Are the Angels awful? Is Juan Soto the best signing? My MLB Early Season Takeaways

By Brandon Murdock

Texas Rangers players admiring their World Series rings from 2023 on opening night before playing the Chicago Cubs. [Photo: Aol.com]

The 2024 season is three games in, or four games depending on what team you root for, but this was a jam-packed weekend full of baseball. While the season is still young and these takes are from a small sample size, I will give my three takeaways from MLB’s opening weekend.

3: MLB umpiring is looking hysterically bad:

Umpires are missing calls left and right to begin the season and they are making it tough to keep backing them up against the installment of robot umps for balls and strikes. The Atlanta Braves dealt with this in the first inning of their game against the Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday when Max Fried threw a pitch right down the middle that would have been strike three. Instead, the umpire blew the call, and as a result, the Phillies ended up scoring three in the frame. Another big example came in the Rangers' opening night game when Jonah Heim stopped playing due to being absolutely certain that Miles Mastrbuoni foul tipped a ball (he was right) which allowed Michael Busch to come in and score the go-ahead run in the ninth inning. I know it’s early, but the umpires need to be better.

2: The Angels may be worse than we thought: 

Nobody came into this season with very high expectations for the Los Angeles Angels after losing megastar Shohei Ohtani this offseason. It does not make matters any better when you have to deal with the powerhouse Baltimore Orioles on opening day. This series showed Mike Trout needs a lot of help with this lineup as they were outscored by the Orioles 25-14 in the three-game set. Anthony Rendon said in the off-season that baseball was not his top priority and he showed that in this series as he is still looking to reach base for the first time as he was unsuccessful in his first 11 at-bats. The Angels did leave the series with something to build off of by winning the series finale 4-1, but it is going to be a long summer in Anaheim.

1: Juan Soto was the best pickup of the off-season:

If you are a fan of the New York Yankees, the only thing better than beating the Boston Red Sox is beating the Houston Astros. In this case, the Yankees were able to do it four times, with a major thanks to Juan Soto. In each of the first four games, Soto has been the one to make the winning play. On opening day, he threw out Mauricio Dubon at the plate in the ninth to preserve the lead. In the next three games, he was able to knock in the game-winning run in each. Soto is currently doing Soto things as his batting average is sitting at .529 and his OPS is 1.365. He has also taken three walks so far. His approach has already spread to his teammates as the Yankees were able to score a lot of runs this series without the long ball and overall have looked a lot more patient at the plate. This is very early into the season but Soto is doing everything he can in a contract year.