By year’s end, odds are we’ll be crowning Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge as the MVPs yet again. To this point, though, neither player has been his team’s best hitter. Ohtani is flashing his two-way prowess with a dominant 0.50 ERA and a respectable .915 OPS, but another Dodgers teammate leads MLB in hits and batting average and is well ahead of him in every slash-line category.

Judge, meanwhile, is pacing the Yankees with nine home runs, but another Bronx Bomber has the highest OPS in MLB. So, who is every team’s early MVP? We’ll take a look as part of this week’s power rankings: We might have a new poster boy for three true outcomes: Munetaka Murakami is tied for the third-most homers in MLB and also has the fourth-highest walk rate and 11th highest strikeout rate.

Hunter Goodman looks poised for another 30-plus homer season, but the bigger story is what Antonio Senzatela is doing in a new long relief role on the mound. The veteran righty allowed his first run of the season Sunday, but he also picked up the win and now sports a 0.63 ERA in six appearances (14.1 innings) while throwing harder than ever before. Perhaps lost among the shocking disasters around the league, the Royals have now lost seven straight games and have scored the fewest runs in MLB.

Michael Wacha (1.00 ERA) and Seth Lugo (1.48) are doing their part on the mound to try to give their team a chance, though. Woof. The losing streak is up to 11.

Since 2020, 11 other teams have lost 11 straight games at some point in a season; none of them made the playoffs. The Mets can’t seem to score runs with Juan Soto sidelined, but at least they have a chance to win every time Nolan McLean pitches. He has the lowest WHIP of any qualified National League pitcher and, as expected, looks like an early Rookie of the Year contender.

If I told you Yordan Alvarez was leading MLB in home runs and fWAR, you’d probably assume the Astros were doing quite well. And you would assume incorrectly. They have two wins in their last 14 games — both against the Rockies, who also swept them during that stretch — and their pitchers have a 6.11 ERA.

Yikes. The pitching is, as expected, a problem. The offense, however, offers plenty of intrigue. CJ Abrams, who has nearly doubled both his walk rate and barrel rate in the early going, ranks fourth among all qualified hitters in OPS.

As a team, the Nationals are tied for second in runs scored with the Dodgers and Astros, just one run behind the Braves. With Logan Webb, Adrian Houser and Tyler Mahle all sporting ERAs over 5.00, the early work from Landen Roupp (2.38) has been needed in the Giants’ scuffling rotation. Roupp hasn’t allowed a home run, or even a barreled ball, through four starts.

The Blue Jays rank in the bottom 10 in MLB in runs per game, which certainly wasn’t expected after they ranked fourth in the category last season. It could be a lot worse if it weren’t for Kevin Gausman and Dylan Cease, who get co-early-season-MVP honors here. The Blue Jays are 5-4 in games in which they’ve started, and they’ve held the depleted Toronto rotation afloat.

Among MLB pitchers who’ve thrown at least 20 innings, Cease is third in strikeout rate while Gausman is third in strikeout-to-walk percentage. As bad as it has been overall in Boston, Willson Contreras is giving the Red Sox everything they’ve needed at first base. As a team, Boston first basemen last year ranked 27th in fWAR and 26th in wRC+.

With Contreras this year, they rank in the top five in both categories at the position. MLB’s shortstop leader in fWAR? Nope, not Bobby Witt Jr., Gunnar Henderson or Elly De La Cruz.

It’s Miami’s Otto Lopez, who’s hitting .338, the best mark of any player at his position. They have the worst run differential (-38) in all of MLB. No, not a typo.

Yes, hard to believe. They’ve now lost five straight games and nine of 11, and they scored three runs total while getting swept by the Braves over the weekend. At least they have Cristopher Sánchez, who started three of the team’s eight wins and hasn’t allowed more than two earned runs in any of his five starts.

I would like to use this section to rave about Mike Trout, who leads all qualified AL center fielders in OPS as he turns back the clock to start the year… but this spot might need to be reserved for the Angels’ early Cy Young contender. José Soriano is 5-0 with a ridiculous 0.28 ERA. The Twins’ trade for 25-year-old right-hander Taj Bradley at last year's deadline is looking like a huge win, especially with Pablo López out for the year.

Bradley is 3-0 with a 1.63 ERA through five starts; Griffin Jax, the player Bradley was traded for, has a 7.04 ERA in Tampa Bay. On a team with so much offensive firepower, Shea Langeliers can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. But he has been the A’s best hitter this year, and he leads all catchers with six homers, including a 467-foot blast that is the longest by any player in MLB this year. (Marvel at it here.) Jeremiah Jackson is slashing .303/.319/.5