April has come and gone and the MLB season is in full swing. Now that there have been enough games played to show some real trends it's a good time to reflect on what we've seen so far. There have been some surprises, some disappointments, and some just as we expected. Not going to go team by team here, just going to point out my thoughts so far.
Biggest surprises-Have to go with the Red Sox and Rockies here. The Red Sox currently have the best record in baseball at 19-8 and the Rockies are 3rd best at 17-10. I said in my MLB preview that I thought the Sox would make the playoffs. I did not however expect them to look as good as they have. Their starting pitching has been much better than anyone anticipated, thank you very much John Farrell, and they have the best run differential in MLB right now at +47. If things continue the way April went, we could see Boston making a serious title run.
The Rockies have been equally surprising, if not more so. No one I saw had them anywhere above about 75 wins this year before the season began. That hasn't stopped them though. They've scored the second most runs out of any team and their team ERA is 10th in MLB. If they can stay healthy they could very easily be this year's 2012 Oakland A's. They're going to have a tough time with this as the Giants are clearly still very good and the Dodgers should pick things up if/when they get healthy. For now though, the Rockies are turning a lot of heads and rightly so.
And as much as I hate them, the Yankees deserved to be mentioned. They're way better than I think anyone anticipated. Kind of scary to think about the players they're going to get back later this season.
Biggest Disappointments-Blue Jays, Dodgers, and Angels. All three of these teams made big offseason acquisitions and all three haven't done squat with them. Granted the Dodgers are dealing with a ridiculous amount of injuries but they should be scoring more runs. They're second to last in batting average, runs, and 3rd worst in slugging percentage in MLB. That simply isn't going to win ball games. Add in the injuries to Greinke and Billingsley and this season could seriously be slipping away from them.
The Angels and their fans have to be sick of this. Their owner breaks the bank and signs guys to massive contracts only to have them fall flat on their faces in April. Josh Hamilton is so lost at the plate he couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat right now. They've only got 2 regular starters hitting over .300 right now and their team ERA is 4.91 which is next to last in MLB. They're simply not a good team right now. The scariest thing for Angels fans is there is no Mike Trout waiting in the wings to come rescue them this year. He's already there and he's only hitting .270 right now. Will he pick it up? Absolutely. But there is no way he's going to put up numbers like he did last year. And if he does, they should just enshrine him in Cooperstown right now. All of this and I didn't even mention their bullpen. Which is terrible. Their save percentage right now is 38%, 2nd worst in all of baseball.
Toronto has to be the biggest disappointment of all. Nearly everyone I saw picked them to win the AL East with relative ease. I'm not really sure why, the guys they got didn't do ANYTHING last year except for Dickey. But Dickey isn't a typical pitcher. It's not like they got a guy like Kershaw or Verlander. They got a guy who had an ERA lower than 4.62 only once before last year. He throws a completely unpredictable pitch and is therefore a completely unpredictable pitcher. The amount of pressure heaped on the Blue Jays doomed them from the time Spring Training started.
So what does this all mean? Nothing. It's only May, we still have a TON of games to play. But if these trends continue there are going to be a lot of analysts and experts in line for a nice crow dinner. Not to mention managers and GMs on the hot seat. You have to think Scioscia is worried about his job and Mattingly can't be too comfortable right now either. It's a long season, can't wait to see how the rest of it plays out.
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