5 hot starts to 2026 and what they can tell us: Mike Trout, Dylan Cease, Yordan Alvarez among the players standing out so far

Major League Baseball is back, which means we’ve finally switched our brains from season-preview mode to the regular-season routine. The first weekend of games provided an avalanche of action to parse through, introducing exciting new characters and restoring familiar faces to prominence. With the second week of the 2026 campaign underway, let’s take a look at five standouts from the start of the season and what these first impressions tell us about what to watch moving forward.

Mike Trout, Angels outfielder While it is unreasonable to expect Mike Trout to fully turn back the clock in his 16th major-league season, the Angels icon is still capable of flashes of greatness that make us all feel a bit younger, and his performance during the Angels’ first series was an encouraging salve in that regard. Enhancing the nostalgia is the fact that Trout is back roaming center field, which he did not do at all last season, as the team limited him to right field and DH, seeking to preserve his health through less wear-and-tear. The Angels succeeded in that Trout played 130 games — his highest total since 2019 — but his dip in performance (a career-low 120 wRC+) suggested that a decline might be in progress even so.

Entering 2026, Trout communicated to the Angels a preference to return to center field, convinced that his move off the position did not contribute to his increased durability last season. The Angels unsurprisingly acquiesced to their face of their franchise, and now Trout is back in center with his 35th birthday approaching in August. More promising is how he’s swinging the bat thus far, with homers in his first two games and a league-leading seven walks to just three strikeouts across his first four.

Trout’s underlying raw power metrics have remained elite in recent seasons, even as his availability and overall output have declined, but his strikeout rate ballooned to a career-high 32% last season, so more consistent contact could be the key to him reclaiming a place in the upper-echelon of the OPS leaderboards. However Trout managed to stay healthy last year, we’ll have to hope he can replicate it, because we’ve seen scorching hot starts from him in the past, only for him to be derailed by injury. Recall that Trout hit 10 homers across his first 25 games in 2024 before a torn meniscus ended his season after one month, so let’s not declare his return to the MVP race until he proves he can stay on the field for a prolonged stretch — no matter what position he’s playing.