Major League Baseball

8 most interesting MLB players to watch ahead of 2023 season

Updated Mar. 29, 2023 11:46 p.m. ET

With every baseball season comes a new wave of pleasant surprises and shocking disappointments for individual players. We like to think we can predict or forecast what a season might look like for a hitter or a pitcher, but it’s usually a fool’s errand. At the same time, unpredictability is what makes this game so fun to observe.

Some players stand out more than others as especially fascinating this spring, whether because of their importance to their team or the unpredictable trajectory in which their career has unfolded to this point. With that in mind, here are eight MLB players whose 2023 seasons I am most intrigued to see unfold.

1. Anthony Rendon, Angels third baseman

Is Rendon’s reputation as one of the game’s most injury-prone players fair? Most signs point to yes. His troublesome medical track record dates back to his days as a dominant college player at Rice. Concerns surrounding shoulder and ankle injuries reportedly hurt his draft stock considerably despite being the consensus best hitter available. More recently, Rendon has played just 105 games over the past two years, making multiple trips to the IL for a laundry list of issues: groin, knee, hamstring and hip problems in 2021, then right wrist surgery in 2022.

At the same time, it’s easy to forget that Rendon averaged 146 games played over his final four years with the Nationals, and even played in 52 of the 60 games (and raked!) in the shortened 2020 season, his first year with the Angels. Still just 32, no one questions Rendon’s talent, and perhaps we’re being too quick to write off his ability to return to the near-MVP form he demonstrated in 2019. He looked fantastic this spring, hitting .500 in Cactus League play and most importantly, didn’t report any issues with any of the various injuries he’s endured over the past two seasons. For all that’s been made of the depth assembled behind Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, Rendon can elevate the Angels to a legitimate contender if everything is clicking. As with anything related to this organization, my cautious optimism is 80 percent caution and 20 percent optimism, but I don’t think we should rule out a big Rendon bounce back in 2023.

2. Shintaro Fujinami, Athletics pitcher

The A’s aren’t going to be a very good baseball team this year. That much we know. But if there’s one player who will absolutely have me tuning into Oakland games this season it’s Fujinami, one of several free-agent signings the A’s quietly made this past winter but by far the most important one.

Fujinami’s decade-long odyssey to the big leagues has been a winding journey, to say the least. He was part of the same draft class out of high school as Ohtani in 2012, and the first few years of his NPB career with the Hanshin Tigers appeared to have him on track for stardom. As a 20-year-old in 2015, Fujinami delivered a Nolan Ryan-esque season in which he led the league in both strikeouts (221) and walks (82) in 199 innings with a 2.40 ERA. The pure stuff was always in place — in 2020, he topped out at 101 MPH — but his shaky command only got worse. Though he was never injured, Fujinami gradually fell off the radar due to his wildness (he walked 178 batters in 259 innings with Hanshin from 2017-2021), bouncing between the bullpen and rotation with frequent demotions to the minors along the way. He seemed to turn a corner in 2022, though, cutting his walk rate to a much more manageable 7.6% while averaging a career-best 95.8 MPH with his heater and throwing his nasty splitter more than ever.

After the season, Fujinami was posted by the Tigers and reached a deal with Oakland in January. His five spring starts exemplified the Fujinami experience, as the right-hander struck out 17 but walked 14 across 16.2 innings with a 3.86 ERA — including six no-hit innings in his final outing.

Compared to Kodai Senga and Masataka Yoshida, Fujinami arrives via NPB as a distant third in terms of hype. But I’ll put it this way: It’s not an accident that Fujinami’s agent is Scott Boras. If Boras believes in Fuji’s high-end talent, consider my interest piqued. Fittingly, he’s scheduled to make his MLB debut against his old NPB foe Ohtani on Saturday against the Angels. I’ll be tuned into that one for sure.

3. Corey Seager, Rangers shortstop

When the shift restrictions were announced as part of the new rules coming to MLB in 2023, it was easy to immediately jump to hitters like Seager and get amped for a potential spike in production. And while I’m certainly also curious about the degree to which it will help Seager’s stats, I’m much more focused on his importance for a Rangers team attempting to speedrun its rebuild by spending extravagantly in free agency. Forget all the people drafting him a round higher in fantasy baseball — the pressure is on Seager to live up to all the hopes and dreams for his potential in a post-shift world because the Rangers need to be awesome right now.

To call his 2022 a disappointment would be harsh considering he led all shortstops in homers with 33, but his .317 OBP was a career-low. Last year felt like a trial run for Texas’ contention window after bringing in Seager and Marcus Semien, and it was a mess. Now, having bought almost an entirely new rotation over the winter, the roster on paper is starting to look like a potential postseason team, but now the Rangers have to go prove it, and Seager needs to be at the forefront of that effort. A 68-year-old Bruce Bochy didn’t come back to manage a 90-loss squad — it’s go time in Arlington.

4. José Berríos, Blue Jays pitcher

For five seasons in a row, Berrios was the model of consistency. The numbers were never especially flashy, but you could always count on him to make every start, strike out a batter per inning, and keep his ERA below 4.00. Even without a sky-high ceiling, that you could pencil in such a reliable 3-4 WAR annually is exactly why Toronto paid a hefty prospect price to acquire Berrios from Minnesota and then committed long term to the right-hander with a 7-year, $131M extension going into 2022. It seemed like they knew exactly what they were getting — if any pitcher’s track record would suggest as much, it was Berrios.

Instead, an inexplicably bad season ensued. He made 32 starts for a fourth consecutive full season, but he suddenly started getting knocked around the yard to a shocking degree. He allowed more hits and earned runs than any other pitcher in the American League, finishing with a 5.23 ERA and 74 ERA+ that was worse than any other qualified starting pitcher in baseball. He wasn’t hurt and his pitch mix didn’t change much at all, yet the strikeouts completely evaporated to a career-worst 19.8% rate, and he allowed a career-high 29 dingers. It was a downright disaster.

What matters now is that Berrios is still entrenched in Toronto for the long haul, and for a team with legitimate World Series aspirations, he desperately needs to get back to serviceable, let alone All-Star form. Still just 28, he’s plenty young (and talented) enough to identify the issues and correct them. How he gets back on track after last year’s bizarre derailment will be a fascinating subplot to the Blue Jays’ season.

5. Nico Hoerner, Cubs second baseman

With the core of the 2016 World Series champions long gone via trade and free agency, Cubs fans have been eager to identify which players on the current roster could be foundational pieces for the next great Cubs team. The 24th overall pick in the 2018 draft, Hoerner emerged last season as a particular fan favorite and an ideal player to build around as a stellar up-the-middle defender with a rapidly developing bat. It would seem the organization agreed with such a sentiment, as evidenced by the reported $35 million extension reached with the 25-year-old that will keep him in Chicago through the 2026 season, buying out one free-agent year. The big-money addition of Dansby Swanson over the winter meant Hoerner would be sliding over from shortstop to second base, but that was hardly an indication of a lack of belief in Hoerner. If anything, it secured arguably the best up-the-middle defense in the sport for the next several seasons.

While his slick glove ensures a safe floor for Hoerner, his ceiling as a hitter remains cloudy. His 10 homers in 2022 were by far a career high at any level, and for as much contact as he makes, his underwhelming batted ball data suggests that even the 10 homers may have been somewhat of a fortunate total. If there is another offensive gear for Hoerner to reach, he could be an All-Star in the Rockies DJ LeMahieu mold. If not, he’s still an awfully valuable player, and one the Cubs are lucky to have.

6. Dustin May, Dodgers pitcher

With Walker Buehler recovering from Tommy John, Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney out the door via free agency, and Tony Gonsolin on the IL to start the season, the pressure is on the 25-year-old May to stabilize a suddenly shaky Dodgers rotation relative to recent years. Yes, Julio Urías and Clayton Kershaw are still around. And yes, there are a couple talented prospects on the way in Bobby Miller and Gavin Stone. But May is a relatively proven commodity who will need to perform if the Dodgers are going to keep pace with the newly loaded Padres. Recall not just how good May was in the shortened 2020 season when he received some down-ballot NL Rookie of the Year votes, but also how dominant he looked in four April starts in 2021 before going down with an elbow injury that ultimately required Tommy John surgery.

May looked mostly like himself in his six starts down the stretch in 2022, throwing his trademark 98 mph two-seamer alongside a nasty cutter and curveball. But the challenge now will be managing May’s workload, considering he hasn’t thrown more than 100 innings in a season since 2019 and is still not even two full years removed from surgery. It’s easy for teams to say they’ll be cautious, but if the Dodgers are fighting for a postseason spot and May is looking like one of their best arms, are they really going to shut him down or even skip some potentially crucial starts? I’ll believe it when I see it. For now, I’m just eager to watch this unique pitcher take the mound every five days.

7. Blake Snell, Padres pitcher

There’s no shortage of high-end pitchers hitting free agency after this season even beyond Ohtani, but Snell stands out to me as the one with the most to gain from a monster platform year on a World Series contender. On a team that is overwhelmingly star-studded, even former Cy Young winners like Snell can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. His three postseason starts last October were typically uneven but still largely effective. Most notably, Snell was throwing harder than ever last September, leaving me to wonder if there’s another gear he can reach and sustain in what could be the most important season of his career. Few pitchers in baseball are more maddening for their inconsistencies relative to their peak performance, but I can’t quit this guy, no matter how obsessed he is with reaching full counts over and over and over. There’s potential for greatness every time he takes the mound, and I won’t have to wait long to see Snellzilla throwing flames from the left side again, as Joe Musgrove's spring training injury opened the door for Snell to earn the Opening Day nod against the Rockies.

8. Joey Meneses, Nationals first baseman/outfielder

Of the 303 players who made their MLB debuts in 2022, only 10 of them were older than Meneses, who was 30 years and 88 days old when he played his first big-league game for the Nationals this past August. Of the 358 players who came to the plate at least 200 times in 2022, only six of them — Aaron Judge, Yordan Álvarez, Paul Goldschmidt, Trout, Jose Altuve and Freddie Freeman — posted a higher wRC+ than Meneses’ 157. After almost 900 career minor-league games, including over 1,000 at-bats at Triple-A, Meneses finally got his chance and ran with it, mashing his way into the national conversation to the tune of .324/.367/.563 with 13 homers in just 56 games. That momentum carried over into the World Baseball Classic when he was a driving force for Team Mexico’s exhilarating run to the semifinals.

The first obvious question: Is this for real? Was this top-tier slugger toiling in Triple-A for the past five years and just waiting for an opportunity? Or was his special late-summer run a product of small sample size and he’s about to come crashing back down to Earth?

Let’s say Meneses is 100 percent legit and is suddenly one of the best 1B/DH-types in the game. For a team dreaming more of luck in the draft lottery than winning a World Series, what does a player like Meneses mean to them? For one, he’s a reason for Nationals fans to head to the ballpark and buy a ticket, and that cannot be discounted. But is a big-league sophomore who's about to turn 31 really an organizational building block for the future? Or has Washington unexpectedly uncovered a unique and valuable trade asset? If he’s really as good as he was down the stretch, I think they have to hang onto him. But if he regresses to more of a solid than spectacular bat, I’d expect him to be flipped for prospects sooner rather than later. Either way, I can’t wait to watch the next chapter for the man they call "CabaJoey."

Joey Meneses cranks a two-run homer as Mexico takes a 2-0 lead over the USA

Joey Meneses cranked a two-run bomb to give Mexico a 2-0 lead over the USA.

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He has covered baseball for his entire adult life, most notably for MLB.com, DAZN and The Ringer. He's a Mariners fan living in the Eastern Time Zone, which means he loves a good 10 p.m. first pitch. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.

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