It’s nearly three weeks into the season and already MLB has been full of excitement and surprises. The Defending World Series Champions are off to a slow start. The National League Cy Young Award winner and workhorse for the Los Angeles Dodgers started one game before hitting the disabled list. Most surprising of all, though, the Houston Astros are not the worst team in baseball right now. There is one thing you can always say about sports, expect the unexpected, but a few of the things that have gone on early in the season that no one could have predicted.
The Milwaukee Brewers Are the Best Team in Baseball
It was going to be no surprise that the Brew Crew would be better this season. Ryan Braun is coming off of a season where he struggled with injuries through most of the first half and then lost the entire second half to suspension.
Having him back full time was obviously going to be a boost to the offense that already has up-and-coming stars and last year’s breakout star Carlos Gomez. Yovani Gallardo was not the same pitcher for the Brewers in 2013, and some blamed pitching in the World Baseball Classic for that, but 2014 has been a different story so far.
With him back in form and the addition of Matt Garza to go along with the rising talent of Marco Estrada and Wily Peralta it was clear that this team was going to pitch better. Still, even with a much improved rotation and the return of Braun this team wasn’t expected to make this much of a splash. They are in the NL Central, the division that sent three teams to the playoffs last season and has the defending National League Champions.
Yet here they are, the team with the best record in the league, and they don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. The Cincinatti Reds look like they’re going to take a step back and the Brewers are ready to be the team who jumps in and takes their playoff spot.
Only One Team in the AL East is Over .500
As of Thursday, April 17 the AL East, the division that has long been considered the best in baseball, only has one team that is over .500. What is even more telling about this is that two of those four teams are below .500, and those two three were playoff teams last year, and one of those two are the defending World Series Champions.
Now, this is no time to panic because it’s only 16 games into the season, but it is surprising that even this early on in the season that these teams are struggling. The defending champion Boston Red Sox lost some key players in the offseason, but it was believed that the additions they made evened out with the losses and they would be ready to make another run.
The Tampa Bay Rays are better than this. Their pitching staff is dropping left and right as they’ve lost ace Matt Moore for the year to Tommy-John surgery and one of the most reliable pitchers on the staff, Alex Cobb, is also on the disabled list. This team always seems to overcome injuries like they did last year when David Price was on the disabled list so it’s shocking to see them start so slow.
The Orioles, they may be the most telling team of all. They have surprised over the last two seasons making the wild card game and pushing for the playoffs until late into the year in 2013. They seemed to do that nearly all on team chemistry, and now after an offseason of spending the team had high expectations, but hasn’t seemed to mesh. I believe eventually the division will turn around as the season wears on, but it is still hard to believe that a division with this much talent is the only division with teams at of below .500 at any point in the season.
Charlie Blackmon
If you had no idea who he was before the season started, you’re not alone. Blackmon, or @Chuck_Nazty to his twitter peeps, only played in 82 games last season but managed to rack up an impressive .309 batting average. The rest of his statistics don’t really jump off of the page as he only knocked in 22 runs while scoring 35, but this season he has started off hotter than a firecracker on the Fourth of July.
He is batting .411, good for second in the league, and in only 17 games has nine runs scored and batted in to go along with that high batting average. Other than his average he’s not on pace to be a superstar this season, but if he can keep that average up near league leading levels and maintain the pace of 85 runs and runs batted in that he is on now he would be one of the better outfielders in the game.
Now, he does play in the altitude at Coors Field that could be causing his numbers to be slightly skewed, but he has earned himself a starting spot for the Rockies so he will continue to play his games there, and no matter what the reason is for his strong start, you will not be forgetting his name anytime soon.
Kyle Gibson
Another one of those guys who you may not have heard of but will be hearing a lot about this season. It is still early but Gibson reminds me of Patrick Corbin of last season in the way he is flying out of the gates. This is only his second year in the majors and his first season statistically didn’t give any indication that he would be this good this this early in the 2014 season. In his first three starts he is 3-0 with only two earned runs for an ERA of only .93 making him the best pitcher on a staff comprised of large contracts from this offseason.
He is currently outshining the likes of Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes who got the big money this offseason as well as the two other guys ahead of him in the rotation, Mike Pelfrey and Kevin Correia. Now, looking at his numbers his nine walks in only three games will eventually come back to bite him if he keeps up that pace, but if he can bring that down he will be the all-star caliber pitcher that the Twins haven’t had since before Francisco Liriano got injured.
The Arizona Diamondbacks Are the Worst Team MLB
Not the Houston Astros or the Chicago Cubs, the Diamondbacks are the worst team in the league. Some people are allowing excuses and blaming it on the travel to Australia for the first two games of the season, but that is just an excuse because the Los Angeles Dodgers made the same trip and are tied for first with the ace of their staff on the disabled list. This team is just plain and simple, not very good.
The ace of their staff, like the Dodgers, is also on the disabled list, and other than Wade Miley who is a decent young starter, the entire pitching staff consists of starters who are on the downslide of their careers. With a pitching staff like that it is no wonder why they have the worst ERA in the league of 6.02, 1.02 higher than the next closest team. The offense hasn’t been horrible on the other side of the ball, but Paul Goldschmidt and Mark Trumbo are the only real threats to knock in a run and have 45 percent of the runs driven in so far, and even then Trumbo has driven in nearly 30 percent of the runs himself.
Baseball is a team sport, and right now the Arizona Diamondbacks do not look like a team. They look like two of the best players in baseball on offense thrown together with a bunch of players past their prime or not playing to their full potential. It’s still early in the season, but if this doesn’t turn around soon both the GM and Manager could be looking for new jobs and Arizona fans could be in for a long season.