Random Thoughts From the 1st Month of the 2024 Major League Baseball Season

There is nothing like being at the ballpark to catch a game in person. I’ve always used it as a way of telling myself, winter is over, get ready and enjoy being outside again.

Although, living in the Seattle area, the first month does not guarantee warmer weather. In fact, you better bring a heavy coat for those evening games. Once the sun goes down, the wind coming off of the Sound can be nasty and cold at times.

It’s certainly symbolic for the type of starts to the season most batters have here in Seattle during those early months. You get those flashes of brilliance and power, but the cold takes over, and balls destined for Edgar’s or the bullpens, end up dying on the warning track becoming deep fly outs with the cold sapping the energy from the ball. They call this the Marine Layer Effect.

Seattle Mariners center fielder Julio Rodriguez celebrates his homer in the bottom of the third inning Wednesday afternoon at T-Mobile Park in Seattle on April 19, 2023. (Kevin Clark / The Seattle Times)

This year has been no different, but interesting enough, there seems to be a power outage throughout most of baseball.

Last year saw 29 players hit 30 or more home runs, which was 6 more than the previous season in 2022. This year, through a little more than a month, 14 of the 29 players who hit 30 HRs in 2023, have 5 or less currently, and 11 have 3 HRs or fewer. It’s probably a little early to hit the panic button, but at some point, these players are going to have to catch fire to match or surpass the production numbers they saw last season.

This isn’t the only notable observation through the first month or so of the baseball season. Here are a few others.

• It’s still early, but a couple of teams have surprised many, jumping out of the gates early. Kansas City and Oakland are teams who have been bad recently, and both are exceeding expectations so far this season. Royals are currently 5 games over .500 and Oakland has 17 wins. The A’s didn’t record their 17th win last year until June 11th.
• On the other hand, Houston is off to their worst start in years, and everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for the defending AL West Champs. You won’t find much sympathy over here though.
• The Dodgers once again are absolutely loaded on offense. No surprise there, especially when you add Shohei Ohtani to your lineup. LA is leading in…