As we enter the home stretch of the 2022 MLB regular season, a bunch of pricey players have been either irrelevant or downright detrimental to their team's cause, and a handful of clubs have come nowhere close to living up to preseason expectations.

Remember when Josh Hader was one of the top candidates for the NL Cy Young?

When the White Sox were a World Series threat in the preseason and the Angels looked great after seven weeks?

When Yusei Kikuchi was going to be a key cog in a great Toronto starting rotation?

Or when Fernando Tatis Jr. was going to be San Diego's midseason savior?

What happened?

And what should we make of those and other disappointing situations moving forward?

We'll touch on nine disappointments: three hitters, three pitchers and three teams, presented in no particular order aside from oscillating among those three categories.

Disappointing Hitter: Marcell Ozuna, Atlanta Braves

It should go without saying that, if Marcell Ozuna is guilty, the actions that led to his recent arrest on a DUI charge deserve condemnation. As do those that led to his November suspension for violating MLB's Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy.

But since this list is largely concerned with the field of play, he's included because of his year-to-date WAR.

When Atlanta signed Ozuna to a four-year, $65 million deal in Feb. 2021, it looked like a bargain. During the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Ozuna led all NL players in home runs (18) and RBI (56), batted .338 and was one of the most valuable players in baseball.

Even though he was already 30 when he signed the deal, it was hard to argue with $16.25 million per year in the aftermath of that type of production.

Since then, though, he has been a colossal disappointment.

He went from hitting .338 to barely slugging it, posting slugging marks of .356 last year and .391 this season. He does have 20 home runs and 34 extra-base hits in 2022, but he's batting .213, is a disaster in left field on the increasingly rare occasions that Atlanta puts him out there and has been worth minus-1.2 bWAR and minus-1.1 fWAR.

Among qualified hitters, he ranks dead last on both sites.

Given the combination of his performance on the field and his legal troubles, it's surprising that Atlanta didn't release Ozuna immediately after the DUI charge. It'd be a lot of money for the club to eat, and we can appreciate the lack of outfield depth on this roster, but it sure feels overdue.

Disappointing Pitcher: Yusei Kikuchi, Toronto Blue Jays

The Seattle Mariners could have kept Yusei Kikuchi on a four-year, $66 million club option ($16.5M per year) after last season. Or, after the M's declined that, he could have stayed in Seattle on a one-year, $13 million player option.

Instead, he chose free agency and ended up in Toronto on a three-year, $36 million deal.

And, well, the Blue Jays have figured out why Seattle said, "Thanks, but no thanks" to this lefty.

It's hard to blame Toronto for thinking Kikuchi might be worth that kind of money. The only complete-game shutout of his career came against the Blue Jays in 2019, and he had a 1.77 ERA in three career starts against Toronto.

But in his first season with Toronto, Kikuchi had a 5.25 ERA in 20 starts before landing in the bullpen and getting worse. (Only three of those 20 starts were quality starts, and he did not pitch into the seventh inning of any of them.)

As far as "what to make of it," this didn't come out of left field. Kikuchi had a 5.46 ERA in 2019, a 5.17 mark in 2020 and a 6.22 ERA over his final 14 starts of last season. His walk rate in Seattle (8.4 percent) was nowhere near as awful as it has been this season (13.6 percent), but it wasn't great. That plus a mediocre-at-best rate of home runs allowed suggested that things weren't going to get much better for him.

Case in point: He had a not-good 4.97 ERA with the Mariners, but an equally not-good 4.93 FIP.

The somewhat good news for Toronto is that it's a front-loaded contract. Kikuchi is making $16 million this season and is due $10 million in each of the next two years. The Blue Jays will presumably give him every opportunity to pitch his way back into the starting rotation next spring, but $10 million per year for two years isn't exactly a Patrick Corbin, Madison Bumgarner or Lance Lynn sunk cost that demands a "well, we're paying him all this money, we better keep him in the rotation if he's healthy" mindset.

Then again, "Hey, at least we don't feel like we need to start him every fifth game" isn't what Toronto envisioned when it signed Kikuchi.

Disappointing Team: Chicago White Sox

There's still slim hope for the Chicago White Sox to make the playoffs. They are 5.0 games back in the AL Central and 6.5 games out of the wild-card race.

However, this sub-.500 team would need to go 28-4 the rest of the way in order to reach its projected preseason win total of 91.5. And based on the White Sox's run differential of minus-43, they should be 60-70, which would mean a 32-0 finish to meet preseason expectations.

So, yeah, it has been a woefully disappointing year for the South Siders.

Not all of them, of course.

Dylan Cease has been fantastic and has a realistic shot at winning the AL Cy Young. José Abreu's power has declined, but he entered play Thursday in second place in the AL in batting average. And who could have guessed 36-year-old Johnny Cueto would have a 2.58 ERA 18 appearances into the season?

Beyond that trio, though, it has been a campaign full of expensive underperformers and a steady diet of injuries.

In Dallas Keuchel, Yasmani Grandal, Lucas Giolito, Joe Kelly, Lance Lynn, AJ Pollock and Yoán Moncada, Chicago is paying $90-plus million this season for seven players worth a combined minus-2.6 bWAR. And it's hard to win when you're getting that kind of negative production for the price of an entire Tampa Bay Rays payroll.

It's also a testament to the constant slew of minor injuries that Chicago has used 129 unique starting lineups through 130 games. (The only repeat was on July 2 and July 4.) The White Sox have an .888 winning percentage in games where Abreu, Tim Anderson, Eloy Jiménez, Luis Robert and Andrew Vaughn are all in the starting lineup, but there have only been nine games with that full quintet available.

Even though they might lose Abreu to free agency, the White Sox should bounce back next season with even a moderate amount of injury luck (and, ideally, a managerial change).