oh yeah i honestly thought they'd be pretty dog horsefeathers and i'm coming around on that some
some significant positive developments in my mind
the bullpen has been the best in the league by many descriptive, & (more importantly) predictive metrics like k-bb%, siera etc; in stark contrast to my personal expectations for largely a heap of journeymen & castoffs
lol Cardinals - i didn't expect their SP to be such a trainwreck, and their need to play pretty awkward defensive alignments (and gulp, likely major defensive downgrade at C) might mean this is more trend than blip; probably worth mentioning they were an elite shifting team and that effect has been somewhat diminished.. Liberatore might eventually help a little tbf
Bellinger outperforming any reasonable expectations offensively, at levels basically not seen for any stretch since '20
the C position being mediocre instead of the black hole it looked to be is nice but i still don't have full faith it'll continue
but starting pitching depth is still pretty worryingly thin until 1-2 Iowa guys gets on track, thankfully there are many potentially qualified candidates there but nobody save Thompson has done much in the early going to give much hope