As the crack of the bat echoes through ballparks across America, the 2025 MLB season is off to an exciting start. The electric atmospheres and sun-soaked bleachers are back. Here are my initial thoughts for each team one week into the season.
National League
NL East
Atlanta Braves – Maybe the worst start in team history? Pitching has been average, hitting has been abysmal, third least runs scored in the league through today. Need Acuña and Strider back badly.
Miami Marlins – Solid first week. Probably the youngest, most unrecognizable lineup in the league; but they’ve played fast and scrappy, and the pitching hasn’t been bad either.
New York Mets – For the standards of this team this year, it was an ugly watch in the first week. But coming home 3-3 after a road trip to open the season isn’t the worst thing ever. Pete Alonso looks locked in.
Philadelphia Phillies – Played lowly Nats and Rockies but look hungry for a division title through week one. Schwarber mashed three homers and pitching has been as good as advertised.
Washington Nationals – Young team losing mostly competitive games. Underwhelming start all around.
NL Central
Chicago Cubs – Bounced back from an ass kicking in Japan from the Dodgers and took care of business with a sweep in Oakland – err – The Athletics. Kyle Tucker appears to have been a wise decision early on.
Cincinnati Reds – Outside of a 14 run outburst this team isn’t scoring… literally got shutout in back to back games. Hunter Greene looks impressive.
Milwaukee Brewers – Got “torpedoed” by the Yankees opening weekend, but bounced back to take 2 of 3 from Royals. Walk-off bunt to take the rubber match!
Pittsburgh Pirates – Paul Skenes. That’s it.
St. Louis Cardinals – 4-2 against the Twins and Angels. Solid week one but need to see more before I’m sold. Pitching looked great vs Twins and not so much against Angels.
NL West
Arizona Diamondbacks – Somehow a 4th place team after a really solid 4-2 start. Burnes and Gallen are a dangerous 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation.
Colorado Rockies – Broncos country. Let’s ride.
Los Angeles Dodgers – They might break the wins record. Not an overreaction either. They look like men amongst boys.
San Diego Padres – *See Dodgers*
San Francisco Giants – Good balanced first week out of this team. They can pitch, they can hit, and they’ve done both. Potential sleeper here. Wilmer Flores is the new Barry Bonds.
American League
AL East
Baltimore Orioles – Up and down start to the year. Lineup is deep, I think they’ll wake up sooner than later.
Boston Red Sox – Rafael Devers needs a map, maybe the worst start to a season I’ve ever seen. Garrett Crochet extended and immediately proved his worth. These guys will be alright.
New York Yankees – Maybe the most exciting weekend in the MLB? Pulverized the Brewers with their new toys the “torpedo bats”. As much as I like to poke fun, their lineup looks deeper than I expected so far. Slowed down with two losses to the DBacks after the weekend.
Tampa Bay Rays – 2 of 3 from the Pirates and 2 of 3 from the Rockies. Need to see more but solid start. Breaking in their new stadium (because their owner won’t pay to build a new one and they now play in Yankee Stadium South)
Toronto Blue Jays – First place! Don’t think it’ll last long but they’ve come out looking hungry to prove that Vlad should hang around in free agency.
AL Central
Chicago White Sox – After last year’s public embarrassment of a season, a 2-4 start is somehow an improvement. Included a 9-0 beatdown of the Twins.
Cleveland Guardians – Started off with a nice series win against the rival Royals, followed by three straight games of clips on Twitter against the Padres. Not the type of Twitter clips you want to be seeing from your team either.
Detroit Tigers – Took 2 of 3 from the Mariners after starting the season getting swept by the Dodgers (welcome to the club). Hard to fault them for the slow start, they’ll be a good team this year.
Kansas City Royals – Two underwhelming series in a row for the fellas from Kansas City. Not much else to be said for the moment.
Minnesota Twins – Swept by the Cardinals and then recovering with 2 wins after being bludgeoned by the White Sox. This whole division is 2-4 but somehow their 2-4 feels worse than everyone else.
AL West
Houston Astros – The pitching has been great. Altuve has been great (not in LF though). Everything in between has been downright ugly. Promising start against the Mets winning that series but the Giants sweep wasn’t pretty. Still not sure how this team, who replaced some key pieces this offseason, will play out.
Los Angeles Angels – 4-2 is a great start for this team who needed to have a good one. Their -9 run differential tells us there is quick regression on the horizon but I’d love to see this become a scrappy Ron Washington team who just wins games despite average play.
Oakland Athletics – Playing in a little league field and playing like a little league team.
Seattle Mariners – Team batting average of .172 and a team WHIP of 1.27. As Dennis Green once said, “THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE”
Texas Rangers – The lineup has been very very quiet but the pitching has been incredible. Degrom back to form, Eovaldi throws a complete game. Hitting will come, this team could be a division winner when it’s said and done.
AH Top 10 MLB Power Rankings: Week 1
- Dodgers
- Padres
- Phillies
- Yankees
- DBacks
- Rangers
- Mets
- Orioles
- Giants
- Cubs
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