The “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” Starts

Sure, you can’t win a baseball season in March, April, and May.

But you can surely lose it.

And for some teams that have weathered the storm in adversity, they’ll only be getting better as the year goes on.

The beginning of the MLB season is a matter of one thing: staying in the fight and getting to your final form when it counts.

Several teams have stood out to start the year in the wake of adversity, and therefore, we haven’t seen anything yet of their potential.

There are the “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” teams that could potentially get even more help along the way.

Baltimore Orioles

The Orioles went from the Baby Birds with big playoff aspirations to a sweep and then a falling-out last season, in which Brandon Hyde got the boot. The sheer number of youth makes them almost impossible to predict from a ceiling-and-floor standpoint.

It’s been a less-than stellar start for the O’s to start the year below .500, but they’re floundering back and forth just as every other American League team seemingly is. Gunnar Henderson looks back in his true MVP-caliber form that he was the year prior to starting last year with an injury, where he just never got right, and the smoothest left-handed swing in baseball is seemingly hitting a homer every night. It’s somehow been Jeremiah Jackson who’s been the young star of the team thus far, an addition they didn’t have when all things were clicking, and the power will come soon enough for Taylor Ward and Pete Alonso.

Some names on the IL who will return include Adley, who was clicking again before needing to be added to start the year, and Jackson Holliday, Tyler O’Neill, and Jordan Westburg, who will eventually make their long-awaited returns. The Birds and the bats will be back, and the AL East is still looking up for grabs.

Cincinnati Reds

The Cincinnati Reds? The Reds that have the LEAST amount of hits, the worst batting average and slugging percentage, and extra base hits?

The Reds that are also somehow still in FIRST PLACE in the loaded NL Central?

That’s how good the pitching staff of Cincinnati has been. Even in the absence of Hunter Greene, they’ve gotten multiple quality starts from 3 out of 5 in the rotation to start the year as well. It’s come largely from Rhett Lowder and Chase Burns dominating as two rookies who were on the fringe of making the rotation to start the season and leading their staff in ERA. When Greene gets back in July, they’re going to push for the filthiest staff top-to-bottom after having already tasted the postseason last year.

As for the hitting, it’s nicknamed Great American Smallpark for a reason: the ball is eventually going to fly. This was precisely the story last year, where we wanted at least one Red to hit over 25 homers, and both Sal Stewart and Elly De La Cruz have already provided some pop this year. Eugenio Suarez was the big signing because he LOVED Cincy, and he’ll get more comfortable as someone who hit over 50 in a much more difficult park last season. Ke’Bryan Hayes has also statistically been the unluckiest hitter in baseball thus far.

The Reds are 8-1 when they just score 5 runs. Any kind of run support for this staff, and they’re a juggernaut going forward.

St, Louis Cardinals

How about the other end of the NL Central spectrum: the pleasant surprise is the plucky Cardinals! Jordan Walker is having a renaissance, as the man with all the power in the world is finally figuring out how to play baseball in more than one way. Truly, the Cardinals have been about as average as it gets offensively aside from hitting a ton of bombs out of Busch, rarely if ever striking out to get some sacrifice hits, and walking to get on base in a season that was supposed to be a tank job year where they plug in the young guys and see what they’ve got.

The face of the franchise was supposed to be Masyn Winn, and he’s been below average to start the season. JJ Wetherholt has been as advertised, Victor Scott’s speed has been the lightning to Walker’s thunder, and the youth on this roster is just figuring out their potential offensively, and plays with a chip on their shoulder if we’re going by analytics that go beyond just stats. 

The pitching has been… as expected: near the bottom, and that’s likely going to be the case when Dustin May is your highest-paid player on the roster. But let’s see what the offense has and if they’re willing to be additive at the deadline, given that they’ve consistently put up offensive numbers with no expectations. Chaimbloom now has the ball in his court!

New York Yankees

The Yanks and the 27-rings culture, as well as behemoth Aaron Judge, are always going to be playing in a different league of expectations. A 13-9 start is going to make any Bronx zoo hooligan that does all of the chants antsy with lofty criticisms blaming Aaron Boone and the front office for not being able to capitalize as a juggernaut in Judge’s window, as well as knowing that Giancarlo Stanton claimed he couldn’t open a bag of chips, he’s that fragile before this season.

Despite the slow start and only two sweeps to start the year, it’s been Ben Rice! The short porch king is the powerful monster next to Judge! Bringing back Bellinger was merely checking off the box rather than being additive this offseason, but HE has been additive in that his power hasn’t broken out yet, and he’s been spraying the ball over the field rather than solely pulling it to right. McMahon has been deemed the annual “Yankee that Yankees players are going to crucify in the postgame,” but the Yanks are stealing bases and getting quality production surrounding Judge this time that will only get better if Grisham improves in luck as well.

Think about the pitching staff as well: Rodon will be added next month, Gerrit Cole may have one last ride in him when he comes back as well, and a full season of Schlittler, who will only get more command with age and looks like a Cy Young candidate next to Max Fried, is going to bolster a rotation that is already top-5.

With the rest of the AL East floundering, the milquetoast first-place start from an optics perspective is nothing to be concerned about.

Atlanta Braves

Remember when the powerhouse Braves locked up their World Series core and we thought they’d be the model organization for years, with all these stars playing for pennies? It’s been nothing but bad luck since then. Nothing but injuries that have crippled their rotation and stars in the lineup, where everyone peaks at the wrong time, gets suspended for PEDs twice (looking at you, Profar), or just has weird injury luck throughout the lineup as a whole. Even the year that they won the World Series, it was when Ronald Acuna Jr. was out, and the additions of Jorge Soler and Joc Pederson and his pearls were uniting the entirety of the South.

The Braves started 0-7 last year in their “this is the year we’re back” campaign, and we all fell for it. The expectation heading into this season was that they just got hit with the same bad luck again, with Ha-Seong Kim injuring himself on the ice, Spencer Strider, Spencer Schwellenbach, AJ Smith-Shawver, and Hurston Waldrep on the IL, and Sean Murphy and Joey Wentz out of the lineup. After the core lost Max Fried and Charlie Morton in their rotation, just when someone would look like a missing puzzle piece, something would go awry.

This year’s Braves do not care about bad luck.

Somehow, they’re looking like an absolute powerhouse in the NL thanks to the unsung heroes, similarly to Soler-Pederson additions rather than the stars. It’s been rookie catcher Drake Baldwin raking. It’s been Mauricio Dubon playing all over the field as the utility man rather than just being the guy paid to play defense and hit singles. Martin Perez at a discount and Bryce Elder suddenly are reliable arms with Chris Sale, and then they turn it over to Iglesias to close out the best ERA in baseball. Ozzie Albies is no longer a net negative at the plate.

And the thing about it is that the stars haven’t taken off yet. Acuna is clearly working his way back from injury, but is at the minimum on the field, and Austin Riley has finally gotten his swagger back with a 4-game hit streak and three homers. 

This Braves team looks pretty magical. Was it removing Marcell Ozuna? That remains to be seen. But they’re looking like the team we projected to throw punches at the Dodgers and will only get healthier (Knock on wood. You never know).