Remarkably, we have already made it through the first full month of the season. It happens so quickly; they grow up so fast.
As we head into May, the season’s second full month, one that tends to get lost when we look back but ends up being pivotal in the long-term (on May 1 of last year, the Mets had the second-best record in baseball), let’s take a look at the big questions for which this month may provide some answers.
1. Can the struggling preseason favorites turn it around?
There are ramifications when a team everyone has big expectations for falls flat on its face to start the season: Ask Alex Cora and Rob Thomson about that. But you can always recover from a bad month; the Blue Jays were under .500 on May 1 last year, and you may have vague memories of them coming this close (several times!) to winning the World Series six months later. And just this week my colleague Anthony Castrovince plainly outlined how forgiving the 12-team playoff format can be. So there is hope for the five notable disappointments so far: the Phillies, Mets, Red Sox, Astros and Royals.
All those teams are at least five games under .500, but none of them have fallen off the map just yet. The Phillies and Mets seem pretty far back from the Braves in the NL East, but just fighting their way back to .500 would put them in the Wild Card race. The same goes for the Red Sox, and the Astros and Royals are playing in two divisions that have a combined one team over .500 (and that’s the A’s, who are just three games over), so no one’s running away in those divisions either.
But none of these teams can afford for May to be anything like April; you can survive one awful month, but you sure can’t survive two.
2. Who emerges, or falls, in the NL Central?
There may be no bigger surprise in baseball so far this season than the fact that all five teams in the NL Central -- a division not thought to be filled with juggernauts heading into this season, or really any season -- are at or above .500. (Poor Pirates, they’re exactly .500 and still in last place.)
The division features the Cubs overcoming countless injuries to rattle off a 10-game winning streak; the Brewers finding ways, despite losing even more key players, to keep winning games; the Pirates putting together a rotation that’s the envy of baseball and hitting better than some expected; the Cardinals getting breakthrough seasons from young players like Jordan Walker, Iván Herrera and JJ Wetherholt; and, most impressively, Terry Francona’s Reds off to a great start behind what sure looks like the MVP-caliber season from Elly De La Cruz we’ve all been waiting to see.
Some of these teams will fall off -- the Cardinals, the team with a minus-8 run differential, seems the most likely -- but every single one of them looks competitive and highly motivated. This could be a horse race all year. Will one team separate in May?
3. Can Mike Trout stay healthy and keep being Mike Trout?
What a joy it has been to watch Mike Trout so far! Last year was the first season he played more than 119 games since 2019 and, worryingly, it was the worst offensive season of his career. (It should be said that he still had a 124 OPS+.)
But in 2026, Trout looks like vintage Trout. He leads the AL in runs and walks, he has 10 homers, he has his highest OBP since his MVP season of 2019, his OPS is at .999 (above his career mark of .977) and he even looks spry in the field and on the basepaths. (He has five stolen bases; he hasn’t stolen more than six since, you guessed it, 2019.) Injuries are the looming worry with Trout, so there’s always the concern that the other shoe is going to drop. But the certain Hall of Famer we saw throughout the 2010s? He’s back. Let’s hope he can remain back all month … and potentially all year.
4. Will the Yankees get Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón back?
The Yankees, perpetually under pressure and always in danger (in some fans’ eyes anyway) of falling off a cliff, have stormed out of the gate to the best record in the American League, and they have done so without two of their best, and most expensive, starters. It’s possible they both return in May. Both pitchers are already making starts in the Minor Leagues, often right behind each other; they pitched successive days in Double-A Somerset this week. (Good luck with that, Double-A hitters.)
The Yankees won’t rush either pitcher, not the way they’re playing right now (and not with how Cam Schlittler, Max Fried, Ryan Weathers and Will Warren are pitching), but you’re talking about a team that’s already thriving adding two of the best starting pitchers in the game. Is May the month the Yankees really take off?
5. Will some of these rookies hit a wall?
It has unquestionably been the season of the rookies so far. Good luck figuring out who the heck the Rookie of the Year favorites are at this point. In the NL, the Pirates’ Konnor Griffin, the Mets’ Nolan McLean, the Cardinals’ Wetherholt and the Reds’ Sal Stewart have gotten most of the headlines, but don’t sleep on the D-backs’ Jose Fernandez, the Rockies’ TJ Rumfield or the Nationals’ Foster Griffin either. (And I’m still missing a bunch of guys there.)
And the American League’s rookie class has arguably been better, from the Guardians’ Parker Messick and the Red Sox’s Connelly Early on the mound to the White Sox’s Munetaka Murakami, the Guardians’ Chase DeLauter, the Royals’ Carter Jensen and the Tigers’ Kevin McGonigle at the plate. (And 2024 No. 1 overall pick Travis Bazzana is up now too.) The rookies have taken over the sport in its first full month, but the thing about the Majors is that everybody adjusts once they’ve seen you for a while. It’s about to get harder for these rookies, not easier. Which ones will be able to make the adjustment themselves?
6. Is Shohei Ohtani going to make a Cy Young run?
What’s the only award Shohei Ohtani hasn’t won yet? After two World Series rings, NLCS MVP, a Rookie of the Year Award and four MVPs, how about Cy Young? It sure seems like he wants it: It doesn’t strike one as a coincidence that there have been two games when he did not DH while pitching this season, something he had not done before.
And it’s probably also not a coincidence that he’s off to the best start pitching of his career, putting up an absurd 0.60 ERA in his first five starts. (He has yet to give up a home run and leads the NL in FIP.) His offensive numbers are down a little (just a little), but those pitching numbers are eye-popping. He has only received Cy Young votes once in his career, when he finished fourth in 2022 with the Angels, but he has never looked this good on the mound. If his May is anything like his April, he may well find himself the Cy Young favorite. Which, I feel obliged to remind you, is ridiculous.