Eight who went from overlooked to MLB stars in one month

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.

Here’s a look at the eight overlooked MLB stars in the making

Graham Ashcraft

Superficially, Ashcraft had a very ordinary debut season as a member of the Cincinnati Reds rotation in 2022. He made 19 starts with a 4.89 earned run average. On that basis he was slotted as the team’s No. 4 starter going in to 2023 only because, let’s face it, the Reds had no other viable options.

The 2022 numbers were always misleading, and we all would have known it if we had dug a little. Ashcraft’s problem really came down to one team, the Chicago Cubs. He made four appearances against Cincinnati’s NL Central rivals, and the Cubs tore into him every time. Chicago batters hit .324 against Ashcraft with an ungodly .944 team OPS.

Against the Cubs, Ashcraft pitched to an 11.86 ERA. Against every other team in baseball (and Ashcraft faced 10 different ones not from Chicago’s North Side) his ERA was a solid 3.57.

He’s begun 2023 evenly more solidly than his 2022 non-Chicago record suggested he would. Through five starts, Ashcraft is 2-0 with a 2.10 ERA for a Reds team that is 7-13 on days when anybody else starts.

He is not yet by name the ace of the Reds staff; by consensus that title still goes to Hunter Greene. But that recognition should change soon. Ashcraft not only leads the staff in ERA but innings; he’s worked 30, four more than Nick Lodolo and seven more than Greene.

The only thing left for Ashcraft to prove is that he can stand up to the Cubs. When he does that, he’ll cease to be overlooked.

Justin Steele

Speaking of the Cubs, they may have the game’s best starting pitcher, even if nobody knows it yet.

How dominant has Justin Steele been? Through five starts, he’s unbeaten (4-0) with an NL-best 1.19 earned run average. Although overlooked until recently, Steele has already amassed 1 1.5 WAR — that’s fifth-best in the majors. He ranks second in the NL (behind the very heralded Spencer Strider) and fourth in MLB in hits per nine innings pitched (5.04), first in the NL and fourth in MLB in Adjusted ERA+, and first in the NL and tied for fourth in MLB in Win Probability Added.

Again, this was predictable if only we had looked. Steele showed what he could do during a seven-game post-All-Star stretch in 2022 when he put together a 0.98 ERA before being sidelined for the final month by an injury.

His reputation was tempered by the fact that none of his final five appearances resulted in a decision, although that fact was plainly attributable more to the Cubs’ offensive issues than to Steele. He worked 28 innings that month, allowing just three earned runs and striking out 39 against eight bases on balls.

On a Cubs staff ranking second in the majors in starter ERA, Steele has emerged as the principal reason why. If the All-Star game were played next week, a case could be made for him as the NL starter.

He will not be overlooked for long.

Nico Hoerner

Those who were paying attention already knew that Hoerner was a solid MLB infielder before this season started. After all, he batted .281 as the Cubs’ full-time shortstop in 2022 and .302 in 2021.

But that didn’t stop Cubs management from uprooting Hoerner from the shortstop position over the winter in favor of free agent Dansby Swanson. Hoerner got the consolation prize, second base.

That move has worked out in a major way. As the team’s leadoff bat, Hoerner entered play April 27 batting .340 (seventh in MLB) and with a 21-game on-base streak. He’s also stolen 10 bases in 12 tries.

His production is a major reason why the Cubs rank second in MLB in batting average (.276), second also in on base percentage (.347), third in OPS (.790) and third in runs per game (5.65).

He is sixth in MLB in position player WAR. Oh and, by the way, the Cubs are four games over .500 and just two behind the Pirates in the loss column at the time of this writing.

It also a reason why a few weeks ago Hoerner got a three-year, $35 million extension. Not bad for a middle infielder who, on the national scene at least, was largely overlooked because he is not considered a power threat.

Jarred Kelenic

Admit it, despite all the hype when he came to MLB in 2021, you never really believed in Kelenic. You thought the pressure of expectations would get to him.

So when he hit .181 as a rookie and.141 in 2022 you were feeling pretty smug. FanGraphs certainly was when in their 2023 preseason prognostication they declared that, “it’s hard to envision (Kelenic) putting up corner outfield type numbers.”

Mariners management shared that lack of faith in Kelenic. Over the winter, they they brought in Teoscar Hernandez and A.J. Pollock to cover what was expected to be an outfield gap.

Then a funny thing happened at season’s start: potential suddenly became reality. The overlooked Kelenic hit safely in the opener against Cleveland, then again the next day, and on April 8 torched the Indians again for three hits.

A few days later, he blasted one off the right field video board at Wrigley Field, one of three home runs he hit in consecutive games in that series, including this bomb.

In fact, the recently overlooked Kelenic approaches the end of April looking very much like the Jarred Kelenic everybody thought he was two seasons ago before they decided he wasn’t.

He’s hitting .325 with seven homers and 14 RBI in the 22 games he’s played. He’s got a league-leading .688 slug, which wouldn’t have surprised anybody before he hit the majors but would have astonished everybody who had seen him play in his first two seasons.

Suddenly the Mariners have a potential All-Star outfielder on their team who isn’t named Julio Rodriguez or Teoscar Hernandez. In fact, Kelenic is hitting 90 points higher than either of them while leading the team in slugging by more than 230 percentage points.

Like Steele, if the All-Star game were being played next week, a valid case could be made for Kelenic as the starting left fielder.

Connor Joe

The ultimate expression of getting overlooked is being traded for a minor leaguer. That’s what happened to Connor Joe this winter. The Colorado Rockies gave up on the 30-year-old third-year player with a .252 average and an 80 OPS+, sending Joe in to Pittsburgh for a Class A player in December.

For the Pirates, it was a low-impact move since Joe only cost the minimum $735,000. As May approaches, that decision is one of the main reasons why the Pirates are the surprise team of the season to date.

Joe entered play Friday batting .304 with a .580 slugging average. He’s been a splurge artist with seven multi-hit games, four of them coming in a 13-9 Pirates victory over the Chicago White Sox April 7. Three of his hits were doubles. He has 10 RBI.

From being overlooked and unwanted by the Rockies, Joe has established himself as a fixture in Pittsburgh. On April 27, Joe delivered his third home run of the month, helping the Pirates take two of three from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Pittsburgh is 14-6 this season when Connor Joe plays.

In 2022, the Pirates had the second-worst team batting average in MLB at .222. They were third-worst in on base average and fourth-worst in slugging. This year, they’re hitting .258, seventh-best. They’re top 10 in on base and fifth in slugging.

Connor Joe isn’t the whole reason for those production increases, but he’s a big part.

James Outman

It’s interesting, if nightmarish for Dodger fans, to project where the team’s offense might be right now if not for James Outman.

When Gavin Lux went down for the season with a spring training injury, it created a gap in both an offense that was already suspect and the infield defense. The Dodgers have gotten creative on the defensive side, tinkering with moving Mookie Betts from right field.

They’ve been able to experiment that way largely because Outman, a 26-year-old who got a taste of MLB duty last year, has been an absolute find. From off the board on the preseason depth chart, he’s risen to a role in the heart of the Dodger order.

He will complete April with an average pushing .290, at least seven home runs, on the order of 20 RBIs and an OPS+ north of 1.00.

External events may have forced Outman into the Dodger consciousness but, once there, he asserted himself. He debuted on Opening Day with two hits, one of them a home run, and so far has accumulated eight multi-hit games. He homered twice against the Cubs at Wrigley Field April 20, then did it again two days later, leading to Dodger victories both days.

From being overlooked in the spring, Outman stands third in the National League in slugging (.644), trailing only teammate Max Muncy and Brandon Marsh. He’s fourth in OPS+. On the Dodger roster, Outman (.287) co-leads the team in batting average (with Freddie Freeman). That’s 33 points higher than Muncy, and 54 points higher than Betts.

His 1.1 WAR ranks second in Dodger blue to Muncy.

The Dodgers are only 13-13 and a disappointing second in the NL West. But it could be worse. They could have overlooked James Outman.

Alex Cobb

For the most part, the overlooked early season surprises have been young players whose development we simply didn’t see coming this fast. The exception is Cobb, the retread ace of the Giants’ staff.

Cobb is a 35-year-old journeyman whose glory days were a full decade ago. Between 2012 and 2014, he won 32 games for the Tampa Bay Rays. Then injuries intervened, costing Cobb all of 2015 and casting his reputation into the deep shadows of the overlooked.

Between 2018 and 2022, Cobb shuffled among three teams, averaging about 20 starts but just 4.5 victories and a 4.38 ERA. On a Giants staff buttressed by the offseason additions of Sean Manaea and Ross Stripling, it was not at all clear there was even a place for the 35-year-old, who went 7-8 in 28 starts in 2022.

But Cobb has produced with a consistency he hasn’t shown since those glory days in Tampa. In five starts, he has yet to allow more than two runs, and he’s done that against competition that includes the Yankees, Dodgers and Cardinals, all preseason divisional favorites. Against the Cardinals on April 24, Cobb pitched a 4-0, nine-inning, complete game shutout.

He is no longer the overlooked Alex Cobb. He is now just the old Alex Cobb … old both in the chronological and performances senses.