The fourth week of baseball is nearly over in MLB and the calendar will soon flip to May ending the first full month of the season. As the weeks have gone by some things have become clear about teams and players. We now have an idea of what teams are good, what teams are bad, and what teams are, in the words of Charles Barkley, turrble. Lets take a look at the most surprising and disappointing teams from each league.
American League Most Disappointing Team - Boston Red Sox
The defending World Series Champions have come out flat in the early weeks of the 2014 season. The currently sit in last place in the competitive AL East division with a record of 11-13 and are looking up at their rivals, the New York Yankees, in first place. The most telling part about their season is that they have only won one series so far this season, and in their final game series against the Yankees this week they made five errors in the blowout loss.
Three of those five errors in that loss were committed by the youth that replaced the veteran free agents that moved on making it clear that they may have made a mistake rushing these young guys to the forefront. It is hard to believe a defending World Series Champion with the core of the team still in tact will not be able to turn it around, but if they are going to do it the youth is going to have to step up or be replaced.
American League Most Surprising Team - Minnesota Twins
The Twins aren’t looking fantastic, but they are looking good and sit in second place in the AL Central with an 11-11 record. The pitching is highly suspect, they’re 28 in the league in team ERA, but as an offense they are driving in the third most runs in the league. The offense is led by an early breakout season by first baseman Chris Colabello who has already set career highs in runs batted in and doubles.
Colabello is only in his second season, but in 20 games he has already passed those two career highs that he set in 55 games in the 2013 season and is on pass to set new career highs in every statistical category. Colabello is not the only breakout star leading to this solid start for the Twins as catcher Kurt Suzuki is off to one of the best starts in his career and third baseman Trevor Plouffe is finally looking like he is going to live up to the potential.
On top of those three the Twins are still lead by catcher turned first baseman and former MVP, Joe Mauer, and while he is not driving in runs like he use to he is getting on base and scoring runs. If this offense can keep this up and the pitching can be even mediocre, the Twins will be a team to be reckoned with in the AL Central.
National League Most Disappointing Team - Arizona Diamondbacks
The Diamondbacks have a horrible pitching staff. They currently have the worst team ERA in all of baseball, with an ERA of 5.39, and the veteran trio of pitchers they have are possibly the worst trio in all of baseball. Brandon McCarthy, Trevor Cahill and Bronson Arroyo were supposed to be anchors in the rotation, but they currently have started 13 games for the team and all have ERAs above six.
The pitching alone isn’t what is killing the team. They have a lack of quality hitters on offense who can drive in runs, and now that outfielder Mark Trumbo has hit the disabled list they will be hurting even more to score runs. The team was not happy after back-to-back .500 seasons and so the brass decided it was time for a change. Well, that change has taken the team in the wrong direction.
National League Most Surprising Team - Milwaukee Brewers
The Brew Crew were terrible last season. The ace of their staff struggled all season long and the star of the team took a suspension for his connection to performance enhancing drugs leading to a last place finish in the NL Central. They have rebounded this season, though, as both Yovani Gallardo and Ryan Braun have returned to form and young players on the verge of superstardom have lead the team to a league leading 17-6 record.
Last season outfielder Khris Davis and shortstop Jean Segura showed that they are the future of this team and now they are proving that the future is now. Their offense along with Braun and a healthy Aramis Ramirez have helped the Brewers led to the quick start, but it’s the pitching staff that has really lead this team to the top.
The team is second in the league with a team ERA of 2.52 led by the starting rotation that only has one pitcher with an ERA higher than 2.66. With a starting rotation like that, and the fact that closer Francisco Rodriguez has seemed to find a rebirth allowing zero runs in 12 innings, it is easy to see why the Brewers are the best in the league. If they can keep this up, or even be remotely close to it, throughout the season you can expect them to make noise in the playoffs.