Struggling Stars or Just Misfortune? The Shocking Truth Behind MLB’s Slowest Starts Revealed

Ah, early-season baseball — where optimism runs wild but stats have a funny way of telling a different story. It’s only about a fifth of the way through 2025, and yet, some of the game’s brightest stars have stumbled out of the gate with a shockingly poor showing. You’re left to wonder: are we witnessing mere growing pains or the ominous start of a deeper slump? For every superstar who dusts off the cobwebs and returns to form, there’s another whose slow start may signal something more permanent. The nuance lies in separating the bad luck from the warning signs, and that’s exactly what this deep dive by Opta Analyst aims to unravel. So, who’s going to turn it around — and who’s already past the turning point? Buckle up; this isn’t your typical hot-take piece, but an incisive examination of six marquee hitters skating on thin ice early this season.

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What’s gone wrong? Henderson has been on a Hall of Fame track over his first nearly three seasons, but he’s had a mediocre start for an Orioles club that looks like it’s having a lost year. The shortstop swings hard and punishes the ball (118.1 BIP+), but he’s doing it a little less often this season and less productively when he does make great contact.

Just three players have a wider negative gap between their weighted on-base average and “expected” wOBA based on exit velocities and launch angles. And his BABIP is tied for the 19th worst in MLB among qualified batters. Eventually, Alvarez will stop hitting the ball right at people.

Not all of them will, however. With the season just more than 20% of the way down, Opta Analyst conducted an independent investigation into six All-Stars who have played right around replacement level.

Is he bad now? No, stop it. But Henderson does not look like a player who should stay at shortstop forever, and a move off that position will make him a little less of a supernova. 

It’s still early in the MLB season, but the horrible April (and early May) of some players who have been All-Stars should be cause for panic. Who will change it, and who won’t? 

Carlos Correa, Minnesota Twins 

The Numbers: .216/.256/.304; 1 HR; 81.8 RV+; 58 wRC+; 0.3 fWAR 

Henderson is usually a Statcast darling for how frequently he crushes the ball at launch angles that would create homers and other extra-base hits, but this year he’s barreling the ball less in part because he’s just not hitting the ball at the optimal angle. His at-bats per home run (34.7) and RBI (20.8) are career lows, and his 27.4 swing-and-miss percentage is a career high.

Even though his line-drive percentage has risen from a career-low 19.7% in 2024 to 22.0%, Bellinger’s BIP+ remains at a woeful 76.9 after it was just 63.0 last season. He’s been dying in a barrage of sliders: He’s 0 for 16 in plate appearances that end with them. Few hitters have struggled as much with a specific pitch this year as Bellinger has against sliders.

Is he bad now? I refuse to submit to this fear without a bit more evidence. Once he returns from his latest IL stint (retroactive to May 1) due to a left knee contusion, let’s see if he can marry his frequent great contact with a bit less missing of the ball altogether – and hope some of his horrible luck turns around. He has the second-worst BABIP (.159) in MLB behind only Josh Bell of the Washington Nationals (.132).

What’s gone wrong? Bad luck, mostly. And that continued Monday when he was placed on the IL with a hand injury. Alvarez has been one of baseball’s most fearsome hitters since he hit the league in 2019 and a particularly big star since leading the Astros to a World Series win in 2022.

Gunnar Henderson, Baltimore Orioles

The Numbers: .260/.300/.433, 3 HRs; 102.2 RV+; 107 wRC+; 0.3 fWAR 

There’s some good news, though: Trout has stayed healthy, and he’s still putting up some of the prettiest numbers in baseball in barrel percentage (16.7%), expected slugging percentage (.577), and even sprint speed (28.5 mph). Other positives: the nine homers and 183.2 BIP+. Trout is still hitting just .179, partly because his whiff rate and strikeout percentages have jumped in tandem to stunning levels, and his contact+ has fallen from 102 in 2024 to 85.2. Seeing Trout with a 29.8% K rate – 15th highest in the game – hurts.

Early season baseball lies to you, but not always.

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Is he bad now? I’m worried that he might be. Correa isn’t this bad, but he turns 31 in September and has been injured often enough that it’s reasonable to wonder when his decline will ramp up. The Twins, who owe him more than million over the next three years, need Father Time to stay away a bit longer. 

Yordan Alvarez, Houston Astros

The Numbers: .210/.306/.340; 3 HRs; 91.0 RV+; 79 wRC+, -0.2 fWAR 

Primarily a DH, he’s been a worse hitter to start 2025 (historically so), but he remains one of the league’s hardest-hitting sluggers (94-mph average exit velocity, hello) and most powerful hitters overall.

Whose horrible April (and early May) should send alarm bells ringing, and whose shouldn’t? 

What’s gone wrong? Every single thing. Just like the Diamondbacks last year, the Rangers have used Pederson almost exclusively against right-handed pitchers. Unlike the Diamondbacks, the Rangers have not gotten good results. He’s 8 for 85 with just four extra-base hits and a 34.4 BIP+ after posting a 149 in 2024.

It’s possible Pederson is just going through one of the most exaggerated, accelerated decline phases we’ve seen in a while, made worse by a baseline inability to hit lefties.    

His defense, which has graded well in the past despite a Correa-like 220-pound frame, has also been subpar. Both Outs Above Average and Defensive Runs Saved say Henderson has cost Baltimore runs in the field. 

Cody Bellinger, New York Yankees

The Numbers: .202/.275/.360; 4 HRs; 76.9 RV+; 79 wRC+; 0.1 fWAR 

What’s gone wrong? A bit of everything. Correa’s power has dipped badly as he has combined a decline in launch angle (which began last season) with an inability to square the ball up. He’s hit exactly four balls on the barrel all season, according to Statcast data, falling from the 62nd percentile in barrel rate in 2024 to the 17th this year. The star shortstop also has dipped to an anemic 65.4 BIP+, which measures damage done upon contact (league average is 100).

The post Bad or Bad Luck? Investigating Slow Starts by Six of MLB’s Higher-Profile Hitters appeared first on Opta Analyst.

Is he bad now? Short answer: Probably, yeah. Pederson’s fall-off this season is so dramatic that, at 33, we have to at least consider it. Any hitter who makes a 12-year career for himself will have awful, prolonged stretches. But amid Pederson’s 29-game nightmare to start his career in Texas, he’s experienced (through Monday) by far the worst drop in OPS of any player with at least 350 at-bats in 2024 and 85 in 2025.

Joc Pederson, Texas Rangers

The Numbers: .094/.181/.153, 0 HRs; 41.3 RV+; -4 wRC+; -1.0 fWAR 

Like every season, the early action in 2025 has featured a handful of this generation’s most fearsome hitters falling flat on their faces over their first 30-ish games. Like every season, many of those players will get back to their raking ways in due time. 

Alvarez’s strikeout and walk numbers haven’t changed much from their usual levels, but what has changed is that he’s missed out on the margins. Alvarez only has three homers (very bad) and a below-average 98.9 BIP+, but he’d have a few more if he’d been playing in the right ballparks on the right days. (Just five players have a wider negative gap between their homer count and “expected” homers, per Statcast.) 

Is he bad now? He’s Cody Bellinger, so I have no idea. Year-to-year performance trends apparently mean nothing when they come to this player. Having said that, Bellinger’s BABIP ranks 18th from the bottom at .218 – so there is some bad luck at play.

Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels

The Numbers: .179/.264/.462; 9 HRs; 147 RV+; 95 wRC+; 0.0 fWAR 

Combine that with hitting the ball into the ground a lot – a 49.5% ground ball rate is second-highest in his career – and you get a power outage.

Correa also isn’t taking many free passes. For most of his career, Correa has drawn a bunch of walks, but he’s seen a massive decline in walk rate this season, to a career-low 5.3% as pitchers have felt more comfortable attacking him. Correa is walking about half as often as usual and seeing more pitches in the strike zone (51%) than ever. His discipline+ sits at a far below-average 86.7.

Is he bad now? No. Alvarez is on the injured list now with hand inflammation. Maybe the break will allow the baseball gods to rethink their cruelty toward him. 

What’s gone wrong? Everything except his solid outfield defense, which is one of the only things about Bellinger that you can take to the bank year after year. Most notably, Bellinger has seen a decline in his percentage of pulled balls in the air, which tend to be the ones that result in homers – especially at Yankee Stadium. He’s perennially near the top of MLB in that stat, sitting north of 21% in each of the past five seasons, but this year’s figure has dipped to a more normal 18.2%.
What’s gone wrong? Defense, for one thing. Trout’s move to right field from center was designed to keep him healthier and limit the defensive problems he could cause the Angels in his old age. So far it’s gone poorly, as Trout has been the second-worst defensive right fielder in MLB by Defensive Runs Saved (minus-4) and fourth-worst by Outs Above Average (-2). More reps will make him better, but more aging will make him worse, and eventually, the Angels will have little choice but to turn their best player ever into a DH.