About 10 percent into the season, the Mlb standings were already a mess almost everywhere — except at the top, where the Los Angeles Dodgers sat at No. 1 with the best record in baseball. Their early grip on the league has been driven in part by a 25-year-old who has turned the opening stretch into his own showcase: Andy Pages led Los Angeles in nearly every offensive category through 16 games.
Pages opened with a.362/.508/.745 line and a 246 wRC+, then widened the gap by leading MLB in hits, RBI, batting average and fWAR through 16 games. That kind of start is not supposed to belong to a player still early in his career, but Pages made the first power rankings impossible to ignore because the Dodgers were winning and he was carrying a larger share of the offense than anyone around him.
The rankings were the season’s first attempt to sort through all 30 clubs, and the picture they produced was as chaotic as the calendar suggested. The article highlighted a mix of players and teams beyond Los Angeles, including Drake Baldwin, Ben Rice, Brice Turang and Mason Miller, a reminder that the opening month can sharpen individual stories even when the broader table is unstable.
There were also signs of strain and improbability around the league. The Atlanta Braves had the lowest ERA in MLB despite an avalanche of arm injuries, while the Milwaukee Brewers were trying to stop a five-game skid with Brice Turang serving as the temporary leadoff man and supplying a.617 SLG% and five stolen bases. On the mound, Mason Miller had struck out 19 of the 24 batters he faced and allowed just two baserunners — a Luis Arraez single and a Spencer Torkelson walk — a level of dominance that few pitchers can sustain for long.
That is what makes the first month so revealing. The Dodgers are already where they wanted to be in the mlb standings, but the bigger story is how quickly the season is sorting out stars, exposing fragile starts and showing which teams can survive the early noise. For Los Angeles, the next question is not whether Pages has arrived for now. It is whether the Dodgers can keep winning with him performing like one of the sport’s best bats in the opening weeks.
