At the conclusion of play on April 11, most major league teams had played at least 10 games or one-sixteenth of a six-month schedule. For baseball fans familiar with week-to-week reactions of NFL fans, the 2014 season is at the same stage a football season is after Week 1.
That, of course, can be taken in different ways. No position player has garnered enough at-bats to derive legitimate meaning, nor does any pitcher have enough innings to tell a full tale. Of course, hot or cold starts could be instructive when projecting the rest of the year.
It’s not easy to separate the signal from the noise during any portion of a marathon season, but Bleacher Report is going to attempt the nearly impossible: finding meaning through a forest of stats, numbers and narratives that have graced baseball fans over the last two weeks.
What’s real? What’s bound to change over the next few weeks?
Here are the biggest takeaways from the first two weeks of the 2014 MLB season.
Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs, unless otherwise noted. All contract figures courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts. Roster projections via MLB Depth Charts.