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USATSI

As difficult as it may be to believe, Major League Baseball's regular season is already a month old. It feels like Opening Day was just yesterday, but it wasn't. Rather, sample sizes are accumulating and narratives are sprouting. Before you know it, the rumor mill will be in full operation heading into the trade season.

Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves: there's still a lot of baseball to be played, and to be enjoyed, before now and then. With that in mind, we wanted to honor the season's first month by highlighting some of our most notable takeaways from April.

You can find 10 of those bad boys below. They range from stars excelling in new locations to game-wide trends to upcoming attractions and everything in between. 

1. MVP Three justifies the hype

Ho hum, the Los Angeles Dodgers are on pace to threaten 100 wins and claim another National League West title. Baseball is largely unpredictable, but there are expectations. Take, for example, the excellence that is the Dodgers' MVP Three -- that is, shortstop Mookie Betts, first baseman Freddie Freeman, and designated hitter Shohei Ohtani. 

Through the first month, that trio has delivered. 

Betts enters Sunday as the favorite to win the NL Most Valuable Player Award. Through his first 29 games, he's hit .391/.481/.661 (219 OPS+) while taking up a new position on a fulltime basis. Freeman has batted .305/.423/.410 (135 OPS+) without really finding his slugging. Ohtani, meanwhile, has weathered off-the-field drama en route to a .347/.410/.661 (195 OPS+) slash line and seven home runs.

Baseball history is full of players, lineups, and teams that failed to live up to the expectations. These Dodgers as a whole might yet join that class. Just don't expect it to be because of what Betts, Freeman, and Ohtani brought to the table.

2. Soto fits in NYC

One of the offseason's biggest trades saw the New York Yankees acquire outfielder Juan Soto from the San Diego Padres for a grab bag of pitchers. So far, it's safe to say that deal is paying dividends for the Yankees.

Soto, in the midst of his walk year, has had no issue fitting into the Yankees lineup. Over his first 28 games, he's hit .324/.443/.581 (195 OPS+) with seven home runs and seven more walks than strikeouts. His contributions have already been worth an estimated 1.7 Wins Above Replacement, according to the calculations housed at Baseball Reference.

All of this to say: Soto is going to fetch a lot -- and we do mean a lot -- of money this winter, when he reaches free agency for the first time in his storied career. The looming question now  is whether it will be the Yankees or another team -- like, say, perhaps, the crosstown Mets -- who are the ones paying him that money to rake.

3. Astros' ALCS streak in peril

The Houston Astros have authored one of the most impressive runs in modern history, reaching at least the American League Championship Series in seven consecutive falls. (Granted, that run has not gone without its fair share of controversy.) In recent years, the Astros have developed a reputation for being slow starters, demonstrating that it's not always about how fast you get to speed but about the speed you average overall.

To wit, here's a look at Houston's record entering May in each of those seasons:

  • 2023: 15-13
  • 2022: 11-10
  • 2021: 14-12
  • 2019: 18-12
  • 2018: 20-10
  • 2017: 16-9

The Astros cut it close here and there, but they notably had not entered May with a losing record at any point during their ALCS streak. That will change this year. 

The Astros started off with a miserable 8-19 mark that puts them on pace to win, oh, 48 games. While other front offices were speculating last fall the Astros' dynasty was nearing its end, no one predicted they would reach the bottom so quickly.

Can the Astros overcome their sluggish April? It all depends on their ability to upgrade their pitching staff over the coming weeks. There are some reasons for hope. The question is whether or not the hole they've dug proves to be too deep to escape.

4. Cardinals' woes not a one-year mirage

The St. Louis Cardinals, fresh off their first 90-plus-loss season since 1990, seemed like a reasonable candidate to rebound. So far, not so good. 

Whereas last season the Cardinals' issues were tied to a bad pitching staff, so far this year the bigger issue has been their offense. They enter Sunday ranked 26th in FanGraphs' wRC+ statistic and ranked 27th in runs scored.

Offense has been so scarce in St. Louis that the front office has already demoted a pair of talented young outfielders, in Victor Scott II and Jordan Walker (more on his woes here), in an attempt to wake up their lineup. 

We'll see if it works. If not, the Cardinals could be staring down their first consecutive last-place finishes in the six-division era.

5. Pitcher injuries remain hot button issue

We apologize if this comes across as morbid, but you can make an argument that April's most consistent performer was the Injury Reaper. That was especially true of pitchers. Maladies affected many of the game's best arms, including past and future Cy Young Award winners, like Shane Bieber and Spencer Strider, each of whom was lost for the season to elbow surgery. 

The carnage spread far and wide, sidelining a seemingly endless list of pitchers. From Framber Valdez to Brayan Bello to Josiah Gray and so on. Anyone who chucks a baseball for a living seemed like -- heck, seems like -- a real candidate to miss action.

Predictably, given that pitcher health is a complex issue without a simple fix, there's a lot of disagreement about the causes and plausible solutions. MLB and the MLB Players Association even publicly traded barbs as it relates to this year's pitch clock changes. Others have settled on velocity and spin as the main culprits behind the epidemic.

Wherever you fall on that, this much seems clear to us: we must regretfully predict that the Injury Reaper will continue to rack up numbers the rest of the way.

6. Long offseason may have hurt Boras Four

You may recall that four prominent clients of superagent Scott Boras -- outfielder Cody Bellinger, lefties Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, and third baseman Matt Chapman -- were left on the offseason vine longer than anticipated this winter. Montgomery, the last to sign on the dotted line, didn't do so until just after Opening Day.

It was fair to wonder how much an abbreviated spring training would impact those players. So far, the answer seems to be "quite a bit."

Snell and Bellinger are both on the injured list. Snell strained an adductor while Bellinger fractured two ribs in a collision with the wall. Prior to sustaining those injuries, Snell had struggled while Bellinger had performed modestly, albeit beneath the standard set by last year's resurgence. Chapman, too, has checked in below his typical production level. Montgomery, meanwhile, has fared well through two starts.

There's still a lot of fairway between now and the end of the season. Those four players, as talented as they are, should have ample time to get on track. Still, you wonder if their employers already wish they would've made a deal a little earlier than they did.

7. Holliday not quite an instant star

The Baltimore Orioles didn't wait long to promote infielder Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 prospect in baseball, for his big-league debut. Alas, Holliday scuffled out of the gate, going 1 for his first 25. He eventually added another hit, putting him at 2 for 34 to begin his big-league career. That is not, as the kids say, what you want.

We chronicled Holliday's struggles elsewhere, and we concluded that they didn't concern us much about his long-term outlook. Nevertheless, the Orioles decided he wasn't ready and demoted him on April 26. "It's nothing that Jackson did," Elias told reporters. "We were the ones that have been moving him along so quickly. It was a little hiccup, and I think it's probably the first one he's ever had. He's ultimately going to be better off for it."

That's not the end of Holliday's promising major-league career, certainly, but it's not exactly what Orioles fans (or the front office) were hoping for.

Ditto for Texas Rangers outfielder Wyatt Langford and Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio. The inverse is true for Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Jared Jones and San Diego Padres converted outfielder Jackson Merrill, who, to date, has been by far the best-performing member of the Jackson Three.

On the bright side, all of those players have the talent and the time to turn things around and live up to expectations for years and years to come. 

8. Vogt early fave for Manager of the Year

The Cleveland Guardians were one of April's biggest positive team-level surprises. There's a long way to go, and there's no telling if Cleveland will be able to maintain a firm hold on the American League Central. If they do though, expect first-year skipper Stephen Vogt to take home some hardware come the wintertime.

Vogt steered the Guardians to a successful first month despite the following hiccups: 1) losing ace Shane Bieber for the season after he required elbow surgery; 2) not having young sensation Gavin Williams available at all as he recovers from his own arm woes; and 3) in turn, having to rely on late-career Carlos Carrasco and Ben Lively. 

That's without even mentioning how Vogt has overseen a more productive Guardians lineup than could have been reasonably expected given some of the personnel. (Be honest: did you expect Will Brennan, Estevan Florial, and David Fry to play this well?)

Vogt had some big shoes to fill replacing Tito Francona. So far, he's been game.

9. Skenes is nearing debut

Pittsburgh Pirates minor-league right-hander Paul Skenes, the No. 1 pick in last summer's draft, didn't reach the majors in April. He very well could in May following another impressive month as a professional.

Skenes did not surrender an earned run until his fifth start of the season. Along the way, he continued to showcase a power arsenal that includes a 100 mph fastball, a swing-and-miss slider, and a new sinker so devastating that some have compared it to the "splinker" (that's a splitter-sinker combo) thrown by Minnesota Twins reliever Jhoan Duran. (Skenes, for his part, told our Matt Snyder that it's just a sinker.)

The only thing holding Skenes back has been workload. The Pirates have taken it low and slow with him, only allowing him to work into the fifth inning once so far as a professional. He should top 80 pitches his next time out. After that, knock on wood, it stands to reason that he could be in line for a promotion, pairing with Jared Jones to form an impressive one-two punch at the top of Pittsburgh's rotation.

10. Clock changes have had desired effect

We mentioned in an earlier section that MLB altered the pitch clock rules over the offseason. Unlike last year, the first with the clock in place, pitchers now have only 18 seconds (as opposed to 20 in 2023) to begin their delivery with no one on base. Pitchers still have 15 seconds between pitches whenever a runner is on board.

It's unclear how much (or how little) that tweak has impacted pitcher health. We do know that it has succeeded in speeding up games.

According to Baseball Reference, the average game entering Sunday was running three minutes shorter this year versus last. What's more notable is that almost 37% of games were wrapped up within two hours and 30 minutes. That's six percentage points higher than last year's mark, and almost 33 percentage points higher than 2022.

Again, you can argue the ends don't justify the means, or that less baseball (in terms of minutes) is a bad thing. But you have to give MLB credit: it set out to speed up games, and it has undeniably succeeded in that mission.