It’s indeed great to see baseball back. The opening week is truly full of excitement, tests and postponements. It seems that staying healthy and being tested negative are the most positive things in baseball. It’s really hard to tell if the 2020 season will be completed because of the COVID outbreak between some players and staff members. However, baseball returns after months-long wait, at least it’s back.
Some players get hot early in the first week of this 60-game season. Who’s hot and on the leaderboard? Any big surprises?Hitters
Seattle Mariners selected Kyle Lewis in the first round in the 2016 MLB Draft. He made his MLB debut on September 10, 2019. In 18 games last season, Kyle Lewis hit .268/.293/.592. This season, he started the season hot. In the first 10 games, he has hits in all 10 games this year and collected 17 hits. He hit .425/.477/.650 to begin the season. It might be too early, but there are only 50 games left, Kyle Lewis is leading in the Rookie of the Year race.
Aaron Judge hit .167/.167/.250 to start the season. In the 3-game series in D.C., Judge had only 2 hits. However, Judge gets hot and has homered in 5 consecutive games. In these 5 games, Judged hit 6 home runs and collected 13 RBIs. He takes the lead for the most home runs and runs batted in in Major League Baseball thus far in 2020.
Colin Moran crushed 5 home runs in 9 games. He only had 13 home runs in 149 games last season. It will be worth watching if he can keep “hot hands”.
Solano becomes the hottest hitter in the Giants lineup. He hit .484/.500/.710 in 9 games. Solano had a career-high 34 RBIs in the 2013 season. It might be possible that he could break his career RBI record this season.
40-year-young Nelson Cruz can still hit very well. On July 26, he homered twice and collected 7 RBI against the White Sox.
Pitchers
Shane Bieber is truly on fire. In 2 sensational starts, he struck out 27 times without giving up any runs. It’s only the first week of the season, but Bieber is the early favorite for the AL Cy Young award.
Trevor Bauer and Sonny Gray both threw 20 strikeouts in 2 starts. The Reds and Indians will play against each other in the next 4 games. It will be a great series to see top pitching performance.
Detroit Tigers is .500 after 10 games. Joe Jimenez secured 4 of 5 wins and he didn’t blow any saves. Zach Britton takes the closer role with Aroldis Chapman unavailable due to the coronavirus. It’s not a difficult job for Britton since he already earned 145 saves from 2011 to 2019. He and Tyler Rogers didn’t give up any runs thus far this season.
Shane Bieber and Lance Lynn haven’t given up any runs so far this season. Trevor Bauer only gave up a run by allowing a solo shot to Niko Goodrum. Hitters all hit below .150 against these top pitchers.
Normally, the performance of the first week will not guarantee anything. However, there are only 50 games left in the season. These players, who have hot starts, are early favorites for the awards. How to maintain “hot” is going to be extremely important for these players. Meanwhile, some players that had slow starts will have to adjust quickly.
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