When looking at the AL East during spring straining, I had the thoughts that most fans probably shared: Boston is going to win the AL, the Yankees will finally flounder to the bottom of the division, and the Blue Jays/Orioles will fight for the third spot leaving the Rays for dust. However, it is now a month into the MLB season, and I want to look at some of the teams in this division that I didn’t expect to be where they are.

New York Yankees

If I had been told that the New York Yankees, a team I thought was severely depleted and doomed for a one-off bad year, were leading the division, I would have been in tears.

The pitching still isn’t good. The one bright spot is Max Fried, who has a 1.01 ERA and 1.4 WAR across 44.2 innings. I was going to mention Carlos Rodon, who is currently the No. 2 guy in the rotation, but they DFA’d him. Whoops. Moving on, the remainder of the starters have negative WAR and all have an ERA around 5, except Marcus Stroman, who currently sits with an ERA of 11.57.

Besides Devin Williams’ bad start to the year, the Bullpen has been decent. All of them, except Williams, have an ERA+ over 100, and all, except Leiter and Williams, have slightly positive WAR.

If there is one thing to point to that ultimately saves this team from having a .500 Red Sox team leading the division is the offense. The only player out of the everyday crew hitting below .200 is Jazz Chisholm, and most of them are hitting well above average. Paul Goldschmidt has been a fantastic addition to the pinstripes, sporting batting splits of .349/.397/.481, with a 151 OPS+. Pretty impressive, considering that Goldschmidt turns 38 in September. The rest of the roster has been hitting quite well, but the main star of the show has been Aaron Judge. So far, he is hitting .423/.510/.777 with 11 homers, 55 hits, 33 RBI, and a ridiculous 1.287 OPS.

Overall, the Yankees shouldn’t be here, but the ridiculous hitting power is pushing them to this spot.

Boston Red Sox

I projected this team to be way better than this, but I feel like I shouldn’t have.

Early on, they took opening day against the Rangers, but they went on a nosedive, losing four straight. They went on to blaze through the remainder of the following series against the Orioles and a series against the struggling St. Louis Cardinals (the only series sweep so far this season).

Since that five-game win streak, the Sox have been mediocre at best- barely avoiding series sweeps by scraping one win either in game one or at the end of the series.

They have also lost several games that the team should’ve won. In the late April series at the Rogers Centre, Boston blew a 6-0 lead, and a 2-0 lead to lose both games. As of writing this, they most recently blew a 3-1 lead against the Minnesota Twins to lose their second in a row.

The main problem stems from the bullpen and consistent hitting. The offense comes out hot within the first three innings and then goes silent as the opponent catches up. Now, with the bullpen, it.. isn’t the best. Out of the main five guys in the ‘pen, only one pitcher has an ERA below 5 (seriously,) and some of the roster moves (like consistently putting in Justin Slaten) have cost the team valuable wins.

Although one could argue that the Starting pitching isn’t all that good either, quality starts out of Crochet, Buehler, and Bello say otherwise. I haven’t liked the starts from Tanner Houck,

Overall, the team needs work, but a weak AL East is saving the Sox for now.

Toronto Blue Jays 

On paper, this team looked so much better than last year’s. However, it has gone pretty much nowhere.

Free agent pickup Anthony Santander has been an absolute disaster to start the year. He’s batting .196/.275/.336 with an OPS+ of 74. Although he does have the most home runs (5) out of the everyday fielders, I did expect him to be a huge piece of this offense, and frankly, he hasn’t been that.

Most of the younger players haven’t been fantastic as well. Ernie Clement and Alan Roden are both batting under.200 this season, and have an ops+ well below 100 (in fact, Ernie Clement is currently sitting at 50.) The Jays also have ZERO hitting power this season, Which is unusual for a lineup that consists of Anthony Santander, George Springer, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

The pitching has been decent, much better than last year. Despite the high ERAs of Berrios, Bassitt, and Gausman, the jays have gotten quality starts out of them this season. Actually, all three of them are above league average in ERA+. The bottom two of the rotation have seen struggles, with Bowden Francis in particular not being the dominant version of himself that he was last season. The bullpen has also seen it’s fair share of struggles, but Yimi Garcia and Jeff Hoffman give glimmers of hope as to what it could be.

AI knew both the Orioles and the rays would default, I just never expected this division to be so…. mediocre.