MLB has only been going on for about a month. Yet already, the 2026 season has done a lot. Done a lot of things no one could have predicted, rewritten narrative after narrative, and served as a great reminder of why baseball is such an amazing game to watch. With everything from veterans finding a new lease of life to unexpected rookies rising through the ranks, baseball in 2026 is proving to be unpredictable yet again.
Here is the list of top 10 most pleasant MLB surprises so far.
- Jose Soriano Throws Like an Otherworldly Being
No one’s 0.84 ERA on Jose Soriano’s 2026 bingo card was likely accurate enough. A 27-year-old right-hander of the Angels, he has been throwing like nobody else in the league through seven games. He leads the American League in both strikeouts and ERA, surrendering just 24 hits, zero unearned runs and rendering opposing batters helpless for 42â…” innings. Soriano’s signature pitch, his knuckle curve, remains a pitch to wipe out the batters. Adding his increased fastball and split change-ups usage to the equation, he has been building one of the cases for AL MVP award this season. - Mike Trout Looks to Be Back Stronger Than Ever Before
It’s been years since people stopped referring to Mike Trout as the face of the game. The man kept getting older. The man kept getting injured. The man’s records kept being stalled. However, there is a reason Trout still keeps getting paid big money in 2026 — because the guy still can play. A 1.000 OPS, 10 home runs, more walks than strikeouts, top-quality-of-contact numbers, and a sprint speed that’s reminiscent of his prime days make for a compelling early season story in MLB.
- The NL Central Shows Why You Shouldn’t Dismiss It
Flyover country usually takes a beating whenever people talk of America’s sports landscape. However, dismissing it entirely is no longer the smartest strategy regarding the current composition of the National League Central division. Coming into this week’s slate of games, all teams of the division held a winning record. Collectively, they performed over .500 against teams outside of the NL Central division. They led by a whopping plus-79 run differential. This is a huge statement for a group of relatively small market teams in MLB play…Read more
- Chase Dollander Has Cracked the Code for Playing at Coors Field
Being sent down to the minors for a season. Suffering through the worst rookie season in your professional career ever. Getting promoted in the next season and failing spectacularly at the task — that’s the career path many pitchers follow before they finally start figuring out how to succeed at Coors Field. Chase Dollander, a 24-year-old righty of the Rockies and a former ninth overall draft pick out of Tennessee, is making an effort to rewrite the book on playing at Coors Field. A 2.25 ERA, 212 ERA+, 99mph fastball and near-as-fast sinker, 39 strikeouts in 32 innings — this is the pitcher that nobody expected. - Ben Rice Is Outdoing Aaron Judge
Being in the same clubhouse as Aaron Judge sounds pretty good. Getting ahead of him in terms of MLB statistics, though? Even better. Ben Rice, a first baseman of the Yankees, has managed just that in the past few weeks. He continued his great 2025 performance with an excellent start of 2026 with a batting average over .300, 10 home runs already hit, and a 99th-percentile xWOBPA. Will Rice be able to maintain his performance throughout the rest of the season? Only time will tell, but, so far, he is definitely doing more than simply playing in Aaron Judge’s shadow. - The Atlanta Braves Are Back!
From a 104 win season in 2023, the Braves have suffered a collapse that took their win totals below the 80 mark twice, including a losing record in 2025 season for the first time since 2017. It was assumed that the rebuild Atlanta needed to go through was going to take its time. Instead, the team started performing exceptionally well as of the first month of the 2026 season. Their 22-9 record makes them the winners of all of MLB thus far. Also, they hold the plus-69 run differential, putting them ahead of everybody else. The injuries that plagued the team in the previous season are now but a bad memory for Atlanta. - Taj Bradley Has Completely Reinvented Himself
With his sub-par 85 ERA+ accumulated in 73 starts before this season, Taj Bradley had every reason to get his act together this time around. A player at 25, he had no room for improvement any more, at least according to many analysts. However, the man has come up with his unique plan to prove everyone wrong. He changed his signature sinker for a fastball and focused more on his splitter. The results speak for themselves: sub-3.00 ERA, 44 strikeouts in 41 innings played. This year, Taj Bradley is an entirely new person. - Parker Messick Quietly Blows Away Everyone Else
There hasn’t been much hype surrounding Parker Messick’s arrival to MLB, nor was there an expectation for him to blow away the competition out of the starting gate. Instead, Cleveland’s rookie pitcher quietly became the biggest surprise story of this early season with his stats — 1.73 ERA, 2.30 FIP, near 50% whiff rate of the change-up. It goes without saying that the organization known for developing pitchers is impressed, but not overly surprised by the rookie starter’s success. - Justin Wrobleski Has Become One of LA Dodgers’ Top Pitchers
With its superstars all around the roster, it was easy to dismiss any other player as irrelevant to the LA Dodgers’ success. Except, perhaps, Justin Wrobleski, a 25-year-old left-handed pitcher of the club who quietly turned out to be the best of the bunch in 2026. The man boasts an impressive 1.50 ERA while managing to perform poorly with regard to his velocity and fastball dominance. Instead, he works on getting rid of the runners with contact and control skills that earned him such a great stat this year. - Jordan Walker Finally Shuts Everybody Up
Being called a bust already at 23, Jordan Walker had his fair share of doubters before the 2026 season started. After two disappointing seasons in 2024 and 2025, the MLB fans had all reasons to believe that the man’s promising career was coming to an end. Fortunately, the man has managed to shut everybody up with a spectacular start of his current campaign — eight home runs in the first 16 games of the season. The player continues to impress everyone with his slash of .279/.352/.532. All this is due to his recent stance tweaks and changes to his approach at the plate which allowed him to generate loft in each pitch he hits.
Conclusion
Less than a month in, and 2026 season has already produced a lot of interesting and inspiring stories to watch in MLB. The players that defied age or failed expectations have already started playing at a high level, showing what baseball is all about…Read more
