The second installment of Baseball, Right Now is here. The standings after a week of baseball are doing what we expected: not giving us much in the grand scheme of a 162-game season, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t learned anything yet.
Where things stand
2026 MLB Standings
Team | Record | Run Differential (Runs Scored – Runs Allowed)
AL East:
- New York Yankees | 7-2 | +25
- Tampa Bay Rays | 4-5 | -5
- Toronto Blue Jays | 4-5 | -8
- Baltimore Orioles | 3-6 | -9
- Boston Red Sox | 2-7 | -15
AL Central:
- Cleveland Guardians | 6-4 | -4
- Chicago White Sox | 4-5 | -24
- Detroit Tigers | 4-5 | +7
- Kansas City Royals | 4-5 | -5
- Minnesota Twins | 3-6 | -5
AL West:
- Houston Astros | 6-4 | +15
- Los Angeles Angels | 5-5 | -4
- Texas Rangers | 4-5 | 0
- Seattle Mariners | 4-6 | +3
- Athletics | 3-6 | -12
NL East:
- Miami Marlins | 6-3 | +8
- Atlanta Braves | 6-4 | +27
- New York Mets | 6-4 | +17
- Philadelphia Phillies | 5-4 | -6
- Washington Nationals | 3-6 | -4
NL Central:
- Milwaukee Brewers | 7-2 | +28
- Cincinnati Reds | 6-3 | -4
- Pittsburgh Pirates | 6-3 | +11
- St. Louis Cardinals | 5-4 | -6
- Chicago Cubs | 4-5 | +3
NL West:
- Los Angeles Dodgers | 7-2 | +20
- Arizona Diamondbacks | 5-5 | -17
- San Diego Padres | 4-5 | -7
- Colorado Rockies | 3-6 | -4
- San Francisco Giants | 3-7 | -25
Storylines to know about after a week of baseball
The next wave of stars has arrived
It was hard to miss what the offensive rookies were doing around the league in the opening stretch of games in 2026.
In Cleveland, Chase DeLauter hit 4 home runs in his first 3 regular season games. He’s now tied for the MLB-lead with 5 bombs on the young season. On the south side of Chicago, Munetaka Murakami is providing a sense of optimism in an environment that begs for the opposite. Through 9 games, he’s got 4 home runs and 7 RBIs, giving juice to a team that has already allowed 24 more runs than they’ve scored. Detroit’s new infielder, Kevin McGonigle, the #2 MLB prospect, broke out with 4 hits on Opening Day and has continued the trend with 10 hits in his first 9 games. Another top-5 prospect, J.J. Wetherholt of St. Louis has ripped the cover off the baseball so far, while Pittsburgh just called up the number-one prospect in all of baseball, 19-year-old Konnor Griffin, to play shortstop for them. He’s the first teenager to play in the MLB since Juan Soto (who turned out to be a decent ballplayer) and joins an esteemed list of players to debut as teenagers.
It’s been an impressive start for so many first-year hitters. Worth noting, however, is the fact that the sample size remains small and comes against pitchers just getting their seasons started. Can these guys continue their rampages or will the reality of the 162-game baseball season come to get them? Time will tell.
What is going on in San Francisco?
The Bay Area has been tabbed as a well-run organization over the last decade or so due to their ability to consistently field competitive squads year in and year out. 2026, a year they’ve begun with 3 wins and 7 losses, has not been a year to back up this claim, to this point.
The Giants were shut out in back-to-back games to begin the season for the first time in their franchise’s history. In those two games, they totaled 4 hits, the second-lowest total for the first 18 innings of the season in MLB history. Now through 10 games, the team hasn’t done anything to convince its doubters that things will improve. Their -25 run differential is the worst mark for the franchise since 1896–and, no, I did not mean 1986. For an offense (Rafael Devers, Willy Adames, Matt Chapman, Jung Hoo Lee, Luis Arráez, and Harrison Bader) worth a collective $121.4 million this season, holding the 5th-worst batting average (.208) and hitting the fewest home runs (4) isn’t a promising concoction.
The starting pitching is a bright spot for the Giants. Logan Webb is a perennial Cy Young Award (top pitcher) candidate, Robbie Ray is a former Cy Young winner, and the trio of Landen Roupp, Tyler Mahle, and Adrian Houser could be a force to be reckoned with at the back of the rotation. This unit will need to get their job done so as to not put too much pressure on the bullpen, the most volatile group on any baseball team.
The good news is that the baseball season’s length provides ample opportunity for a collective slump, as the Giants are going through, to pick up momentum and flip the script. Rookie manager Tony Vitello, hired straight from the University of Tennessee’s program (an unprecedented move), has been a vocal leader in years past, and should give the boys in the Bay some life as they adjust their mindsets. Best not rule a team like this out.
Are the first-place Marlins here to stay?
It feels like a silly move to discuss whether a team that has played 9 games out of 162 is a real threat to make the playoffs. It almost feels inevitable that a few months will go by and I’ll be kicking myself for even giving the Marlins of Miami the time of day. Unfortunately, I’m human and my best self is prone to overreaction once in a while. So let’s talk about those Fish.
Sitting at 6-3 and atop the NL East division, the Marlins of 2026 did something that hadn’t been done in their franchise since 2009: they began the season with a 3-game sweep of their opponent. Granted, it was a sweep of the Colorado Rockies, the consensus worst team in baseball. However, a sweep is a sweep, and the Marlins took the full set against a team they were supposed to take the full set from. That counts for something, right?
The big story about the Marlins is the pitching. Led by 2022 Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara, the pitching staff feels like a unit unlike the team has had in years past. Alcantara presents a special case. He won the Cy Young in 2022, then dealt with the reality of Tommy John surgery, taking 2024 to recover. 2025 was his first season back from the injury, and it wasn’t near the level baseball fans know it could’ve been. He went 11-12 with a 5.36 ERA, which was the second-highest ERA among qualifying starters in MLB. It was a tougher start than finish, posting a 7.22 ERA in his first 18 starts, versus a 2.68 ERA over his final 8 starts.
So far in 2026? Alcantara seems nearer that 2022 level: 2-0, 0.00 ERA, 12 strikeouts, 0.56 WHIP (walks+hits per inning pitched) through two starts. His second start of the season was against the White Sox, a complete game shutout, 93 pitches, 7 strikeouts, 3 hits, 0 walks — his 13th career complete game and second career “Maddux” (complete game under 100 pitches). With that complete game shutout, Alcantara reached 10 complete games since 2022, the most of any individual pitcher in MLB over that span. The only team with more is the Phillies (11).
Behind the starting rotation, the Marlins’ bullpen has been off to a red-hot start. With a 3.00 ERA and 3.26 FIP (Fielding-Independent Pitching), the unit sits top 10 in baseball. On top of that, they have the third-best strikeout rate (30.3%) in the league. Numbers like that are promising, but similarly numbers like a league-best .219 BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) and league-worst 16.2% walk rate suggest that unless they remain strong in other areas, the unit could fall to the middle of the pack eventually. If the Marlins look to add this season through the trade market, the bullpen will be an area they are most certainly active in the market for.
With pitching as talented as the Marlins’, the offense doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting. They’ve gotten solid production from the lineup already, so there’s reason to be optimistic, especially for a unit so young and apt for a breakout.
So, is this Marlins team legit? There’s no accurate way to predict that. The only way to know the answer to that question is by watching their games and seeing how they result. The schedule context is too strong to ignore: the Fish have won two series against the Rockies (3-0 sweep) and the Chicago White Sox (2-1), two of the worst teams in baseball in recent seasons, while losing their most recent series to the Yankees (1-2). Still, you should never say never with a team like Miami. If Alcantara and the rest of the rotation can continue to shove, backed up by a high-power bullpen, this team could be in the conversation come the fall. To summarize, I won’t give you a clear-cut answer to the question, but I will tell you to keep an eye on the team from south Florida because they could have the most potential of any dark horse squad to break out this season.
3 things for in the next 2 weeks
World Series rematch: Beginning tonight (Monday April 6), the Los Angeles Dodgers take on the Toronto Blue Jays in the second-earliest World Series rematch since 1997. The earliest rematch featured the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals in 2016. Both of these teams made major additions since their fierce, 7-game war of a series, so this early-season go-around will be a nice feeler for both teams as they get the first bit of rust off their backs. This is must-watch baseball.
Can the rookie wave sustain itself? Through roughly 10 games, rookies that began Opening Day with their teams have accumulated roughly 40 plate appearances, give or take a few. I highlighted multiple rookie hitters that have been seemingly shot out of a metaphorical cannon, making it seem as though getting comfortable with MLB-level pitching isn’t that difficult. Over the next two weeks, we’ll see that sample size double. Over the next two weeks, we’ll get an even better idea of the types of players making themselves known on the baseball landscape. Can they keep doing what they’re doing? The next two weeks will give us a much better idea.
Cal Raleigh and the Mariners need to wake up: One of the final four teams of last season, the Seattle Mariners nearly made their first World Series appearance ever in 2025. The first couple weeks of 2026 has been a stark contrast to the bliss they experienced then. The club sits at 4-6, just two games behind the first place, 6-4 Astros, and has a positive run differential (+3), but it’s the performance of Seattle’s star players that has me concerned.
Raleigh hit a historic 60 home runs last season, putting up the greatest offensive season ever for a catcher. Through 10 games and 43 plate appearances, he’s still searching for his first homer of 2026 and has struck out 20 times. Josh Naylor, extended on a 5-year contract in the offseason, and Julio Rodriguez have only managed 5 and 6 total hits, respectively, and none have gone for extra bases. In my eyes, it starts with these players. If two of these three players are cold, the team is cold. The next two weeks will tell us if this start is simply rust or if it’s something the Mariners should be more concerned about.
Inner Half 