Opinion

The critics came out in droves.

They slammed Billy Beane for dismantling a playoff team during the last offseason, and they questioned his commitment to keeping a winning team on the field since he jettisoned players like Josh Donaldson, Jeff Samardzija, Derek Norris and Brandon Moss for lesser returns. They even retroactively bashed his trading of Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester.

They say you only get one chance to make a first impression, but nobody says you can't recover from making a bad first impression.

That's what the Chicago Cubs must be telling themselves about Jon Lester's bad first impression, anyway. And fortunately for them, their $155 million man should allow them to breathe easy before long.

All together now: It's only been a week. If the baseball season were a marathon, we'd barely have broken a sweat. So while it's tempting to draw sweeping conclusions, it's mostly folly.

Still, we just can't help ourselves. It may be early, but a handful of teams have already bucked expectations and turned heads—for better or worse.

We're talking about projected basement-dwellers who have charged out of the gate, and presumed contenders who have stumbled, often due to injuries. 

The Washington Nationals and Boston Red Sox are underway on this lovely spring Monday at Fenway Park, and the game has effectively turned into the Mookie Betts Show.

Alex Rodriguez survived his first week back in an MLB uniform while performing at a high level for the New York Yankees to kick off the 2015 season. Appearing in all six games, Rodriguez hit .300 with one home run and six runs batted in.  

For one reason or another, there are always a handful of MLB players who simply don't receive the attention they deserve.

Ben Zobrist was the poster child for being underrated for so many years that it reached a point where his "underratedness" was almost overrated, if that makes any sense.

At any rate, there is a fresh batch of under-the-radar stars around the league who deserve far more hype than they are currently receiving.

The 2015 Major League Baseball season isn't quite into the grind just yet, but it's on its way there. They've been playing games for a whole (business) week!

That's obviously not much time in the grand scheme of a 162-game season. But since it means we know more about what's what in 2015 than we did before, let's talk about what we've seen and learned so far.

The Washington Nationals entered 2015 as a threat to finish as Major League Baseball's first 100-win team since 2011, largely because their pitching just looks too darn good.

To this end, here's the latest from the front: It's not going so well, mainly because of what's happening on the other side of the ball. Washington's lineup is not at full strength, and it's showing.

Jimmy Fallon is a Yankees fan.

Each year, a number of different media outlets publish an MLB survey in which they ask current players for their predictions on topics ranging from who will win it all that season to who the most overrated player in the game is.

With that in mind, we decided to do the same thing here at Bleacher Report—but with a pool of 32 of our MLB writers instead. I crafted a 30-question poll with a mixture of team- and player-specific questions.