Gaudy spring training statistics are like finding the car of your dreams at an absurdly low price. Everything looks great until you pop the hood and find an empty void where the engine should be.
Yet that doesn’t stop us from dreaming big and hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, our favorite team has struck oil and stumbled upon a game-changing talent who flew under the radar, or that a perennial underachiever has finally figured things out.
That’s not to say that every player having a torrid spring won’t carry that momentum into the regular season—a handful do every year—but by and large, what happens during exhibition play has no impact on a player’s regular-season performance.
Keep that in mind as we take a look at nine players who have wildly overachieved this spring. Some are locks to break camp on a 25-man roster, while others are either destined for the minor leagues or still battling for a roster spot on Opening Day.
What they all have in common, however, is that none of them will look nearly as good a month from now.