MLB's Biggest Winners and Losers 30 Games Into 2025 Season

For as long as the MLB season is, it never ceases to amaze just how fast it moves.

Take the 2025 season, for example. It's already been going for more than a month, and every team either already has or soon will have played 30 games. That's 19 percent of the 162-game slate.

This makes now a good time for a "Winners and Losers" piece, and everyone should know how these things work. It's about players and teams that are dominating the early narrative of the season, be it in good ways (i.e., Winners) or bad (i.e., Losers).

We have five of each to get to, and a good place to start is with a couple of sluggers in New York having wildly different experiences thus far.

Pretty much all of us are too young to remember Babe Ruth, and there are 20-something MLB fans who don't remember Barry Bonds at his peak.

Well, to watch Aaron Judge right now is to get the gist of what they were like.

The New York Yankees' slugger is well on the way to his third American League MVP, with his first 29 games yielding a .405/.496/.703 slash line, eight home runs and 28 runs batted in. By Yankees standards, it's a Ruth-ian start.

Combined with the five torrid months that the six-time All-Star had to finish off last season, he now has 13.6 fWAR and a 244 wRC+ for the last 365 days. The former is once again reminiscent of Ruth, while the latter is very Bonds-like.

All this is naturally helping to buoy a Yankees squad that came into the season off a less-than-encouraging winter. At 17-12, they're leading the AL East and within shouting distance of the top record in the league overall.

As Judge is 33 years old, there is the obligatory question of how much longer he can keep doing this. But sans actual signs of a cool-down, a better use of everyone's time is to simply enjoy watching him cook.

Meanwhile in Queens, who could have predicted Juan Soto would get some Bronx jeers less than a month into his tenure with the New York Mets?

OK, fine. It really was just "some" boos Soto heard, and Mets fans promptly rallied to his side with a Trea Turner-style ovation. It's as if the base wants the club's $765 million investment to succeed as much as Steve Cohen.

Nonetheless, he hasn't been the hitter the Mets paid for. A .787 OPS and three homers aren't bad numbers, per se, but this is a guy with a .948 career OPS and a self-imposed "best hitter ever" reputation.

Will Soto eventually be fine? Well, yeah. Obviously.

As he's 26 years old, he's nowhere close to aging out of his prime years. He also still has a ton of red on his Baseball Savant page, including a chase rate in the 91st percentile and exit velocity in the 92nd percentile.

But whatever $765 million buys, it doesn't purchase an excess of patience. Soto will eventually have to let his bat do the talking, and that will hopefully go better than when he loaned that duty out to his mouth.

On the plus side, just imagine what the Mets will be capable of once Soto gets hot.

They already have the best record in MLB at 20-9, and those who can claim credit for it include Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor. They're picking up the offense amid Soto's slow start, posting a combined .961 OPS and 11 homers.

Still, let's be real here: The Mets are as good as they are because of a pitching staff that leads MLB with a 2.62 ERA, and not one of us saw this coming.

The club's injured list is loaded with pitchers, including offseason signees Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas. Yet the staff is second in MLB in strikeouts-per-nine, as well as second in ground-ball percentage.

This is basically a case of pitching coach Jeremy Hefner doing it all over again. He ostensibly didn't have much to work with in 2024, yet the Mets' pitching still blew away expectations to help lead the team to the playoffs.

The Mets' hot start has already upended the National League East, as FanGraphs now sees them as a 54.5 percent favorite to win the division.

Elsewhere on the topic of NL East playoff odds, the Braves began the year as a 64.2 percent favorite to claim the division at FanGraphs.

Those odds are now at 26.6 percent.

True, the Braves are on an upswing with a 13-8 record since beginning the year with seven straight losses. Also true is that they're due to get major pieces back in May, with Ronald Acuña Jr. set to return in the first half of the month and Spencer Strider in the second half.

However, the promise of those returns is more uncertain than it should be. Neither Acuña nor Strider has been a consistently healthy, impactful player since 2023, and it was just a couple weeks ago that the former was calling out manager Brian Snitker over a hustle incident involving since-optioned outfielder Jarred Kelenic.

The Braves also have other problems, namely an offense that is still mired in a post-2023 fall from grace and a pitching staff that is 23rd in ERA.

Due to shoulder inflammation, Reynaldo López is not walking through that door any time soon. And after a Cy Young Award-winning season in 2024, Chris Sale has seen both his hits (11.4) and home runs (1.3) per nine innings skyrocket in 2025.

It's hard to argue with the pedigree here, given the Braves haven't missed the playoffs since 2017. But there's an expression that starts with "All good things," and it may well be applying here in real time.

As expected, the Dodgers are one of the better teams in MLB in 2025. At 19-10, they're tied for the second-best record in the league.

What is unexpected, of course, is that the Dodgers are not running away with the NL West accordingly.

They're tied with the San Francisco Giants (19-10) and are barely ahead of the San Diego Padres (17-11) and Arizona Diamondbacks (15-13). The situation has already shifted the odds, with FanGraphs lowering the Dodgers from a 85.7 percent favorite to win the division to a "mere" 75.1 percent favorite.

Even if the competition was lacking, they would still be looking closer to human than to super-human right now.

Mookie Betts is struggling offensively in the wake of his mystery illness, and the club's knack for losing pitchers to the injured list is still very much there. Blake Snell is already out and Tyler Glasnow joined him on the IL on Monday.

For their parts, the Giants, Padres and Diamondbacks each have at least one solid source of fuel for their respective engines. The Giants (3.47 ERA) and Padres (2.82 ERA) both pitch well, while Arizona is still an offensive powerhouse (5.4 R/G).

Frankly, the Dodgers' odds may be more likely to keep going down than they are to go back up. This doesn't mean they won't end up having a great season, but what's happening already has definitely dampened the "greatest team ever" hype.

As for that other team in the NL West, we need to have a serious conversation about how screwed the Rockies are.

They came into 2025 off back-to-back seasons of at least 100 losses and with seemingly no sense of urgency to at least improve to 99 losses. The entire energy of the franchise right now is akin to that of a ghost ship.

Still, though...four wins against 24 losses? Seriously, Rockies?

It's an all-time bad start, as only Colorado and three other teams have ever begun a season with at least 24 losses in a 28-game span. Not even the 2024 Chicago White Sox are on that list, and they famously lost a modern-record 121 games.

As the Rockies haven't been as bad as the 2024 White Sox from a run differential perspective, perhaps there's hope for them yet. And at least this team has some interesting players, including outfielder Jordan Beck and right-hander Chase Dollander.

Yet nobody is under any delusion that the NL West is going to do them any favors. In fact, it's as bad as you'd expect. Per FanGraphs, no team has a tougher remaining schedule than the Rockies, and it's not close.

Let's go ahead and say it: 122 losses could actually happen.

It was only six years ago that the Tigers had a 114-loss season. Now look at them.

They had a bunch of questions to answer after a surprising 86-76 season in 2024, but nothing silences naysayers quite like a "best record." And in the case of the 18-11 Tigers, theirs is the best in the American League.

It isn't necessarily surprising to see them with a 2.86 ERA overall, but reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal has more help than anyone could have anticipated. Casey Mize, Jack Flaherty, Jackson Jobe and Reese Olson also have low ERAs, while a largely star-less bullpen has a 2.58 ERA.

The Tigers are otherwise one of the biggest offensive improvers from 2024 to 2025, and it is downright heartwarming to see Spencer Torkelson leading the way.

The former No. 1 pick had minus-0.1 rWAR to show for his first three major league seasons, so it was understandable that the Tigers didn't have him penciled in for a job coming into 2025. And yet, there he is with a .896 OPS and eight homers. He had 10 homers throughout all of 2024.

The Tigers have even done a magic trick with "El Mago" himself, Javier Báez. He's relevant again, batting .299 and putting in solid work at shortstop, third base and [it still feels weird to say it] center field.

The odds for the AL Central have shifted as you'd expect, with FanGraphs now putting the Tigers as a 58.6 percent favorite to win the division.

You know who the Tigers just swept over the weekend? The Orioles.

And do you know which team looks to be in deep, deep trouble? Also the Orioles.

At 11-17, they have the second-worst record in the American League ahead of only the White Sox, who are 7-21. Baltimore's odds of making the playoffs in any capacity have tanked, with FanGraphs now putting them at just 18.3 percent.

Alas, if only someone had warned the Orioles that their starting pitching was a major liability.

Just kidding. Everyone did. And everyone looks like a smarty pants now, as O's starters have an AL-worst 5.62 ERA with the worst opponent batting average (.289) this side of the Rockies, who at least have Coors Field to blame.

What hope there is for Baltimore rests with an offense that finished second in the majors in home runs a year ago. Gunnar Henderson, in particular, is a whole lot better than a guy with a .655 OPS.

All the same, it feels like the page is already turning on what could have been a dynasty. The Orioles simply should not be this bad just two years after winning 101 games, much less because of shortcomings that are so obviously self-inflicted.

Shifting back to actually good teams, arguably the greatest show in Major League Baseball right now is the Cubs doing anything on offense.

They're outscoring the next-best team by 0.4 runs per game and are at or near the top of the leaderboard for the following categories:

265 Hits: 1st in MLB

57 Doubles: 3rd in MLB

38 Home Runs: Tied for 6th in MLB

44 Stolen Bases: 1st in MLB

.260 AVG: 3rd in MLB

.340 OBP: 2nd in MLB

.444 SLG: 3rd in MLB

Kyle Tucker was getting a ton of attention early, but the spotlight has since shifted to Pete Crow-Armstrong. To call him "dynamic" would be understating it, as on his line are 10 doubles, five homers and 12 stolen bases.

As PCA's 12 steals come with just one caught-stealing, he's the tip of the spear for what is a remarkably efficient ground game. The Cubs are 44-for-50 in stolen bases, putting them on track for an all-time success rate.

If an offense like this is good for nothing else, it's for keeping a team in games. Cubs fans are beginning to know this well, as the North Siders have already won two games in which the defense allowed the opposition to score 10-plus runs. That's as many as the rest of the league put together.

For now, it means a 17-12 record and first place in the NL Central.

Speaking of stolen bases, swiping bags is definitely en vogue again in 2025. There have been 0.82 steals per game, the highest rate since 1987.

As for home runs...not so much. There's an average of 1.04 homers per game so far. If it holds—and this is a big if—it'll be the lowest mark for a season since 2015.

If it's a question of who's not hitting homers, the No Homers Club—not to be confused with the other NHC—32 different players have taken at least 70 plate appearances without going deep. Some of the names on that list make sense, most notably Xavier Edwards (131 PA) and Nico Hoerner (107 PA).

But then you have guys such as Bo Bichette (128 PA), Alec Bohm (115 PA), Jonathan India (111 PA) and Xander Bogaerts (110 PA), as well as other luminaries like Max Muncy (100 PA) and Joc Pederson (80 PA).

There's no better word for this than "fluke." These guys are better power hitters than [waves hands] this, and they are sure to look like it eventually.

Their power outages have already damaged their teams, though, and Bichette has to worry about how his might damage his finances. With free agency looming, the last thing he needs is teams questioning the potency of what used to be one of his defining tools.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.