It’s only the second full week of the 2026 Major League Baseball season, and it’s already tempting to sound the alarms on some of the sport’s biggest names. But why haven’t we heard about some of the players who were the face of baseball last season?
Let’s start with the American League’s Most Valuable Player candidates from the 2025 season — Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh and José Ramírez. Judge had all eyes on him from the season’s start, as the New York Yankees played the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday, March 25. He struck out four times in his five at-bats.
Then there’s Raleigh, the catcher who led MLB with 60 home runs on an unexpected tear last season. He has only hit one home run through 13 games with the Seattle Mariners, and is on pace for 12 home runs total this season.
Ramírez, a strong hitter and third baseman who posted 5.8 wins above replacement last season, has a batting average of .163 and 0.1 wins above replacement for the Cleveland Guardians through the first 13 games played this season.
It’s hard to fathom that these three players are the same dominant players who were in the race for AL MVP last year.
There’s also Paul Skenes, the National League Cy Young Award winner for the 2025 season. He started the first game of the 2026 season for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but was pulled before the end of the first inning. He was charged for five earned runs in that game — yikes. So what happened to all these “great” players?
Well, a myriad of things could have happened in the 178 days between the two regular seasons. Although each player is in a different situation, categorizing these well-known players into a slump is not completely inaccurate. But what could be causing these slumps?
The aforementioned players have carried their teams to many of their wins in past seasons, which could cause stress to play well and conversely result in poor performance. Since these big-name stars have immense pressure on them, they could be fighting a mental battle trying to live up to who everyone expects them to be — especially Judge, whose performance in the World Baseball Classic left a lot to be desired.
The mental component of baseball tends to be overlooked when analyzing early-season performance, yet it can be a very influential factor. Players like Judge and Ramírez aren’t just competing against the pitcher, they’re competing against their own legacies. When these players set lofty standards and break records, anything short of that can feel like failure — even within a small sample size.
What is happening now in MLB reflects the natural volatility of baseball rather than a true regression in talent. Over a 162-game season, even elite players go through highs and lows. These fluctuations are a part of the game that every player experiences.
The first few weeks of the season draw such massive viewership that when these struggles occur, they are magnified. These early slumps, while worth noting, are rarely predictive of an entire season. Instead, they highlight the adjustments players make throughout the season that define the game of baseball. For a season as long as MLB’s, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.