There have been a lot of surprises to begin the 2020 MLB season, but these three teams are exceeding expectations, thus far.
Despite two different COVID-19 outbreaks among the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins rosters, threats to shut the 2020 MLB season down if players didn’t adhere to safety protocols, scheduling nightmares, constant rule changes, and so much more, the MLB season continues to progress along.
Now a little over two weeks into the regular season, we’ve seen a lot of weird, a lot of phenomenal rookie performances, and routine domination from some of the league’s top stars and franchises.
Raise your hand if you had San Francisco Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski leading the major leagues in Wins Above Replacement at any point in the season, much less for the entire first two-plus weeks? Put your hand down, I know you’re lying.
What about Trent Grisham being one of the most productive pickups for a team last offseason? AJ Preller sure does have a way of finding talent and it’s all starting to come to fruition for his San Diego Padres.
Through three starts in 2020, Baltimore Orioles starter Tommy Milone has a higher fWAR (0.5) than Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer (0.4), Dylan Bundy has been filthy for the Los Angeles Angels, and it’s really hard to pick a favorite pitcher from the Cleveland Indians rotation because they are all so good this season.
I could keep going, but you get the idea at this point. The 2020 MLB season has been full of surprises and a lot of fun to watch. But this is a team game and even in a shortened season full of quirks, it’s going to take a special team to win the World Series.
Here are three of the biggest surprise teams of 2020 who may end up shocking us all with a deep playoff run this season or, in the case of the last team on this team, greatly exceeding initial expectations.