NEW YORK — Welcome to the halfway point of the Major League Baseball season! It’s time to talk about the biggest surprises and biggest disappointments (thus far) in 2023.
We’re about to enter the month of July, the All-Star teams are taking shape, and the MLB trade deadline is just over a month away. We have unexpected teams atop some divisions and unexpected ones at the bottom. We also have teams that spent money not living up to expectations and teams whose owners are notorious for being on the cheaper side of the spectrum, leading divisions, or in playoff positions. Up is down, and down is up.
Let’s lead with the good news first and talk about the surprises.
The Cincinnati Reds are 43-38, and they are tied for first place in the National League Central division with the Milwaukee Brewers. At this time last year, the Reds were 28-53 and finished 62-100. No one expected the Reds to be doing this well. They started June with a 26-30 record, and with one game left this month, the Reds are looking to finish the month 18-9. They had a 12-game winning streak and called up prized prospect Elly De La Cruz, who injected life into the team, and they’ve shown no sign of slowing down. In fact, they went into Baltimore and took two of three from the Orioles. Will they be buyers at the deadline? They kind of have to because even though they’ve had a good month of June, they’re a little light on the pitching side of things and will need a starter if they want to contend. And will they make the playoffs? We’ll check back in a couple of months.
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Another surprise from the National League. The Marlins are in second place behind the Atlanta Braves in the East, and they’re currently riding high on a five-game winning streak thanks to a sweep of the Red Sox in Fenway Park. And fun fact, the Marlins are doing this while reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara is having a rough 2023. He’s currently 3-6 with a 4.82 ERA.
Luckily for the Marlins, Jésus Luzardo, Braxton Garrett, and 20-year-old Eury Pérez are filling in nicely—Pérez is 5-1 with a 1.34 ERA in nine starts. And on offense, they have the reigning AL batting champ Luis Arraez, who is batting .392 on the season.
The Marlins are four games in front of the Philadelphia Phillies and 11.5 ahead of the New York Mets. Will the Marlins shock the world, keep up this pace and make the playoffs? It’s entirely possible.
Our last surprise is in the American League East, which itself isn’t a surprise because it’s the best division in all of baseball, just like everyone predicted it would be. But the Orioles seem to be ahead of schedule. A lot of baseball pundits were thinking 2024 would be the year in which Baltimore would show up and show out, but it looks like it’s 2023 instead.
They are in second place in the division behind the Tampa Bay Rays and ahead of the New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, and Boston Red Sox, and they’re doing it with a lot of young players on their squad. Their oldest regular in the starting lineup is Adam Frazier, who is 31; the rest of the guys are between 25-29.
On the pitching side, they’re being led in bWAR by Cuban reliever Yennier Cano who has been unhittable in 39 and one-third innings pitched. He’s 1-0 with a 1.14 ERA, he hasn’t given up a home run, and he’s struck out 35 while walking only six. Going back to the division, the Orioles don’t have a losing record against any AL East team and are 3-2 against league-leading Tampa Bay.
And here are your biggest disappointments so far.
The Mets did not win a series in June. And heading into Friday’s game against the San Francisco Giants, their record this month is 7-18. It has been a nightmare for the team in Queens, especially given how much money owner Steve Cohen spent on the 2023 squad, including starters Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.
Scherzer is 7-2 with a 3.87 ERA. Not bad. But Verlander, the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner, is 2-4 with a 4.11 ERA. Not great. Cohen held a press conference earlier this week stating that if the team doesn’t get any better, they’re going to sellers at the trade deadline, and Scherzer came out and said that he’d be open to waiving his no-trade clause. If you told any Mets fans in April that this would be the state of the team with the calendar about to turn to July, they probably wouldn’t have believed you.
Here’s another team that overspent and is underperforming. The Padres are in fourth place in the National League West. They are in the midst of a five-game losing streak and are 2-8 in their last ten. The strange thing is, besides their record against the Dodgers, which is 1-5, the Padres are doing well against the rest of the division. They’re 4-2 against first-place Arizona, 3-3 against the Giants, and 4-3 against Colorado.
Their biggest problem in 2023 is inconsistency and leaving runners on base. You’d think a lineup with Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis, Jr., and Juan Soto would be steamrolling over other teams, but that hasn’t happened yet. And Yu Darvish, who was signed to a six-year/$108M extension this offseason, is 5-6 with a 4.84 ERA. Did we mention Darvish is 36 and signed until he’s 42?
It’s the end of June, and the Cardinals are in last place in the National League Central Division. No one expected this when the season began. They’re 33-47 overall and 8-15 in June.
To add insult to injury, they lost 14-0 on Thursday night to the Houston Astros, and Adam Wainwright was knocked out of the game after only one and two-thirds innings pitched. He gave up six runs on six hits, and his ERA is now 7.45. The Cardinals, like the Padres, cannot play consistently unless it’s when they’re on a losing streak. This month alone, the Cardinals have had losing streaks of five and six games, respectively. A big problem for them has been their starting pitching. While having a bloated ERA, Wainwright is the only starter whose record isn’t under .500. Miles Mikolas, Jordan Montgomery, Jack Flaherty, and Steven Matz are all under .500, with Matz 0-7.
Of course, we know that win-loss records aren’t always the fault of the starter, but in this case, the Cardinals pitchers are struggling. There’s still time for the Cardinals to turn things around, but it’s getting late early, and maybe for the first time in a generation, the Cardinals will be bad all year.
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