The Bad-Dream Team So Far in 2023

Issue #87

I write a lot about baseball dream teams. My first book was on that subject: Now Taking the Field: Baseball’s All-Time Dream Teams for All 30 Franchises (ACTA Sports, 2019). And in my Substack I’ve continued to put together dream teams of various kinds, based on month of birth, country or state of birth, who performed best during each month of 2022 and so far in 2023, and more.

But what about a “Bad Dream” team, or dare we say “Nightmare” team? As we are almost one-quarter the way through the 2023 regular season, here are the players that I think are off to the worst starts—relative to expectations, which I admit is subjective and can vary, and not including players who have not met expectations largely due to injuries. (Note: For position players, this is based on their hitting only—some of them might be doing fine defensively.)

For some of these players, the expectations were not just based on prior performance, but also the excitement of being a new acquisition. José Abreu on the Astros certainly fits that description, as he has played 38 games and has yet to hit a HR—yikes. And Miami acquired two contact-hitting infielders during the off season to try and provide some spark to their offense, but the results so far couldn’t be more different: Luis Arraez until recently was batting over .400, while Jean Segura is batting .186 with a pathetic .256 OBP.

Rookies often have big expectations, perhaps unfairly, and not all of them blossom into solid major-leaguers right away. That has been the case so far this year for the Orioles’ Gunnar Henderson, the Red Sox’ Triston Casas, and the Rockies’ Ezequiel Tovar. Similarly, some young players came into 2023 with hopes of making solid progress—but that hasn’t worked out yet for guys like Kansas City’s MJ Melendez, Detroit’s Spencer Torkelson, Minnesota’s José Miranda, Arizona’s Jake McCarthy, or Cleveland’s Josh Naylor.

Then there are the players who have proven themselves to be All-Stars, sometimes many times over, but are just starting off slowly in 2023. The most striking in this category might be Carlos Correa, given the saga we all followed with him in the off-season. But guys like Starling Marte, George Springer, Alex Bregman, and José Abreu who I mentioned already, fit into this category too. Last year’s AL Rookie of the Year, Julio Rodríguez, does have 7 HR and 7 SB so far, but also owns a .214/.280/.403 slash line. And there are certainly more stars that I did not include in the roster above who are off to relatively slow starts, including Manny Machado, Nolan Arenado, Trea Turner, Austin Riley, Francisco Lindor, and until coming alive recently, Juan Soto.

For starting pitchers, arguably the worst starts to 2023 came from two pitchers who are no longer starting. Madison Bumgarner allowed 25 hits in 16.2 IP across four starts, with 10.26 ERA and 2.400 WHIP. That led Arizona to release him, and it remains to be seen if another team will give him a shot (perhaps even with a specialist relief role in mind?) And Shintaro Fujinami came to the A’s from Japan with much anticipation, but got shelled in three of his four starts. So Oakland moved him to the bullpen, but he’s not really faired much better there, with his early season numbers now being 12.17 ERA across 23.2 IP with a 2.028 WHIP.

There have been a few starting pitchers who entered 2023 with lofty expectations but who have struggled. NL Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara has been inconsistent, but seems to be coming around. The two I listed here that fit this description came in second and third in the AL Cy Young vote last year, Dylan Cease and Alek Manoah. Both are allowing far more free passes than last year, so we’ll see if they can right their ships as we move into baseball’s second quarter.

Two of Cease’s White Sox staff mates also made the list, veteran Lance Lynn and former prospect Michael Kopech. Their poor starts to the year are a big reason for the White Sox disappointing results overall, and the same can be said for Miles Mikolas and Jack Flaherty for the seriously underperforming St. Louis Cardinals. And as with Kopech in Chicago, the Royals were hoping that Brady Singer would be taking the next step this year—so far, not so much.

There are of course many other starting pitchers off to bad beginnings in 2023, but I don’t think many had as high expectations for them as the ones I included above (maybe for Lodolo?): José Suarez (LAA), Chad Kuhl (WSN), Luis Cessa (CIN), Drew Rucinski (OAK), Sean Manaea (SFG), Chris Flexen (SEA), David Peterson (NYM), Zach Plesac (CLE), Kyle Muller (OAK), Spencer Turnbull (DET), Ross Stripling (SFG), Ken Waldichuk (OAK), Matthew Boyd (DET), Jameson Taillon (CHC), Nick Lodolo (CIN), Corey Kluber (BOS), Nick Pivetta (BOS), Austin Gomber (COL), Jordan Lyles (KCR), Ryne Nelson (ARI), Noah Syndergaard (LAD), Joey Wentz (DET), and Braxton Garrett (MIA). Two modern greats, Max Scherzer and Chris Sale, have also been inconsistent to start the season.

Amongst closers, A.J. Minter of the Braves and Kyle Finnegan of the Nationals each have seven saves, but they also have 8.05 and 6.75 ERAs, respectively. Raisel Iglesias is back now, so we’ll see how long Minter gets save opportunities.

The inconsistent enigma that is Craig Kimbrel in his 30s seems to be continuing in 2023, even as he approaches 400 saves for his career (his four this year have him sitting at 398). And there were a seemingly unlimited number of other relievers with bad numbers so far this year (in admittedly a small IP sample size), so I included several of the ones that had a significant delta from previous good performance, and ended the list with Fujinami and a couple of his Oakland bullpen mates. The A’s have had a few relievers get off to good starts this year, e.g., Zach Jackson, Sam Moll, Richard Lovelady, but overall they have the highest relief ERA at 6.72 and WHIP at 1.720, across 159.1 relief innings.

All data is from Baseball-Reference.com, and also their subscription service Stathead.com. If you are a big sports fan, be sure to check out the latest features at Stathead and the Sports Reference family of sites.

Did you know? I wrote a book with the same title as this Substack newsletter / blog: Now Taking the Field: Baseball’s All-Time Dream Teams for All 30 Franchises. It was published in early 2019, by ACTA Sports, the publisher of the annual Bill James Handbook and other popular titles. You can learn more about it at www.NowTakingTheField.com, or buy directly at Amazon and other booksellers.