MLB’s biggest surprises from the season’s first month

Jung Hoo Lee, Tyler Mahle highlight baseball’s biggest surprises.

There’s nothing like the start of a new baseball season. The soothing, familiar sounds of the crack of the bat and a fastball burying itself in a catcher’s mitt. The contagious optimism found in all 30 clubhouses, from the defending champions to the last-place club from 2024 that thinks it can surprise some people. Oh yes, and the rampant lying.

Wait, what?

April baseball always offers some surprises, both positive and negative. It’s just a matter of determining which statistics are telling you the truth about what a player is now—and which are not. Regrettably, Chris “Big Red” Shelton could not maintain an 1.186 OPS throughout 2006 despite his scorching first month for those Tigers. No, David Ortiz was not actually at the dawn of a decline at age-34 in 2009 with a dismal start. But yes, when Ronald Acuña Jr. began 2023 at a torrid pace both on offense and on the bases, it was a real signal of his upcoming MVP 40/70 campaign.

April 2025 has featured its own share of surprises. Will these actually hold up for the rest of the season? We’ll find out soon enough, but no matter what, they’ve been fascinating to see.

Good: Jung Hoo Lee

In December 2023, the Giants made a deal with one of the best talents to make the transition from the KBO to MLB, signing outfielder Jung Hoo Lee to a six-year, $113 million deal. A Rookie of the Year in Korea’s top league at just 18 in 2017, Lee is the son of a legendary KBO player and proved that he was a terrific player on his own by winning the MVP in 2022 and batting .340/.407/.491 with 244 doubles, 43 triples, and 65 homers across seven seasons before coming stateside.

2024 was a tough debut for Lee. After a thrilling first few games against the division rival Padres and Dodgers, he went through an adjustment period against MLB pitching, and he hit just .265/.312/.325 from April 5th until May 12th. He never got a chance to rebound, as on May 12th, he tore up his shoulder trying to make a great catch in Cincinnati. Lee needed surgery to repair a torn labrum, and just like that, his rookie year was over already. The Giants marched to a listless 80-82 season and the front office underwent an overhaul following three years of frustration. Future Hall of Fame catcher Buster Posey is now running baseball operations.

The Giants as a whole would fit in well as one of the biggest early surprises of 2025 (slow start from big free agent signing Willy Adames be damned) as few expected them to be neck-and-neck with the juggernaut archrival Dodgers as the first month came to a close. But Lee has been a true standout.

For Lee’s diehard fans among the brilliantly-named Hoo Lee Gans and Jung Hoo Crew, perhaps this isn’t a true shock. Few, however, would have expected a .321/.379/.536 triple slash, a 162 OPS+, and a National League-best 11 doubles thus far. He’s been a terrific center fielder, he’s had a multi-homer game at Yankee Stadium, and he’s pulverized the ball with a 94th-percentile squared-up rate.

Although this must be Lee’s ceiling, there’s reason to hope that he can keep this up. We need more stars with nicknames like “Grandson of the Wind” anyway.

Bad: The Baltimore Orioles

The 2022-23 seasons marked the incredible resurrection of the Orioles. After a franchise-record 115 losses in 2018, they cleaned house, hired Houston’s Mike Elias to run their baseball operations, and embarked on a rebuild. It got ugly at times and they even lost 110 as recently as 2021. But the very next year, they zoomed to a 31-win improvement and weren’t eliminated until the final weekend. Then in 2023, the youth movement paid off as they captured their first AL East crown in nearly a decade with a 101-61 season. They were disappointed to be swept by the eventual World Series champion Rangers in the ALDS, but the foundation had been laid for a Charm City baseball renaissance.

This past year though, the Orioles fell to 91 wins and a Wild Card berth that went nowhere in a punchless two-and-out at the hands of the Royals. Nonetheless, with a core of AL MVP candidate Gunnar Henderson, switch-hitting All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman, and reliable contributors like Cedric Mullins, Ryan Mountcastle, and Jordan Westburg (plus more young talent on the way), the 2025 O’s should be in the mix to take back the AL East crown from the Yankees.

Instead, they’ve been dreadful and sit in the AL East cellar.

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The already-spotty pitching lost ace Corbin Burnes to the Diamondbacks, and Elias failed to adequately replace him. Although incoming NPB righty Tomoyuki Sugano has been decent enough, fellow signee Charlie Morton has looked his age at 41 with a 9.45 ERA in 26.2 innings, leading the majors with 28 earned runs allowed and 21 walks. No one in the AL has given up more hits than Dean Kremer (40). Veteran insurance policy Kyle Gibson was mollywhopped by the Yankees in his 2025 debut. Only four MLB teams have a staff ERA over 5.00, and a should-be contender like Baltimore has no business being in the same company as the Rockies, Marlins, and Nationals. Opening Day starter Zach Eflin is on the IL and hopeful ace Grayson Rodriguez recently suffered a setback. The bullpen is generally doing its job, but that only matters so much when your rotation isn’t keeping you in ballgames.

Ideally, a rebound should arrive, if not only because the offense should not remain as middling as it currently stands. Mullins and Ryan O’Hearn have raked, but Henderson and Rutschman both have a sub-.700 OPS. Mountcastle entered 2025 with a 114 OPS+ across his five-year career from 2020-24; his OPS+ currently sits at 51. Even with Westburg, outfield addition Tyler O’Neill, and AL Rookie of the Year runner-up Colton Cowser all on the IL, merely modest steps up from Henderson, Rutschman, and Mountcastle will have them in a better place. Baltimore just has to make sure that it doesn’t bury itself early.

Good: Mystery Mid-Rotation Men

Pop quiz: If you were asked to name the best starting pitchers on the Mets, Rangers, and Phillies, it would be safe to say Kodai Senga, Jacob deGrom, and Zack Wheeler, respectively. Maybe you’d zag a little on one of those (Nathan Eovaldi has more recent success than deGrom, for one), but those are perfectly solid picks. They’re probably still technically correct since April only means so much.

That being said, while the Mets, Rangers, and Phillies all have representatives on the list of qualified ERA leaders, check out the actual identities:

1. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 1.06 ERA (Dodgers)
2. Tyler Mahle, 1.14 ERA (Rangers)
3. Max Fried, 1.19 ERA (Yankees)
4. Hunter Brown, 1.22 ERA (Astros)
5. Jesús Luzardo, 1.73 ERA (Phillies)
6. Tylor Megill, 1.74 ERA (Mets)

Naturally. Now finally healthy after a long Tommy John surgery recovery, Mahle is helping keep the Rangers’ rotation in the mix with deGrom somewhat underachieving. Luzardo was acquired from Miami and always had talent to put it all together on the A’s and Marlins; it just hadn’t quite happened, and he’s now blossoming with the Philly pressure higher on the likes of Wheeler, Aaron Nola, and Cristopher Sánchez. And while Megill isn’t new to the Mets, he’s been overlooked for a couple years now by his flashier rotationmates.

It’s easy to find reasons to poke holes in these pitchers’ numbers, but don’t worry; a rival will be happy to do so. In the meantime, it’s just fun to see these guys thrive.

Bad: Elite relievers

There’s an understanding in baseball that relievers are often fungible. Their success is hard to predict, so there’s often quite a bit of variance in year-to-year performance. Nonetheless, when true cream-of-the-crop bullpen arms are still in their primes, it’s reasonable to have some degree of confidence.

Sure enough, Emmanuel Clase and Devin Williams both would have been popular picks for the title of “MLB’s Best Reliever.” Both have won two Reliever of the Year awards this decade, and despite brutal postseasons in 2024, both entered 2025 with very high hopes. And yet both Clase and Williams have already allowed more runs than they did in the entirety of 2024.

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The good news for Clase is that despite his ugly start and barking shoulder, Cleveland has managed to win the game in all but one of his appearances (and in the exception, Clase threw a scoreless inning anyway). Although he might not dominate to the same degree as in his 0.61 ERA 2024, he should get back on track.

As for Williams? Yeesh, has his first month as Yankees closer been rough. He’s already been at least temporarily demoted from the role. His command has been completely absent, and the fastball that normally helps enable the smashing success of his famous “Airbender” changeup has been hammered. Williams came dangerously close to an Opening Day blown save, and despite that escape, he blew a four-run lead in Tampa on the 19th before a zero-out effort against the Blue Jays on the 25th lost the game as boos rained down on Yankee Stadium. This restoration is going to take a little time.

In the eye of the beholder: The Colorado Rockies

Look, on the one hand, no one expected the Rockies to be anywhere close to good. They’re in probably the toughest division in baseball, their organization lacks any sense of direction, their highest-paid player might never play baseball again, they’ve already fired a hitting coach, their rotation is a tire fire, and the on-field product is a downright mess. They’ve lost 100 games in consecutive years and the preseason odds weren’t optimistic about 2025, either. It was always going to be bad and easy to ignore.

But this bad?

The most recent team to do that was the 2003 Tigers, who lost 119 games and nearly broke the modern record. The doomed 2024 White Sox might have started 3-22 but after 29 games, they were 6-23. The infamous 1962 Mets were a comparatively dominant 10-19.

Riding an eight-game skid into the end of April, the only question better than “Why is Bud Black still managing the Rockies?” at this point is “Why does Bud Black even want to still manage the Rockies?” Even acknowledging that the Ghost of Casey Stengel couldn’t make these guys any good, the daily beatings can’t exactly be enjoyable for ol’ Buddy, either.

Honorable Mentions

Good: Eugenio Suárez’s four-homer game; Spencer Torkelson’s post-hype breakout; Aaron Judge’s 1941 Ted Williams impression; MacKenzie Gore strikes out the world; Out-of-nowhere Yanks Ben Rice and Trent Grisham combining for 16 bombs; Tyler Soderstrom?? Tyler Soderstrom!!; Jorge Polanco can’t stop homering; the high-flying Cubs offense

Bad: The aforementioned Willy Adames; Joc Pederson’s 0-for-41 skid; Mookie Betts and Aaron Nola are getting concerning; Blake Snell’s no-longer-healthy shoulder; José Miranda’s doubly embarrassing month; the popular preseason NL East pick Braves’ 5-13 start (only avoiding a feature due to their recent hot streak); the chaotic Cubs bullpen