Six potential surprise MLB teams of 2023
Every new MLB season produces one or two surprise teams, and 2023 isn’t likely to be an exception.
All you have to do is think back to last season, when the Cleveland Guardians ripped through the final two months of their season at 40-21 to run away with the AL Central. The Guardians were a major surprise to pre-season forecasters, none of whom picked them to beat out the favored Chicago White Sox.
The surprise MLB team of 2021 was certainly the San Francisco Giants. A sub-.500 team for four straight seasons, the Giants exploded for a franchise record 107 victories to capture the NL West from the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had to make do with 106 wins.
It’s only January, but already the oddsmakers have established favorites in most of the six divisions. The Astros, Yankees, Dodgers, and Mets are clear favorites in their four divisions, leaving only the two Central divisions up for debate.
The problem is that once the action begins in earnest, pre-season favorites don’t always play like favorites. The White Sox amply demonstrated that reality last season, delivering a lackluster 81-81 record.
On average over the past decade, only a bit more than half the consensus pre-season favorites actually won their divisional races. That leaves plenty of room for surprise teams to emerge from the anonymous pack.
The question then becomes which teams are most likely to break out of that pack of mediocrity in 2023? Off-season maneuvers, likely supplemented once the regular season begins by the inevitable maturity of young talent, suggest several MLB teams as candidates. Here’s a look at six of them, one for each division.
AL East
If there’s to be a surprise team challenging the Yankees, Rays, and Blue Jays in the AL East, it almost has to be the Baltimore Orioles. Fortunately, a good case can be made.
Begin with the fact that this is a young team on the rise. Almost all of the Orioles’ core talent will be between age 25 and 29 entering 2023, meaning this is a team in its physical prime.
Adley Rutschman is 25 and a rising All Star. Ryan Mountcastle and Kyle Bradish will be 26, Dean Kremer and Austin Hays 27, Cedric Mullins and Anthony Santander 28, and Jorge Mateo and Ramon Urias 29.
Gunnar Henderson, a 2019 draftee projected to take over at third base, is rated as MLB’s No. 2 prospect entering the season. He’ll be just 21 when he takes the diamond this year.
What do the Orioles need? Continued growth, obviously.
It’s asking too much of them to match the 2022 improvement, which amounted to 31 games. The Orioles were 83-79 in 2022, the franchise’s first winning season since 2016.
But even a four or five-game improvement would project Baltimore as a postseason contender in the AL East, which sent three teams into the playoffs last year. The Orioles had a legit chance, missing out by just three games to Tampa Bay.
Normal growth from such players as Rutschman, Mountcastle, Mullins, and Kremer could account for those needed three games, and probably more.
Have they improved enough to overtake the Yankees, who won 99 games in 2022? That’s a big ask. But if some of the Yanks’ core pieces – Anthony Rizzo, D J LeMahieu – begin to show their age, and if injuries become a factor, anything is possible.
AL Central
Few MLB franchises had as interesting a winter as the Minnesota Twins, who saw their star shortstop Carlos Correa leave, then leave where he had left, then leave there to return to the Twins.
The Twins produced a second consecutive poor season in 2022, finishing 78-84 and a surprising 14 games behind the Guardians. In first place as late as the second week of August, they stumbled dispiritedly through the season’s final six weeks, going 21-34 down the stretch. That included seven losses in eight September starts against the Guardians when Minnesota was still a plausible playoff contender.
What has changed to make Minnesota a potential surprise team entering 2023? Only expectations. The personnel is largely identical, and that’s a good thing.
Begin with the return of the Prodigal Son, Correa, to again anchor the infield at shortstop. After batting .291 with an .834 OPS, he exercised the opt-out clause in his contract. That left a gaping hole in both the Twins’ offense and defense which they eventually filled by signing … Correa.
The other key is likely to be Byron Buxton, a center field genius when he’s on the field. Nagging injuries reduced Buxton’s availability to just 92 games in 2022 and also shot holes in his production. His .224 average was a personal worst for any season with more than 150 plate appearances.
Buxton was still good for 24 home runs, but he did not get on the field at all after Aug. 22, and it’s no coincidence that the Twins were 16-26 from that date forward.
Buxton’s availability never comes with a guarantee; he’s an eight-year veteran who’s only once made as many as 100 starts. But if Buxton can hold down regular time in 2023, he and Correa provide Twins fans with two reasons why their team can be the surprise of the AL Central.
AL West
The Texas Rangers haven’t produced a winner since 2016, and few give them a chance to contend this year in a division dominated by the world champion Astros.
But for the second straight winter, GM Chris Young put in long overtime hours to improve this franchise, and that work might pay off.
One obvious key is the health of free agent signee Jacob DeGrom. There’s a consensus that when healthy DeGrom may be the game’s best pitcher, just as there’s medical evidence stipulating that he is rarely healthy.
Last year, DeGrom gave the Mets a 3.08 ERA but in only 11 appearances. DeGrom is the MLB equivalent of Wedgwood china: great to look at but rarely taken from the display case. He hasn’t topped 90 innings since 2019.
The Rangers need a minimum of 25 starts and 150 innings from him in 2023. If they get it, that’s Step 1 to being a major surprise challenger to Houston’s divisional hegemony.
Step 2 involves the continued growth of one of the team’s home-grown stars, Adolis Garcia. A 2021 rookie, Garcia has hit 58 home runs in his first two seasons with OPS scores in the solid .750 range.
He was a 2021 All Star and finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting who drove in 101 runs in 2022.
But Garcia has also fanned 381 times in his first 1,303 plate appearances. That’s a 29 percent whiff rate, dampening his value. In a season when the shift will be outlawed, Garcia could substantially improve his production merely by reducing his no-contact rate to MLB average levels. If he does, Texas will have a profound mid-order force.
NL East
In a division lorded over with big-money contenders plus a Washington reclamation project, only the Miami Marlins qualify as a potential surprise. Against the Phillies, Mets, and Braves, the Marlins face a daunting series of obstacles that includes the two most recent National League champions.
Stranger things, however, have happened. So while the NL East is the division least likely to feature a surprise team, here’s the case for why it might.
That case begins with the fact that the Marlins are led by the best pitcher you can actually count on to show up for work. He led MLB in workload last season and has piled up a largely first-rate 434 innings just since 2021.
The team’s strength is its rotation, led by Alcantara but also featuring Pablo Lopez, Jesus Luzardo, Trevor Rogers, and Edward Cabrera. All but Rogers produced ERAs under 4.00 last season, and you won’t find many teams that can say that of their top four starters.
Run production obviously is the concern. The Marlins finished 14th in the league last year in batting average and home runs, and last in runs scored.
The hope is that guys like Jazz Chisholm and J.J. Bleday can spark a turnaround. It’s a longshot, but if they do Miami could be a dangerous surprise with that pitching.
NL Central
The NL Central is ripe for the taking, and the Chicago Cubs have gone about this winter with the intent to surprise the division champs, the Cardinals.
Granted, the Cubs needed a lot of work coming out of 2022. The offense was in the lower half in every meaningful category. They’re taking a gamble on Cody Bellinger returning to something close to his 2019 MVP form after three sub-standard seasons with the Dodgers.
Bellinger may flop again. But if he does return to form, imagine what that means for an offense also upgraded by the presence of free agent signee Dansby Swanson. Then imagine what the Cubs look like if two other reclamation projects, Trey Mancini and Eric Hosmer, return to something approaching their historic norms.
It’s a big parley, but plausible.
For Chicago, the bigger question may be the reliability of the pitching staff. The Cubs added Jameson Taillon to a rotation that already included Marcus Stroman, Drew Smyly, and Justin Steele.
Health is always an issue with MLB pitchers, and that’s certainly true of the Cubs. Begin with Steele, who was more than occasionally brilliant in his first full season. Steele posted a 3.18 ERA in 24 starts. But he managed only 119 innings and did not pitch at all the final five weeks.
Stroman, Smyly, and Hendricks combined for only 63 starts, all three were injured for stretches, and Hendricks will start 2023 on the Injured List. The Cubs need their rotation pieces to show up for work or all is lost.
The thing is that when they did pitch, most were darned good. Stroman had a 3.50 ERA, Smyly was 3.47, and Adrian Sampson – who’s also available — 3.11 in 19 starts. Give some combination of those arms plus Taillon 150 starts and 900 innings – not an unreasonable ask – mix it with a resurgent Bellinger and the product is a serious NL Central contender.
NL West
Since the Dodgers and Padres are summarily ruled out, the contenders for the surprise team of the NL West boil down to the Rockies, Giants, and Diamondbacks. None are particularly plausible. The Rockies have done almost nothing to improve this winter, and the Giants lost out on their two biggest potential catches, Aaron Judge and Correa.
That leaves the Diamondbacks as a potential surprise MLB team, however unlikely that scenario may be.
The D-Backs made one move of significance this winter. In return for catcher-outfielder Daulton Varsho, they acquired Lourdes Gurriel and catching prospect Gabriel Moreno from the Toronto Blue Jays.
Moreno batted .319 in a 25-game debut for the Jays in 2022.
Arizona also has Corbin Carroll, the game’s No. 3 prospect, who projects to make the Opening Day start in right field.
Since the Diamondbacks finished 37 games behind the Dodgers in 2022, the chances of Arizona being a surprise team exceed credibility. Arizona lost 110 games in 2021, and the changes they’ve made over the winter aren’t likely to produce much of a turnaround this quickly.
But given how little either the Giants or Rockies have done, in the unlikely event anybody emerges as a surprise to the Dodgers and Padres, the Diamondbacks are the only plausible option.