Now at a full month into the 2023 season, it’s time to recognize the blossoming stars we’ve somehow overlooked in our preseason assessments.
A month of play may not be enough time to project season-long trends; I don’t think the Pirates are going to keep this up any more than you do. But it is enough time to prepare a solid list of the overlooked players we should have recognized, but didn’t, for the star potential they’re now showing.
There are at least eight legitimate first-time All-Star candidates. Though not big names, they’ve played like big names this April, and they’re giving every indication of being capable of continuing to do so.
Most, although not all, play for teams that tend to be dismissed as non-contenders, contributing to the players’ overlooked status. The eight most overlooked include three pitchers and five position players.
Only one of them is technically a rookie. One in fact is a 35-year-old journeyman once considered on the periphery of the game’s star class before he faded into the obscurity of the overlooked.
In fact, seven of the eight have track records, and with the exception of the renaissance journeyman alluded to one paragraph ago those track records range from one to four years of MLB experience. In most cases, those track records carried clues to a potential 2023 breakout … if we’d bothered to look. We didn’t; we overlooked them.
We weren’t alone, either. Their own teams either replaced or tried to replace three of the eight this winter until the play of the overlooked ones forced their clubs to restore their places in the team hierarchy.