Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are off to historically slow starts, but everyone worried should remember what happened last season.
- It turned out Juan Soto wasn't washed, the A's weren't giant-killers and torpedo bats didn't change the game forever.
- Last year's dramatic overreactions prove fans shouldn't draw conclusions too soon.
Quick! Look! Shohei Ohtani has already lost out on his chances of winning the NL MVP!
Did we get your attention? Good. Yes, we’re just as stunned as you are that Ohtani is only hitting .200 with no RBIs through five games. Although he’s drawn six walks in 22 plate appearances, all five of his hits have gone for singles. Have we seen the last of Ohtani’s greatness, especially considering that he turns 32 in July?
Hah. That’s funny.
Ohtani doesn’t have an RBI, Aaron Judge is hitting just .190, and Paul Skenes didn’t make it out of the first inning on Opening Day. The 2026 season is certainly off to a strange start through its first week, what with the Nationals having more victories than the Padres and Red Sox combined. Not bad for a team that I predicted would lose at least 110 games.
Overreacting to the first few games is tradition for baseball fans, and we did the same thing last year. When we look back at some of the initial takeaways we had during the start of the 2025 season, we might feel ridiculous, and understandably so.
Juan Soto’s slow start meant nothing
Admittedly, I’d forgotten all about this until I heard it mentioned on TV last week. Soto entered May 1 hitting .241 with three home runs, 12 RBI, and a .752 OPS. Normally, that wouldn’t have been a big deal, but Soto was in the first weeks of his record-setting 15-year, $765 million contract.
All turned out fine for Soto, who finished his first Mets campaign with 43 homers, 105 RBI, 38 stolen bases, and a stellar .921 OPS. However, the Mets’ dreadful September collapse cost them a playoff berth, and they wasted another excellent season from Soto, who placed third in NL MVP voting.
It’s been so far, so good for Soto to begin 2026, with him hitting .381 with a .935 OPS through five games.
No, the A’s weren’t going to shock the world in Sacramento
Did you know that the Athletics ended last April with a winning record? At 16-15 with a loaded young core, those A’s looked nothing like the team that had gone just 50-112 only two years earlier. They were exciting, had a chip on their shoulder, and were ready to break through and compete for an AL West title.
Unfortunately for the A’s, they finished 76-86 and missed the postseason for the fifth straight season. That’s not to say the year was a total disaster, with rookie shortstop Jacob Wilson winning AL Rookie of the Year and four players recording at least 3.0 bWAR. We’ll see whether the Athletics can turn things around after a 1-4 start this year.
Torpedo bats didn’t change baseball
Remember Torpedo bats? I won’t go so far as to call them a one-hit wonder (heh heh), not when it was a common talking point for at least a couple of weeks. ESPN called the bats “baseball’s next big thing,” and some of the network’s talking heads stopped repeating themselves about LeBron James and the Cowboys to actually discuss baseball. What a foreign concept!
But, by the start of May, we’d already forgotten the torpedo bat movement, possibly because the Yankees weren’t averaging 20 runs per game while using them. Still, at least it continued the trend of baseball working its way back into the national consciousness, which is always a victory.
Nobody was going to dethrone the Dodgers (though Toronto came close!)
This wasn’t so much an overreaction as it was that blend of optimism, denial, and fans rooting for the Dodgers to fail. By this point last year, we collectively knew that, barring a massive rash of injuries, the Dodgers would be in the postseason again and the likely No. 1 seed.
Well, part of that proved true. The Dodgers actually finished as the No. 3 seed and hosted the Reds in the NL Wild Card Round before moving on and taking down the Phillies and Brewers. In hindsight, it’s interesting to wonder what the narrative about the current Dodgers would be had the Blue Jays defeated them in that thrilling World Series.
Despite his early struggles this year, at least Ohtani threw six shutout innings in Tuesday’s 4-1 victory over the Guardians. We’ll see whether he can get his bat going within the coming days, or if we’re witnessing the extremely rare Ohtani slump.