scored twice.
Per Sarah Langs, Arizona's 14-run third inning was tied for the fourth-most runs in an inning since 1900, the most since the Texas Rangers put up a 16-spot on April 19, 1996, and the most in an inning on Opening Day.
Loser: Tanner Scott, Miami Marlins
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Last year, Tanner Scott was—at least as far as Baseball Reference was concerned—the most valuable reliever in all of baseball. He won nine games and saved 12 others, logging 78.0 innings with a 2.31 ERA and a 0.99 WHIP.
He was almost single-handedly the reason Miami had such a preposterously good record in one-run games, and why the Marlins so drastically exceeded their Pythagorean record. With former closer AJ Puk transitioning into the starting rotation, Scott was the obvious choice for the full-time ninth-inning gig.
Thus far, however, it has been a disaster, and not even in the ninth inning.
Scott was the first pitcher of the season to be saddled with multiple losses, earning those L's on back-to-back days.
He entered in the top of the 10th inning against the Pirates on Sunday, immediately committed an error on a sac bunt and allowed two unearned runs to score in taking that loss. The following day, he came on in the eighth inning of a tie game against the Angels and promptly walked the first three batters he faced. He somehow only allowed one run out of that debacle, but it was enough for another loss.
All told, Scott has walked six batters in his first 3.0 innings, compared to 24 freebies issued all of last season. Prior to 2023, walks had been a major issue for Scott. Among the 384 pitchers who logged at least 200 innings from 2017 to 2022, his 5.84 BB/9 was the worst in the majors.
It was only because he got his lack of control under control that he was able to have so much success last year. But that appears to be gone, as he also walked seven hitters in 3.2 innings in spring training.
The only hit he has allowed was an infield single, but not exactly the start he or the 0-6 Marlins had in mind.
Winner: Bryce Harper's Funk-Snapping Tuesday
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When I was cobbling together the list of potential candidates for this list Tuesday afternoon, Bryce Harper was firmly in the "would be a loser with another dud today" department.
At that point, he was 0-for-11 with two walks and five strikeouts, and he didn't even play in the lone game the Phillies won.
But on a night against the Cincinnati Reds that very much disproved the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia misnomer, Harper hit not one, not two, but three round-trippers through a bunch of nasty, chilly mist.
The first one was a moonshot to left of center. At an estimated distance of 420 feet, it was his longest opposite-field home run since August 2021.
It was one heck of a loud way to get that first hit of the season.
The second and third dingers were even more impressive, though.
No. 2 was an absolute laser that might have still been gaining altitude when it cleared the wall in right field. It was listed at 367 feet, but the seat that ball hit might be permanently damaged.
No. 3 was a grand slam of a no-doubter off the bat, sailing even further than the first one.
In the blink of an eye, Harper went from "hitless for the season" to "tied for the MLB lead in home runs among players who didn't start their season early in South Korea."
It was the second three-homer game of Harper's career, the previous coming on May 6 of his first MVP season back in 2015. And after hitting just three home runs in his first 58 games of last season, things are already looking up for 2024.
Loser: The Vast Majority of Pitchers Facing Mookie Betts
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Mookie Betts had already gotten out to a blisteringly hot start in the Seoul Series, going 6-for-9 with a home run and seven RBI in those two games against the Padres in South Korea.
That 11ish-hour flight back to Los Angeles didn't do much of anything to slow him down, either.
In his first official at-bat back in America, Betts went yard against Miles Mikolas.
The following day, he hit a leadoff homer off Zack Thompson.
He proceeded to make it three days in a row with a leisurely trot around the bases, hitting a ninth-inning home run Saturday off Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley.
And after going two whole days in a home run slump, he took Logan Webb deep in the third inning Tuesday night for his fifth round-tripper of the season.
There were also quite a few non-homer hits along the way, as Betts entered Wednesday batting .500 for the year. However, it's pretty wild that even if you excluded those two games in Seoul, he'd still be leading the majors in home runs.
Last year saw a career high for Betts in the homer department, as he hit 39 to eclipse the personal best of 35 that he set the previous year. But with five in eight games, he's on pace for 101.
Obviously, that's not going to happen, but eclipsing 40 for yet another career high suddenly seems not only feasible but almost inevitable.
Winner: Pittsburgh Pirates
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If you have zero interest in putting any stock in a hot start by the Pittsburgh Pirates, that's understandable. After all, on the morning of May 1 last season, they had the second-best record in baseball at 20-9, only to go 56-77 the rest of the way, ensuring for an eighth consecutive year that they would not even remotely sniff the postseason picture.
Moreover, they opened this season against Miami and Washington in games that, technically, someone had to win.
All the same, the Pirates entered Wednesday at a perfect 5-0, scoring at least six runs in each of those five road victories.
It's the first time they've started 5-0 since 1983.
The dynamic duo of Bryan Reynolds and Ke'Bryan Hayes has been stellar, and having Oneil Cruz back in the mix after he missed nearly all of last season with a broken leg has been a major plus.
But they've already been getting contributions from all over the place—with the strange exception of Jack Suwinski, who led the team in both home runs (26) and OPS (.793) in 2023. Perhaps by the time Connor Joe and Michael A. Taylor cool off, Suwinski and Andrew McCutchen will be ready to pick up the slack a bit.
All winter, we talked about how wide open the NL Central seems to be this season. Most did expect the Pirates to finish in last place, but not by some laughable margin. Their consensus win total was right around 75 while co-favorites Chicago and St. Louis landed in the vicinity of 84.5.
So, why not Pittsburgh, keeping in mind that 2023 No. 1 overall pick Paul Skenes could be coming sooner rather than later?
The Pirates have improved their winning percentage in each of the past three years, and maybe this is where they finally break through.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics are current through the start of play Wednesday.
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