Two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani continues to do amazing things \u2014 counting 2025, he leads MLB with 43 straight games reaching base and 28\u2009\u00b2\/\u2083 consecutive innings with no earned runs allowed \u2014 and perennial stars Corbin Carroll, Giancarlo Stanton, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Max Fried, Tarik Skubal and Sandy Alc\u00e1ntara are all off to big starts, too.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s notable how many surprise players are making early impacts. Here\u2019s 12:<\/p>\n
1. Joey Wiemer, Nats OF<\/p>\n
He\u2019s on his fifth organization in two years, and maybe the late bloomer is finally figuring things out at bat (.440 BA, 1.253 OPS). Many hitting coaches have tried to change his unorthodox swing, but he\u2019s determined to make it work.<\/p>\n
2. Jose Soriano, Angels SP<\/p>\n
With his big stuff (99-plus mph), the mystery really is why he pitched to an average 4.26 ERA last year (100 ERA-plus). But now he not only leads the majors with a 1.2 WAR and three wins, but holds a 971 ERA-plus at 0.45.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani continues to do amazing things \u2014 counting 2025, he leads MLB with 43 straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,49,50,51,56,60,4,185,430,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-672006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago-white-sox","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-cleveland-guardians","12":"tag-los-angeles-angels","13":"tag-minnesota-twins","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-sports-columnists","17":"tag-sports-plus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116377403599792193","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}