Major League Baseball (MLB) has been in full swing for several weeks now, and while the sample size is still pretty small, there have been plenty of surprises thus far. Teams have overperformed or underperformed, and players have struggled or come out of nowhere to burst onto the scene. With only one month of the season complete, there is still ample opportunity for things to change, but that does not mean that surprises are not valid.
Surprises come in good and bad forms, and no team in the MLB has been free of all unexpected results. Whether good or bad, projections are not set in stone and often end up quite different from the result. Teams are feeling that right now, and are at the point where they are starting to think about ways to shake up the dynamics on their roster.
Shakeups in the MLB can come from a variety of areas. It can come from within, with simple lineup changes, minor league callups, or providing surprising players with more opportunities for playing time. It can also mean trading for a player that fills an obvious hole, or dealing from a position of depth to fill in an area of weakness. Teams have already made minor swaps this season to address such concerns.
These three surprises are some of the biggest storylines thus far in the MLB, but as previously stated, every team has some sort of unexpected outcome currently. The question becomes how long those surprises carry over through the course of the full season.
Image of the Atlanta Braves MLB Team, courtesy of Athlon Sports.
The Atlanta Braves play in one of the more challenging divisions in the MLB. Falling too far behind will make their upward climb far more difficult. The Braves were supposed to be competing at the top of their division this year, right alongside the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies, and in contention for the National League Pennant.
Thus far, the team has not even looked like an MLB playoff squad, let alone a division or league powerhouse. They are without a few key players as they recover from injury, including Ronald Acuna Jr and Spencer Strider, and they did lose some major contributors in free agency, most notably Max Fried. The team should still have the talent, though, to succeed in the interim and at least stay afloat. A 9-14 record at the bottom of the division, 7.5 games back of the Mets, is not where the team wanted to, or should, be.
The offense has let them down thus far, boasting a below-average MLB team wRC+, the 19th-best fWAR of any team for hitters, and a strikeout rate near the top of the league. The one good thing is that they have one of the highest hard contact rates in baseball, right behind another team whose offense has struggled, the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox have still had more success overall, though, which means the Braves’ hitters need to figure it out so that hard contact can turn into productive scoring.
Even worse, the Braves also look like one of the worst in MLB pitching. They ranked 29th in pitcher fWAR, only ahead of the 0 fWAR put up by the worst team in baseball, the Colorado Rockies. Not ideal. Their team ERA and FIP suggest them in the bottom 10 of all teams, but their xFIP (expected fielder-independent pitching) has them at 14, indicating some level of bad luck is in play here. A good example of this is Chris Sale, who has far outperformed his poor results. Given that they are bottom ten in hard contact allowed and bottom five in HR/FB ratio, some of it is simply bad pitching.
It appears some Braves players are going to be returning soon. That is a good thing for a team that desperately needs reinforcement. They did not do much in the offseason, so they need their regulars and stars to step up if they want to keep pace in a stacked MLB, and specifically, their league, the National League.
Image of San Francisco Giants MLB Team, courtesy of McCovey Chronicles.
On the flip side of the coin, a National League team well ahead of its projections is the San Francisco Giants. A few years ago, the Giants shocked all of MLB when they finished first in the NL West with 107 wins. They have not come even close to replicating that since, but the start of 2025 gives fans hope. The Giants sit third in a stacked NL West, but hold a 15-9 record, which is the fourth-best winning percentage in the entire league.
The Giants have been backed not just by their stars but by some breakout player talent as well. To stay at the spot they are in now, and push the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers for the division crown, they need those players to hold up for the full year. Their pitching staff is top 10 in the MLB, with an ERA, FIP, and xFIP that are all very similar, indicating the results match the metrics.
The Giants’ offense, however, may be in for some regression. Despite sitting middle of the pack in team fWAR, team slugging, and exactly average (100) in wRC+. When looking at the team’s statcast, however, the metrics tell a more concerning tale. Their hard hit % and barrel % both sit at the bottom 10 in the MLB, with hard hit % in the bottom five. Given their BABIP is right at league average, though, perhaps there is not as much luck involved as initially appears.
In either case, the Giants are scoring enough to win and pairing the scoring with a great pitching staff that was always expected to do well. If they are going to continue to score, though, players like Jung Hoo Lee, Tyler Fitzgerald, Mike Yastrzemski, and Wilmer Flores need to keep hitting. Maybe not at the torrid pace they are on currently, but certainly at a steady clip. Positive regression to the mean from Willy Adames, Luis Matos, and Patrick Bailey could counteract the slight regression from the other group.
The Giants have impressed the MLB so far, but their record appears to slightly outpace their actual performance. In a dangerous division like the NL West, there is not a moment to let off the gas. If the Giants want to remain the surprise story of the year, players will have to continue finding ways to win, even if their advanced metrics on offense do not match the top of the charts.
There are several pitchers so far this season who are struggling. Corbin Burnes has had issues in Arizona, as has Dylan Cease in San Diego and Tanner Houck in Boston. Perhaps no one, though, has looked worse for what they were brought in to be than Charlie Morton for the Baltimore Orioles. Morton is 41 years old, and talk of his retirement has been in the air for a while. After it was clear the Braves were moving on, Morton chose to take his talent to Baltimore instead of packing up his glove. That may have been a mistake.
As of Wednesday, April 23, Morton has a 0-5 record with one of the worst ERAs in the entire league, at 10.89. His FIP and xFIP metrics are lower only because it is nearly impossible to match a 10.0+ pace, but they are still well below league average. He is giving up over two home runs per nine innings, more than double his career average and nearly double his worst seasons as well. On top of all this, he is walking a staggering 6.53 batters per nine innings. These numbers lead him to a negative fWAR.
If all this sounds bad for Morton, that is because it is. The numbers get worse, though. Specifically, his pitch metrics are declining in a way that indicates he may be done. His average fastball velocity has dropped for the second year in a row, sitting at 93.7 mph, the worst showing of his career. He is giving up a hard hit percentage nearly 20 points higher than his career, at 53.5%. Morton has also doubled his career barrel rate. Finally, every single type of pitch he has thrown this year has produced negative value overall.
Interestingly enough, using Baseball Savant, the pitch movement that Charlie Morton throws is mostly still solid. When compared to last season, though, there are differences. Nearly all his pitches have higher vertical drop and lower horizontal break. Almost all of them have slightly decreased in velocity, except for the changeup, which has gained two mph on average.
Isolating the fastball, the same pitch that dropped in velocity, has some more concerning numbers. Its vertical drop has reduced dramatically. The horizontal break, meanwhile, has nearly doubled in movement versus comparable pitches from last year. That means the pitch is moving side to side, but not up and down. Given the drop in velocity, that type of movement is not going to be enough to get past MLB hitters.
Some of these problems may be addressable. In the aggregate, however, Morton’s overall statistics paint a very bleak picture. Perhaps he can bounce back, and the Orioles certainly hope so given the massive flaws in their rotation, but it seems unlikely. His struggles have been part of the reason the Orioles as a team have been such an underperformer so far, and as long as he continues to struggle, so too will the team.
As stated above, I fully recognize that the season is only a few weeks in, and there are plenty of small sample size numbers that will regress either positively or negatively to the mean. Some of the surprises that we see now will not hold up throughout a full MLB season – just ask Pirates fans the last two seasons. That said, some surprises persist, especially ones grounded, for better or worse, in supporting metrics. Time will tell whether one of these three surprises changes as the season goes on.
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