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AL Players of the Month: April 2026

SportsGrid Contributor Just Baseball

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Honorable Mention: Parker Messick
April Stats: 6 GS, 36.1 IP, 1.73 ERA, 38 K, 1 HR, 1.3 fWAR

You can’t ask for a more auspicious start to your season than a throwing gem against the reigning champs. Parker Messick held the Dodgers scoreless over six innings, striking out five – including Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Kyle Tucker (twice!) – and collecting the win.

The rookie has looked just as good in five starts since. He led the Guardians past the red-hot Braves. He took a no-hitter into the ninth against the Orioles. All told, he owns a sub-2.00 ERA, and the Guardians have won all but one of his outings.

The strikeout rate is good. So is the strikeout-to-walk ratio. However, what Messick has done best is limit dangerous contact. More than half the balls his opponents have hit into play have been on the ground, and only one made its way into the seats. No qualified AL pitcher has allowed hard-hit balls at a lower rate (26.7%), and only one (Dylan Cease) has given up fewer barrels.

Messick looked good in his cup of coffee last year, but he looks even better now. His velocity is up, his new cutter is working the way he wants it to, and the early results speak for themselves.

The post AL Players of the Month: April 2026 appeared first on Just Baseball.
AL Players of the Month: April
One month down. It’s still early in the season (as I’m sure you’ve heard), but the 2026 campaign has gone on long enough for meaningful trends to emerge.

In the AL, the Yankees have already separated themselves from the pack, while the Astros have dug themselves into a pretty bad hole. Yet, funnily enough, the best player in the Junior Circuit after the first month of the 2026 season plays in Houston, not the Bronx.

The Astros’ very own version of Aaron Judge is outslugging Judge himself. Indeed, as terrific as Judge continues to be, he hasn’t even been the best hitter on his own team. More on all that in a moment.

On the pitching side, Tarik Skubal still has to be the favorite to win his third straight Cy Young, but it looks like he could have some competition from names no one expected to be in the race. The best pitcher in the AL through April is coming off just his first full season in 2025, while our two runners-up are hoping to pitch their first full seasons this year.

These are Just Baseball’s AL Hitter and Pitcher of the Month for March/April.

Hitter of the Month: Yordan Alvarez

April Stats: 32 G, 143 PA, 12 HR, 27 RBI, .356/.462/.737, 220 wRC+, 2.2 fWAR

I’m going to tell you about two players and what they did through their age-28 seasons.

The first player won a Rookie of the Year and a Silver Slugger, earned two All-Star nods and one top-three MVP finish, and hit for a 151 wRC+, racking up 18.8 fWAR.

The second player won a Rookie of the Year and a Silver Slugger, earned three All-Star nods and one top-three MVP finish, and hit for a 163 wRC+, racking up 23.7 fWAR.

Both players had absolutely dominant age-25 seasons, two of the best offensive campaigns we’ve seen since the days of Barry Bonds, but injuries held them back from reaching their full potential again for the next several years.

The first player is Aaron Judge. Since his age-29 season, he has hit 260 home runs, won three MVPs, and cemented himself as a future Hall of Famer.

The second player is Yordan Alvarez. He doesn’t turn 29 until June.

Am I saying that Alvarez is the next Aaron Judge? Of course not. I can’t promise you that his 60-homer pace and 220 wRC+ are sustainable. All I mean to say is that breakouts can happen at any age and any stage. Alvarez has always pulverized baseballs, but he’s never pulverized them quite like this.

Alvarez leads the majors with a .498 wOBA. Somehow, his expected wOBA is another 32 points higher. By xwOBA, he just had the best first month of a season by an AL hitter in Statcast history (since 2015).

Here’s the list of every player who has posted an xwOBA of at least .520 in a month. Each one of them, except for Alvarez, is an MVP winner.

Hitter	Month	xwOBA
Aaron Judge	May 2024	.588
Aaron Judge	Sep/Oct 2025	.575
Aaron Judge	May 2023	.557
Aaron Judge	Sep/Oct 2017	.550
Cody Bellinger	Mar/Apr 2019	.547
Miguel Cabrera	Sep/Oct 2016	.545
Shohei Ohtani	June 2021	.540
Shohei Ohtani	June 2023	.535
Yordan Alvarez	Mar/Apr 2026	.529
Joey Votto	July 2015	.529
Mike Trout	May 2017	.523
Mookie Betts	Mar/Apr 2018	.523
Freddie Freeman	Sep/Oct 2020	.520

So, maybe this was just an MVP-caliber month for Yordan Alvarez. Or maybe it was the first month of an MVP season.

Honorable Mention: Ben Rice
April Stats: 30 G, 122 PA, 10 HR, 23 RBI, .327/.443/.714, 210 wRC+, 1.7 fWAR

I have to admit, whenever I heard anyone call Ben Rice “unlucky” in 2025, I couldn’t have disagreed more. It’s not that I didn’t see the gap between his .358 wOBA and .394 xwOBA, but when a guy hits 26 jacks with a 133 wRC+ in his first full season and earns a job in the middle of the Yankees’ lineup, “unlucky” feels like the wrong word.

Maybe I was wrong.

If this is the real Ben Rice, then my god, he was unluckier than a black cat in a broken mirror last season. Rice was 33% more productive than the average hitter a year ago. His wRC+ ranked top-10 in the American League. But this year’s version of Rice makes last year’s look like a scrub.

Through the end of April, he’s been 110% better than the average hitter. He has 10 homers, a 17.2% walk rate, and a 1.157 OPS. Among AL hitters, only Alvarez has a higher slugging percentage, OPS, wRC+, and FanGraphs WAR.

It doesn’t make sense that the 2026 Yankees could have an even more dangerous one-two lineup punch than the Aaron Judge-Juan Soto combo that sent them to the World Series in 2024, but, well, at least for now, they do.
Honorable Mention: Mike Trout
April Stats: 31 G, 144 PA, 10 HR, 21 RBI, .248/.431/.569, 173 wRC+, 1.5 fWAR

Months like the one Mike Trout just had are precisely why we give out honorable mentions.

You could easily make the case that Trout has been one of the AL’s top three position players so far in 2026. But you could also make the case for a number of others, including Aaron Judge, Bobby Witt Jr., and Kevin McGonigle.

Thankfully, we don’t have to quibble over who is most deserving. The point of an honorable mention is to shout out the guys we most want to shout out. (Dare I say, that’s what it’s all about, to shout out Trout?)

Before the season started, we all knew we’d spend plenty of time talking about Judge and Witt in the MVP race. We knew McGonigle would be the Rookie of the Year favorite. What we didn’t expect was that Mike Trout was going to look like Mike Trout again.

Trout leads the AL with 29 runs scored and a 1.72 Win Probability Added, thanks to his 10 home runs, 32 walks, and five stolen bases. He ranks top-five in OPS and wRC+, and only Alvarez has a higher xwOBA.
Pitcher of the Month: José Soriano
April Stats: 7 GS, 42.2 IP, 0.84 ERA, 49 K, 3 HR, 1.2 fWAR

Through his first seven starts, José Soriano has only given up four runs (with three of them coming in his latest outing). The last pitcher to start a season like that was Zack Greinke in 2009. The last one before that? Fernando Valenzuela in 1981. Both of them went on to win the Cy Young.

Soriano’s 0.84 ERA leads qualified AL hurlers, while his 42.2 innings rank fifth. Unsurprisingly, his groundball rate is top-three in the league, although at 55.7%, it’s somehow lower than his ridiculous 61.2% career average. What’s more surprising is his 30.1% strikeout rate.

This is a pitcher who has always excelled at limiting extra-base hits, and now he’s added missing bats to his skill set. His 34.0% whiff rate is second in the AL, thanks to near-50% whiff rates on both his knuckle curve and his splitter.

Control is still a problem for Soriano (16 walks), but free passes are manageable when you don’t give up extra-base hits and can strike your way out of a jam.
Honorable Mention: Cam Schlittler
April Stats: 7 GS, 41.2 IP, 1.51 ERA, 49 K, 1 HR, 2.0 fWAR

Cam Schlittler was terrific for the Yankees in his rookie season, leaning on his 98-mph fastball to strike out 84 batters in 14 starts, finishing with a 2.73 ERA.

The 6-foot-6 righty used six different pitches, but he threw his four-seam more than the rest of them combined. That helped him rack up strikeouts, but opponents weren’t biting on his offerings outside the zone. His walk rate was high, and his groundball rate was low.

The Cam Schlittler we’ve seen to this point in 2026 has no holes in his game. His sinker is moving better, and it has become a much more important part of his arsenal. He’s also throwing his cutter harder, and the result is a pitch that tunnels well with both his four-seam and his sinker.

Schlitter is now throwing his three fastballs almost 90% of the time. He’s missing more bats, inducing more groundballs, and issuing fewer free passes. While his 1.51 ERA trails Soriano’s sub-1.00 mark, his FIP, xFIP, SIERA, K-BB%, and fWAR all rank first among AL starters.
Honorable Mention: Parker Messick
April Stats: 6 GS, 36.1 IP, 1.73 ERA, 38 K, 1 HR, 1.3 fWAR

You can’t ask for a more auspicious start to your season than a throwing gem against the reigning champs. Parker Messick held the Dodgers scoreless over six innings, striking out five – including Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Kyle Tucker (twice!) – and collecting the win.

The rookie has looked just as good in five starts since. He led the Guardians past the red-hot Braves. He took a no-hitter into the ninth against the Orioles. All told, he owns a sub-2.00 ERA, and the Guardians have won all but one of his outings.

The strikeout rate is good. So is the strikeout-to-walk ratio. However, what Messick has done best is limit dangerous contact. More than half the balls his opponents have hit into play have been on the ground, and only one made its way into the seats. No qualified AL pitcher has allowed hard-hit balls at a lower rate (26.7%), and only one (Dylan Cease) has given up fewer barrels.

Messick looked good in his cup of coffee last year, but he looks even better now. His velocity is up, his new cutter is working the way he wants it to, and the early results speak for themselves.

The post AL Players of the Month: April 2026 appeared first on Just Baseball.
AL Players of the Month: April
One month down. It’s still early in the season (as I’m sure you’ve heard), but the 2026 campaign has gone on long enough for meaningful trends to emerge.

In the AL, the Yankees have already separated themselves from the pack, while the Astros have dug themselves into a pretty bad hole. Yet, funnily enough, the best player in the Junior Circuit after the first month of the 2026 season plays in Houston, not the Bronx.

The Astros’ very own version of Aaron Judge is outslugging Judge himself. Indeed, as terrific as Judge continues to be, he hasn’t even been the best hitter on his own team. More on all that in a moment.

On the pitching side, Tarik Skubal still has to be the favorite to win his third straight Cy Young, but it looks like he could have some competition from names no one expected to be in the race. The best pitcher in the AL through April is coming off just his first full season in 2025, while our two runners-up are hoping to pitch their first full seasons this year.

These are Just Baseball’s AL Hitter and Pitcher of the Month for March/April.

AL Players of the Month: April 2026

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