May 4, 2026
·Brandon Gustafson
One of the greatest parts of baseball being a 162-game season is that there’s no shortage of stories. Each game tells its own unique story, which naturally means we see plenty of stories being told on a game-by-game, series-by-series, week-by-week and even month-by-month basis.
With the calendar officially flipping to May late last week, we’re seeing a ton of stories getting written.
Top storylines from the 2026 MLB season so far
With SeatGeek serving as the Official Ticket Marketplace of MLB, we keep a close eye on all the happenings across the league with all 30 teams and their players. There are a ton of awesome and intriguing stories ongoing right now, but these are some of my favorites of the early stages of the 2026 MLB season.
Shohei Ohtani is a better pitcher than hitter right now
Look, Ohtani is must-see TV even as “just” an everyday designated hitter, but his allure has always been his ability as a two-way player. We’ve always seen that in spurts, but Ohtani has had trouble staying healthy on the mound. He returned to pitching last year after not making a single start in 2024. The results were great — a 2.87 ERA, 1.043 WHIP and 11.9 K/9 rate. However, he pitched just 47 innings in 14 appearances.
Ohtani is fully healthy as a starting pitcher in 2026, and boy has he been dominant. In fact, he’s been even better on the hill than in the batter’s box, if you can believe it. Ohtani owns a ridiculous 0.60 ERA and 0.867 WHIP in 30 innings across five starts with a 10.2 K/9 rate and no home runs allowed. Yes, the Dodgers are keeping a close eye on him and utilizing a six-man rotation, but boy has Ohtani been dominant every sixth day thus far.
Ohtani is already a four-time MVP, but he may very well be the Cy Young frontrunner in the National League right now. He’s just that good.
Jose Soriano’s insane start to the year
Soriano is now in his fourth MLB season, and he’s had a great start to his career. The young right-hander has always had electric stuff, but he’s been more of a groundball specialist thanks in large part to a devastating sinker. His other pitches — a curveball, 4-seamer, splitter and slider — are all really good offerings, too.
Soriano has taken an incredible leap in the early stages of 2026. As good as Ohtani and guys like Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal and Cristopher Sanchez have been, Soriano is arguably the best pitcher in the game right now with a 5-1 record, 0.84 ERA, 0.983 WHIP and 49 strikeouts in seven starts and 42 2/3 innings. Soriano has allowed four total runs all year, and three of them came in his last start. Soriano is still keeping the ball on the ground at an elite rate, but he’s missing more bats than ever before. After an 8.3 K/9 rate last year, Soriano has a 10.3 K/9 mark this season.
Soriano has improved across the board. His strikeouts are up, his walks and hits allowed are down and he’s been incredible at limiting soft contact with a 33.7% hard-hit rate and 87.9 mph average exit velocity, both of which rank incredibly well among qualified MLB starting pitchers.
The Angels have really struggled on the pitching side of things over the last decade, really, but Soriano is a major win for a team that desperately needs good pitching — and Soriano has been more than good thus far.
Braves are back
I didn’t pick the Braves to make the playoffs, but I did think they could be a sneaky postseason contender after a poor 2025 showing given the talent on the roster. Heck with a postseason contender — the Braves are the best team in baseball right now.
Atlanta exits the weekend at 25-10, the best mark in the game. The Braves have won all but one series this year, and that outlier was a 2-2 split with Arizona. They’re first in runs scored — 20 more than the second-place Chicago Cubs — and are second in team ERA at 3.19. Matt Olson and Drake Baldwin are having monster seasons at the plate and Bryce Elder and Chris Sale look like All-Stars. Really, the only thing that hasn’t worked for Atlanta is former MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. getting off to a slow start before landing on the injured list with a hamstring strain.
At least through this point of 2026, Atlanta is the most complete team in baseball.
AL Central rookies
Ah, rookies. Sometimes the game’s best players take a while to acclimate, and sometimes youngsters hit the ground running. We’ve seen some awesome rookie performances in the early stages of 2026, and no division better encapsulates that than the American League Central.
Munetaka Murakami has been a must-watch when he steps to the dish for the White Sox, as the Japanese slugger is tied with Aaron Judge for the MLB lead in home runs at 13. Any questions about his ability to slug in MLB are out the window.
Detroit’s Kevin McGonigle may be just 21, but he looks like a regular All-Star at the plate with an OPS nearing .900 and a batting average over .300. He’s also making a ton of contact while already appearing to be the Tigers' best everyday bat.
He may be coming off his worst start of the year, but goodness gracious has Parker Messick been a stud for the Guardians. The young southpaw owns a 2.40 ERA and sub-1.000 WHIP while allowing two or fewer runs in five of his seven starts. His worst start was Sunday when he allowed four runs over five innings to the A’s, but if that is a low point for a rookie, things are certainly going right.
And sticking with Cleveland, Chase DeLauter may not be swatting a ton of homers like he did to kick off the season when he went yard in each of the Guardians’ first three games, but he’s hitting over .300 with an OPS over .900 and more walks than strikeouts.
At this point, it sure looks like the American League Rookie of the Year is coming from the AL Central.
A’s and Pirates contending
Parity is a good thing in sports, and it’s always good when franchises who haven’t contended in some time appear to be establishing themselves as legitimate postseason contenders.
That’s the case with the Athletics, who are 18-16 and sit in first place in the AL West as the division’s lone team above .500, as well as the Pirates, who may be in last place in the NL Central but are 19-16 overall thanks in large part to a dominant pitching staff. The Athletics haven’t made the postseason since 2020 — the final year of a three-straight playoff appearance stretch — while Pittsburgh has missed out on October every year since 2015.
Will one or both of those droughts end this year? It’s obviously too early to tell. But the fact that the A’s are taking advantage of a poor start to the year by the likes of the Mariners and Astros is good to see, as is the fact that the Pirates are doing a good job of keeping pace in an incredibly talented NL Central. The young talent each team has accumulated is really starting to bear fruit at the MLB level, and it’d be fun to see both these franchises trying to make some noise in August and September while contending for a postseason berth.
How early firings impact the Red Sox and Phillies
I don’t like seeing managers — or anyone, really — lose their jobs. I just want to make that very clear. However, as a sports fan who has a very competitive side, I do enjoy seeing how teams and players handle adversity.
The Red Sox and Phillies — two playoff teams from a year ago — have gotten off to dreadful starts. That led to the very early dismissals of Alex Cora, a World Series-winning manager, in Boston, and Rob Thomson, who led Philadelphia to the World Series in 2022 and the playoffs each of the last four years. Again, I don’t like that either of those two lost their jobs, and I’m not here to say whether or not either decision was the right one.
But some teams handle these situations better than others. Some teams will view a managerial move as waving the proverbial white flag and they’ll go through the motions the rest of the way. For others, change is a good thing and they can actually improve moving forward, either from just a new voice leading the charge or because that firing was a wake-up call. Heck, that happened with the Phillies in 2022 when Thomson took over for Joe Girardi, and Philly made it all the way to the World Series.
The Red Sox are 3-4 under Chad Tracy after moving on from Cora, so that “new manager bump” hasn’t quite been a thing just yet in Boston. But the change this year appears to have worked for the Phillies once again, who are 5-1 under interim manager Don Mattingly through games of May 3. Mattingly wasn’t just a great player in his day, but he has 12 years of full-time managerial experience under his belt. This is a veteran team with a proven manager, so perhaps the Phils are worth keeping an eye on moving forward.
ABS is a hit
This is more a general observation as a baseball fan who watches a lot of games, but man, ABS has been great. I had some familiarity with it as I also watch quite a bit of minor league baseball, but you never know how things are going to work at the MLB level.
There were some growing pains early on as teams figured out when and where to utilize their challenges, and it’s been fun to see how teams operate from that standpoint. Do you save it for late innings or key situations? Do only your top hitters get to challenge? Do you even allow your pitchers to consider utilizing a challenge from the mound?
Replay reviews in sports are a good thing as we want the calls to be correct. MLB adding replay for plays like tags, fair balls and other important moments was needed, but those reviews can take a hair too long at times. ABS has been an excellent addition to the big league level given it takes little time at all for a replay to occur and for a call to be confirmed or overruled.
Given how well received ABS has been, you figure they’ll add more challenges to the mix moving forward. Personally, I think giving each team two unsuccessful challenges per game is the perfect amount, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it increase to three over the next few years.