Every day in the MLB season provides some reason for a particular fanbase to freak out. But with so many days in the baseball schedule, it can be hard to know what is really worth freaking out about.

That’s why we have the Freak-Out Factor -- a scale that ranges from 1 (chill out) to 10 (panic!) -- to determine just how serious a particular issue is.

Here are six sources of early intrigue and indigestion and how they fare on the Freak-Out Factor scale.

The Cubs are 2-7!

“Urgency” was the preseason buzzword surrounding a Cubs team that left 2018 with an offense that “broke” and entered 2019 with Joe Maddon as a lame-duck manager. So while a 2-7 road trip is an upsetting way for any team with World Series aspirations to start a season, it’s even more disconcerting here. The first Old Style of the season hasn’t even been served at Wrigley Field yet, and the Cubs’ odds of making the playoffs have already fallen by about 20 percent, per FanGraphs.

Though some of this is fluky stuff that can’t reasonably continue at the current rate (the Cubs already have two lost games in which they scored 10 runs), I’m legitimately worried about the North Siders for two reasons:

1. The bullpen, a known concern coming into the year, has done absolutely nothing to allay that concern. Sunday's loss to the Brewers marked the first game this season in which a Cubs reliever didn’t give up a run (they lost 4-2 anyway), and their bullpen's ERA is 8.37.

2. Chicago’s ability to swing an impact trade this season is suspect, given the lowly state of the club's farm system after so many trades and graduations to the Majors, as well as its tight budget. The other day, I discussed some of MLB’s most flexible teams. The Cubs are one of the league’s most inflexible teams.

Freak-Out Factor: 8, which doubles as the number of Cubs pitchers currently carrying a WHIP of 2.00 or higher.

The Red Sox matched their worst 10-game start in team history!

Despite manager Alex Cora’s bold preseason proclamation that, “If you thought last year was special, wait ‘til this year,” the Red Sox’s start, even after Sunday’s win that improved them to 3-8, is the exact antithesis of 2018, which saw them enjoy one of the best opening months in history.

Boston's starting rotation has an 8.57 ERA, making an iffy bullpen look magnificent by comparison. The Red Sox's FanGraphs-calculated postseason odds have fallen from 90.8 percent to 69.5 percent.

Obviously, an 11-game West Coast trip to open the season was suboptimal, and playing 16 of their next 21 at Fenway will help immensely. And given the starters’ unusual workloads over the last six months (first with relief usage in the postseason, then with a shortened spring schedule), you can, for the most part, shrug off that unsightly starters’ ERA as a clear hangover that could resolve itself.

All that said, it’s awfully hard to ignore Chris Sale’s early dip in velocity, and the bullpen is still a bit of an unknown. There’s a reason nobody has repeated as a World Series champion this century: It’s hard.

FOF: 6, which doubles as the number of times already this season that a Red Sox pitcher has given up five earned runs or more in an outing.

Everybody on the Yankees is hurt!

Well, not everybody, but it's too close for comfort in the Bronx. The Yankees' injured list features 11 (or should it be IL-even?) guys and more than $87 million in 2019 salaries -- higher than the entire Opening Day payroll of four teams. The financial ramifications alone are probably enough for a front-office freak-out.

The in-season injuries to Miguel Andujar (labrum tear), Giancarlo Stanton (left biceps strain) and Troy Tulowitzki (left calf strain) have amplified the effect of the absences of Didi Gregorius and Aaron Hicks. And with Luis Severino likely out until May, the Yanks somewhat desperately need a smooth mid-April return from CC Sabathia and their other starting arms to avoid injury issues of their own.

Even as these guys eventually return, the inevitable question will be how much the missed time and any lingering effects from the injury affect their performance. And if Andujar has a setback, there’s a chance he has season-ending surgery.

All that said, some of the panic here can be offset by what’s going on in Boston. It’s a credit to the Red Sox’s struggles that, despite New York’s early injury turmoil, the Yankees’ odds of winning the AL East, per FanGraphs, have actually gone up -- from 62.2 to 73.1 -- after a 5-4 start. The Rays look like a viable threat in the East, but the Yankees can take some comfort in knowing that their early issues are more related to injury than performance. They’ve also got a relatively easy schedule early, and they finally began to take advantage of it in Baltimore over the weekend.

FOF: 5, or the number of April games the Yankees have against teams that had winning records in 2018.

Washington’s bullpen is a National(s) disaster!

What sort of moron would have rated this as one of the 10 best bullpens in baseball going into the year?

Oh, right, that was me.

The Nats’ bullpen has already given up 17 runs -- and that’s just in the eighth innings of games. Even when the Nats put up 12 runs against the Mets in support of Max Scherzer on Sunday, the ‘pen kept it interesting by giving up five runs in a 12-9 win. Four appearances into 2019, Trevor Rosenthal, who a lot of us (not just me, I swear) thought was a wily addition with his velocity intact coming off Tommy John, has an ERA of … infinity! Kyle Barraclough has been better, but he allowed his first five inherited runners to score. So the setup situation is in shambles.

Signing Craig Kimbrel would push the Nats over the luxury tax threshold and also require patience, as he would need time to get ready for Major League action. General manager Mike Rizzo has shown the ability to rebuild the bullpen on the fly in the past, but we’re months away from trade activity picking up, and a deep NL East might not leave margin for error.

FOF: 8, or the total walks and hits Rosenthal has allowed without recording an out. (Hey, it’s better than an FOF of infinity.)

The Astros’ offense has struggled!

Though the pace picked up this weekend by sweeping the A’s, Houston has scored only 33 runs through 10 games. The offense was the biggest culprit behind a ho-hum 5-5 start.

There’s not much to see here. The Astros are 11th in the Majors in team OPS (.760). It hasn’t translated to as many runs as you’d expect because of the performance in the "clutch." But that’s the sort of thing that usually levels out over the course of a long season. In fact, entering the week, the negative gap between the Astros’ batting average with runners in scoring position (.136) and expected batting average with runners in scoring position (.195), based on Statcast’s hit probability measurements, was the second-largest in the Majors. So bad luck intervened.

FOF: 1, which is where the Astros ranked in the Majors in run differential last year.

The Reds are 1-8!

This was a 95-loss team in 2018, and I give the front office credit for making an earnest effort to turn things around with short-term, cost-effective potential solutions. But my goodness, what a mess. The Reds had that thrilling late-inning comeback on Opening Day and haven’t won a game since.

Last year, Cincinnati had a solid offense that was held back by brutal pitching. So far this season, the pitching has been respectable, but the offense, which lost an igniter when Scooter Gennett sustained a bad groin injury late in spring camp, has an anemic .534 OPS. If the runs don’t pick up soon, the Reds are spiraling toward a situation in which every pending free agent not named Marty Brennaman will be on the trade block.

FOF: 9.0, or Yasiel Puig’s current ratio of strikeouts-to-homers.