Biggest Busts of MLB's First Month of the 2024 Season

The first month of the MLB season is not enough time to overreact, but that doesn't need to stop us from identifying the biggest busts of the season so far.

We have just enough data now to have a sense for which teams are good and which ones might want to start looking toward selling at the trade deadline to improve their outlook.

There are also some individual players who are struggling, yet there is an expectation they will bounce back eventually. That won't exclude them from this list, though.

Here, we look at the biggest busts of the season, from team to individual performances. For some, injuries factor in. For all of them, though, it's either a lack of delivering on expectations or being epic failures.

A slow start for Blake Snell was always reasonable, considering how late in spring training he signed with the San Francisco Giants.

The 31-year-old signed his two-year, $62 million deal over a month after Giants pitchers and catchers reported to spring training and just before the regular season began.

Snell has been reluctant to use it as an excuse for his slow start, but the numbers are still striking. His .273 xBA is in the bottom 23 percentile, and the 11.57 ERA through 11.2 innings in three starts is concerning.

Now, he's on the 15-day injured list with an adductor strain, which Giants manager Bob Melvin classified as "moderate" but provided no timetable for a return.

For Snell to both underperform in a short sample size, and already be injured for a Giants team fighting in a competitive NL West, is one of the biggest busts in the game right now.

That Dylan Cease is thriving, effectively as Snell's replacement for the San Diego Padres, adds insult to injury. As is Jordan Montgomery getting off to a strong start for the Arizona Diamondbacks after also signing just before the regular season began.

It's not like anyone expected the Milwaukee Brewers to win the Corbin Burnes trade. After all, they gave up a Cy Young winner and strikeout leader under the age of 30.

But they were relying on third baseman Joey Ortiz and left-handed pitcher DL Hall as centerpieces of their return in the trade to be key contributors in 2024.

While Burnes has lived up to expectations with the Baltimore Orioles, Ortiz and Hall have been underwhelming early in their time with Milwaukee.

Ortiz is slashing .245/.351/.306 and 1-for-13 across his last seven games. He isn't hitting the ball hard, or particularly often, over his first 49 at-bats. He gets the majority of appearances at third base but does not play every day, sometimes sitting for fellow rookie Oliver Dunn.

Hall was a mess before going on the 15-day injured list with a left knee sprain. His 7.71 ERA and 11.9 walk rate across four starts raise questions about the Brewers' decision to stretch out the 25-year-old as a starter, as opposed to the mostly bullpen work he'd done in two MLB seasons with the Orioles.

There are no redeeming metrics for Hall, who wasn't expected to be Burns but is hopefully better than this.

Credit the Cincinnati Reds for making an honest effort toward improvement with their offseason moves, but the early returns on the one-year, $16 million Frankie Montas signing are not good.

The 31-year-old was already returning from injury when the Reds signed him, and it shows through his dip in velocity. His fastball is down to 94 mph from 96.4 mph in 2021, before the injury. His other pitches are also down a few ticks, and he's now back on the shelf after taking a pitch off the elbow.

It's way too early to panic, and he is expected to only miss two starts but allowing 18 hits in 19.1 innings through his first five starts is not ideal for Montas and the Reds. His strikeout rate is just 16.7 percent, while his walk rate is at 11.9 percent.

The time off could help Montas find what he's missing, or the limited sample is indicative of a declining player.

Anyone who predicted Vladimir Guerrero Jr. would return to MVP-level form is still waiting. He's slashing .214/.330/.337 for a lowly .667 OPS through his first 98 at-bats.

Each category is actually worse than his disappointing .789 OPS from last season.

A real question for the Blue Jays this season was whether the pitching would regress from an impressive 2023 campaign. That's exactly what's happening in Toronto.

Last season, the team had the fourth-best team ERA and was top-10 in WHIP and opponents' batting average. So far this season, it is bottom-10 in all three categories.

Yet the pitching has still been a bright spot. Only four teams have more quality starts than Toronto. Since April 8, only the Philadelphia Phillies and Seattle Mariners have more quality starts.

It's the lack of timely hitting and their stars not playing like stars that have the Blue Jays fighting to stay above .500, despite a poor run differential.

This is no longer just a stretch of bad play from Guerrero Jr. It's starting to look like his magical 2021 was merely a mirage.

Singling out the Astros' bullpen might seem cruel considering they don't do too many things well.

Most of their starters are either injured, ineffective, inexperienced or some combination of the three. The lineup is talented but seemingly allergic to knocking in runners in scoring position.

But then there's the lauded bullpen, which hasn't exactly lived up to the billing. When the Astros signed closer Josh Hader to a five-year, $95 million deal, they seemed to be forming one of the game's better back ends of a bullpen with Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly carrying them into the ninth.

It hasn't worked that way at all. They aren't nearly as good as projected and rarely hand over a lead for their bullpen to save.

In the rare instances they do, it's tenuous. The Astros are tied for the fewest saves and the second-most blown saves. They are 12 games under .500 as of Friday, their worst start since 2013.

None of this was a part of the plan.

The Cardinals' offense is not supposed to be this inept.

Only three teams have scored fewer runs, have a lower OPS or collected fewer hits. Only the Chicago White Sox have fewer home runs. Only two NL teams have a worse run differential. They are also bottom-five in batting average.

Jordan Walker, the Cardinals' 21-year-old right fielder, was recently demoted to Triple-A after a dreadful start to his sophomore season. He's slashing .155/.239/.259 with a 26.9 percent strikeout rate without any home runs through his first 58 at-bats.

Paul Goldschmidt, the 36-year-old first baseman who won the NL MVP just two seasons ago, is showing a steep decline. It's bad enough that fans are comparing it to Matt Carpenter in 2021.

Forgive them for being dramatic. He's slashing .200/.294/.278 for a lowly .572 OPS. He's played first base in 24 of the Cardinals' first 25 games. St. Louis is tied for the fourth-worst fWAR at the position.

The Cardinals made a strong effort to fortify their pitching this offseason, but it won't mean much if they are going to hit like this.

A week ago, this same columnist was dismissive of the Chicago White Sox being historically bad. Sure, it's a historically bad start, but could they really be this bad?

The White Sox have not won a game since, losing seven straight. They are 3-22 after 25 games with a painful minus-85 run differential. The next worst run differential belongs to the Colorado Rockies at minus-56.

Chicago is considerably worse than any other team in baseball, and there are several bad ones. The latest PECOTA projections have the White Sox losing 103 games, but that merely assumes they could win another 56, which looks less likely every time they take the field.

They are at the bottom of every major offensive category: batting average, OPS, hits and home runs.

On the pitching side, only the Rockies have a higher ERA. The White Sox are bottom-five in WHIP and opponents' batting average.

It's wild to think they had World Series aspirations just a couple of years ago.

For as good as Juan Soto has been since the New York Yankees traded for him, the pairing with Aaron Judge hasn't fully taken off yet.

The dynamic left-right, one-two punch has been mostly one-sided as Judge sputters out the gate. He's still hitting the ball hard, just not nearly often enough with a .189 batting average through his first 95 at-bats. His 33 strikeouts is tied for seventh-most in baseball. Inexplicably, he's even hearing boos from Yankees fans.

Judge is whiffing at offspeed pitches at 57.1 percent, a much higher clip than he did in 2023 (47 percent) and the most since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season (62.9 percent). He's also struggling against breaking balls from lefties, whiffing 50 percent of the time.

The Yankees have been good enough to survive this, but they will need Soto and Judge to be playing well at the same time eventually.