Major league baseball is finally back, and after an intense World Baseball Classic, we can finally relax and watch some good old regular season baseball. Sure, we’ve only played about five out of the 162 games, but it’s never too early to start rating players’ performances. That being said, there have been some players who have immediately shown crazy amounts of talent, and some who have surprisingly been a little slow.
Winner: Munetaka Murakami
The 26 year-old Japanese slugger signed his first deal with the MLB this offseason with the Chicago White Sox. Before this contract, he was a star third baseman for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in Nippon Professional Baseball. After just his first three games in the MLB with the White Sox, he hit one home run in all three games against the Milwaukee Brewers. While the White Sox still ended up losing pretty badly in all three games against Milwaukee, we were able to see great potential for a new powerhouse player on a struggling White Sox team.
Loser: Paul Skenes
Sure, he’s only played one game so far, but holy cow that game was just terrible. The reigning Cy Young Award winner for the Pittsburgh Pirates pitched 0.2 innings, gave up four hits, walked two batters, and had five earned runs. I’ll repeat that: five runs in not even a full inning. And, it was all in the first. I will admit that at least two of the earned runs were Pirate’s center fielder O’Neil Cruz’s fault, as he let two routine fly balls right past him, putting people on base. As we sit right now, Skenes has a 67.50 earned run average (ERA), which is way higher than his last years’, with an impressive 1.97 ERA. Obviously the 67.50 ERA isn’t going to last, and obviously one bad first game doesn’t mean he’s going to have a bad year. Hopefully his team defensively won’t disappoint him any more this year though.
Winner: Brandon Lowe
Lowe was traded from the Tampa Bay Rays to the Pittsburgh Pirates in a three-way deal, and so far he has shown great signs even with his older age. On his first at-bat in his Pirates debut (yes, the one where Skenes went 0.2 innings), Lowe hit a solo home run off of Freddy Peralta, and then proceeded to hit another home run later that game. Two days later, he hit another home run, and was 2/3 at the plate. Lowe has been hitting the ball incredibly well in these first couple of games, and I’m excited to see if he can continue through the rest of the season.
Loser: Cal Raleigh
Last season, Seattle Mariners’s catcher Cal Raleigh had probably the best season a catcher has ever had in the MLB. While only batting .247, he managed to hit a whopping 60 home runs, which placed him first in the league in that category, beating out names such as Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. He clocked 125 RBIs (runs batted in), putting him third in that category, tied an MLB record on multi-home run games with 11, and won the American League Silver Slugger Award. Not to mention he was one of the better defensive catchers, making him one of the best players of the 2025 season. The 2026 season though, is probably not going how he’d like. In his first couple of games, he’s made 17 plate appearances, and has only gotten three hits out of those. Plus, he’s only managed to take three walks, and according to ESPN, all of his 11 other at-bats have been strikeouts. He has no home runs so far and has a batting average of .176, which is pretty bad. His World Baseball Classic showing wasn’t great either, having nine plate appearances, zero hits, and six strikeouts. While I don’t think he’s going to have the season he did last year, I’m sure he will get back into the swing of things and start producing a little more.
Winner: Los Angeles Dodgers
I hate to say it, but the Dodgers are looking like a World Series contending team… again. As sick as I am of them continuing to spend money and win, I have to admit they do it well. Along with Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobo Yamamoto, and all of the other superstar players on that team, they were able to pick up another superstar in Kyle Tucker. Tucker was a free agent after a somewhat successful 2025 season on the Chicago Cubs, where he slashed .266/.286/.263. So far, all of their players have been decently consistent, which shows from their 4-1 win-loss ratio. The Dodgers have some of the most talented players in the league, and you could argue that some are the best of all time. They’re going to be a force to be reckoned with in the coming season, and as much as I hate to say it, I think there is a good chance we will see them in the World Series again.
Loser: Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox were expected to be one of the best teams coming out of the offseason, being ranked 7th overall in the pre-opening day MLB power rankings. They made quite a bit of good looking moves over the offseason, such as picking up starting pitchers Sonny Gray and Ranger Suarez, and infielders Willson Contreras and Caleb Durbin. The additions of Gray and Suarez were huge at the time, and the Red Sox’s pitching was seen to be the best in the league, with Gray and Suarez behind Garrett Crochet, who is ranked in the top five for pitching overall. Plus, with the 21-year old Roman Anthony expected to have a breakout year, the Red Sox were looking golden. But that hasn’t really shown so far. The Sox have played five games and they’ve only won one of them. Nobody has really shown any production, and they’ve been really bad with runners in scoring position. Contreras has been to the plate 17 times, and only had two hits, while Durbin is still waiting to pick up his first hit of the season. And besides Crochet (who got them their only win), their pitching has been rough. On his first start, Gray pitched four innings and gave up six hits and four runs, and on Suarez’s first start he showed very similar stats. Hopefully they are just a little rusty from the offseason and the team starts producing soon, but as of now, they aren’t doing too sharp.
Like I’ve said many times before, the season has just started and there are still many games to go in the 162 game season, and it’ll be exciting to see which teams and players can succeed this year.
