Was it the right time for the Phillies to fire Rob Thomson? (1:51)Paul Hembekides and Buster Olney react to the Phillies firing Rob Thomson. (1:51)
Jeff PassanApr 30, 2026, 07:00 AM ETMultiple Authors
The first month of the 2026 Major League Baseball season was a funhouse mirror. Blue bloods faltered. Every team in the National League Central is above .500. Starting pitchers, as a whole, have a better ERA than relievers. Shohei Ohtani is pitching better than he’s hitting.
As much as April can be a mirage, there can be signal amid a one-month sample inherently filled with noise. Of the dozen playoff teams last year, nine ended April in position for a postseason berth. Seven of the top 12 players in FanGraphs wins above replacement remained in that elite grouping through the end of the season.
So as much as the general rule of taking the season’s first month with a mine of salt is reasonable, elite in April often means elite for the remainder of the season. For every collapse, there are multiple successes. And every failure threatens to torpedo a season, either individually or as a team.
Here are the top dozen competitive balance tax payrolls, according to Baseball Prospectus, and the teams’ records entering Thursday:
The three worst teams in baseball (Mets, Phillies, Astros) carry top 12 payrolls — with two of them in the top five. In aggregate, the record of the top 12 is 185-179, which means the average of the dozen biggest payrolls in baseball is … an 82-win team.
As far as labor talking points for the MLB Players Association go, there are far worse than: If money spent matters enough that the league is intent on pursuing a salary cap, why are so many of the most expensive teams so bad?
The most extreme struggles have already led to managerial changes in Boston and Philadelphia. The Carlos Mendoza employment watch in New York is a daily event. Joe Espada is in trouble in Houston. John Schneider is plenty safe in Toronto, but the Blue Jays’ injury-battered start is nevertheless disappointing.
The collapses of the Red Sox, Mets, Phillies and Astros are causing sky-is-falling levels of consternation among fan bases with extraordinary expectations. That’s fair. April for all four was a fast-moving mess. Each entered 2026 with World Series aspirations, and now they’re going to have to spend the next five months clawing their ways out of a self-dug hole.
It’s the sort of thing, in fact, that causes lookaheads — to the trade deadline and winter, when the managerial carousel could once again be whirling in full force. Where does Alex Cora, fired by the Red Sox, land? If Torey Lovullo leaves the Arizona Diamondbacks after his contract expires at the end of the season, could he be a fit in Philadelphia, where he knows president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, or Boston, where he served as bench coach for John Farrell?
From the moment the automated ball-strike challenge system debuted in MLB, it was almost universally celebrated. That’s one hell of a trick for the league to pull: not only having faith in the system to work but showing it on a daily basis in the form of a graphic output on every stadium jumbotron to adjudicate ball-strike calls and, in the process, actively engage fans to pay attention.
The challenge is more or less a coin flip at this point, with 53.5% of the 1,882 successful. Catchers are the best at it, with overturns 60.7% of the time. Hitters are next at 45.9%. And pitcher-initiated challenges — of which there have been just 40 — remain the most challenging, with a success rate of 42.5%.
The granular numbers on ABS are perhaps the noisiest of the bunch, seeing as there is no previous MLB data against which they can be compared. Why, for example, have the Red Sox challenged just 36 times while the Twins are at 88? And is the Brewers carrying the best challenge win probability added thus far a matter of small sample or another sign that Milwaukee does the little things better than anyone?
The impact of ABS goes beyond the challenges themselves. The strike zone is demonstrably different, with a couple of inches shaved off the top gravitating to the bottom of the zone. Just how impactful ABS has been on the leaguewide walk-rate spike from 8.4% last year to 9.6% this year is unclear, but it’s especially benefiting right-handed hitters, who are walking at a 15.5% higher clip.
Of that extremely elite group, Álvarez’s batting average (.355) ranks second, his on-base percentage (.463) third and his OPS (1.199) third. For a player of Álvarez’s size (6-foot-4, 233 pounds) to strike out as infrequently as he does — 11 in 134 plate appearances, an 8.2% rate, the fifth lowest in all of MLB — is damn near impossible.
And hallelujah for that. It’s easy to forget that between 2012 and 2019, Trout was not just the best player in baseball. He was the best by an almost inconceivable amount. Consider the top five position players in WAR during that stretch:
Take away Trout’s two best seasons in that stretch altogether and he would still be just a fraction behind Donaldson. Regardless of what Trout does now, he is a first-ballot, no-doubt, slam-dunk Hall of Famer.
Six players signed long-term contract extensions this spring — four of them with less than a month of major league service time and two who remain in the minor leagues. This is how they’re faring.
Kevin McGonigle, SS, Detroit Tigers: He is already one of the best hitters in the major leagues, and that is not an exaggeration. The 21-year-old has the seventh-best weighted on-base average in baseball, and his .333/.420/.518 line is in line with his minor league production. The most impressive part of McGonigle’s game? He’s got nearly as many walks (16) as strikeouts (17). He’s worth every dollar of the eight-year, $150 million extension.
Colt Emerson, SS, Seattle Mariners: Still just 20, Emerson isn’t exactly languishing at Triple-A. His strikeout rate has jumped nearly 10 percentage points since last year, and a wrist injury has slowed him — and perhaps prevented his ascent to the big leagues after signing an eight-year, $95 million extension.
Ben Rice, 1B, New York Yankees: Rice’s Baseball Savant page is lobster red, and his left-handed swing has provided Judge with the complement the Yankees have missed since Juan Soto absconded to Queens. What’s most exciting is Rice’s emergence against left-handed pitching. Though his eye-popping walk numbers lag against lefties, he’s slugging at an even higher clip against them than right-handers. This is how a star is born.
Sal Stewart, 1B, Cincinnati Reds: Stewart was an obvious breakout candidate based simply on the fact that he has hit at every level of his career — and that tends to be a strong predictor. To think he would be one of the 10 best hitters in the league, however, was a touch far-fetched for the 22-year-old. And yet here he is, the perfect running mate to Elly De La Cruz’s similar breakout, ready to help Cincinnati challenge for NL Central supremacy.
Drake Baldwin, C, Atlanta Braves: The reigning NL Rookie of the Year has leveled up and isn’t just in line to be the best-hitting catcher in the league. He’s looking like the best in baseball, period. Sean Murphy’s impending return gives the Braves the ability to give Baldwin more DH days, helping him traverse a 162-game season and be his best self come playoff time, which is looking increasingly likely for Atlanta this October.
James Wood, OF, Washington Nationals: Wood did something like this last April, too, but what’s truly exciting is not his otherworldly power or sneaky speed. Wood’s 19.9% walk rate leads the NL, and while some of it is a function of a Nationals lineup that’s not nearly as good as its second-in-MLB runs-scored total, it’s mostly this: Wood has an elite eye. His strikeouts might be alarmingly high, but for everything else Wood does, they’re a plenty worthwhile tradeoff.
Cam Schlittler, SP, New York Yankees: Schlittler has been the best pitcher so far this season. His 1.57 FIP — a predictive metric — is the best in the big leagues. So is his .442 OPS against. He is everything he showed in his 12-strikeout, no-walk gem against Boston during the postseason last year, and with four above-average pitches and excellent command of each, he is another ace in a Yankees rotation filled with them.
Jose Soriano, SP, Los Angeles Angels: There were signs. Sinkers that dive-bomb in at 97 mph don’t grow on trees. But until this season, Soriano’s production had never matched his stuff. He has cut down his walks, ramped up the punchouts and ridden an elite groundball rate to one of the finest starts in years. Soriano is far from the favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award, but the mere fact that he’s mentioned among the candidates says plenty.
Landen Roupp, SP, San Francisco Giants: The 27-year-old Roupp, never a top prospect after joining the Giants in the 12th round of the 2021 draft, has the best curveball in the NL this side of Nolan McLean and Paul Skenes. He gets beaucoup ground balls and, with the aid of Oracle Park’s dimensions, keeps the ball in the park. In a rotation with Logan Webb and Robbie Ray, he has been the best of the bunch and should be a mid-rotation staple for years to come.
Bryan Abreu, RP, Houston Astros: Abreu’s fastball is down more than 2 mph, he’s got the worst walk rate in baseball (28.3%), and his ERA (12.96) is the highest in MLB. With Josh Hader out for the whole month, Abreu had ample opportunity to seize the closer job. He fumbled it spectacularly.
1. Los Angeles Dodgers, $416.8 million (20-11) 2. New York Mets, $379.3 million (10-20) 3. New York Yankees, $338.7 million (20-11) 4. Toronto Blue Jays, $322.3 million (14-16) 5. Philadelphia Phillies, $315.1 million (10-19) 6. Boston Red Sox, $268 million (12-19) 7. San Diego Padres, $258.6 million (19-11) 8. Atlanta Braves, $252.6 million (22-9) 9. Chicago Cubs, $249.9 million (19-12) 10. Detroit Tigers, $243.9 million (15-16) 11. Houston Astros, $238.4 million (11-19) 12. San Francisco Giants, $230.8 million (13-16)