Try as we might, there is simply no predicting how a new baseball season is going to play out, and that's one of the things that makes the sport so great.
Sure, Mike Trout having an MVP-caliber season, Jacob deGrom racking up strikeouts and the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets battling it out atop the NL East are all things that even casual baseball fans could have predicted.
Even the Tampa Bay Rays' early success shouldn't come as that much of a surprise given their consistency in recent years, and the same goes for Luis Arraez having the best batting average in baseball and Ronald Acuña Jr. racking up stolen bases.
However, there have been some surprises that few could have seen coming, which is what we're focusing on here.
Ahead we've selected the 10 biggest surprises of the first month of the 2023 MLB season, highlighting eight players and two teams who have blown past expectations in the early going.
Check back Saturday morning for the other side of the coin as we look at the biggest disasters of the season's first month.
Aroldis Chapman, Kansas City Royals
One of the most overpowering pitchers in baseball history at the peak of his career, Aroldis Chapman looked like he might be coming to the end of the road after struggling to a 4.46 ERA and 1.43 WHIP with an unsightly 6.9 walks per nine innings last season.
After routinely throwing a triple-digit fastball throughout his career, his velocity dipped to 97.5 mph, and his hard slider was not the same swing-and-miss secondary offering it had been in the past.
The 35-year-old met a limited market in free agency and ended up signing a one-year, $3.8 million deal with the Kansas City Royals. That is quickly shaping up to be one of the steals of the offseason.
Despite giving up runs in each of his last two outings, he still has a 1.93 ERA, 0.96 WHIP and 16.4 K/9 in 10 appearances, and his fastball velocity has ticked back up to 99.5 mph with a career-high 2,534 rpm spin rate. If nothing else, he will be a valuable trade chip in July if his stuff doesn't regress.
Matt Chapman, Toronto Blue Jays
Elite defense at the hot corner and 30-homer power: Those are the tools that have made Matt Chapman one of the best third basemen in the league, albeit with some holes in his offensive game outside of the power production.
In 2021 and 2022, he hit a combined .219/.319/.418 with a strikeout rate hovering around 30 percent, and while he was a 3.5-WAR player both seasons, it was unclear what type of market he would have in free agency following the 2023 season given those middling numbers.
The 30-year-old has simply looked like a different player in the batter's box so far this year, leading the AL in batting average (.364) and on-base percentage (.446) while trimming his strikeout rate to a more manageable 23.8 percent and tallying 16 extra-base hits in 101 plate appearances.
His .458 BABIP is not sustainable over a full season, but the improvements in his strikeout rate and absolutely elite batted-ball metrics suggest he has taken a legitimate step forward offensively.