The Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees have opened the 2026 Major League Baseball season with the sport’s two best records, distancing themselves from divisional rivals through a fortnight in which several preseason favorites have faltered and a handful of small-market clubs have surprised early.

Through Monday night’s games, the Dodgers stood at 11-2, their best 13-game start since 2020, and the Yankees at 10-3, both teams riding rotation strength and unexpectedly potent bottom-of-the-order production. The Cleveland Guardians, at 9-4, are the only other American League club with fewer than five losses. In the National League, the Milwaukee Brewers have quietly matched the San Diego Padres at 9-4 and 8-5 respectively, while the Atlanta Braves, picked by many forecasters to win the East, have opened 4-9 and lost six of their last seven.

“You don’t win or lose anything in April, but you can absolutely tell who showed up ready,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after a 6-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. “The pitching has been the story for us. Guys are throwing strike one. The defense has been outstanding. Those are repeatable things.”

The Dodgers’ rotation has held opponents to a .192 batting average, the lowest in the league, with right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto opening 3-0 with a 1.42 ERA. Manager Dave Roberts has rested his usual position-player regulars more aggressively than in past Aprils, citing the long postseason runs that have stretched the roster’s mileage. “We’ve talked all spring about pacing,” Roberts told reporters in Phoenix on Saturday. “It’s a marathon, and I’d rather have everyone for July and August.”

The early surprise has been the Brewers, whose 9-4 start has come behind a remade outfield and the return of left-hander Jose Quintana, signed in February to a one-year deal. Milwaukee swept the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field over the weekend, outscoring them 19-6 across three games, and entered Monday with the highest team OPS in the National League.

Conversely, the Baltimore Orioles, viewed by many analysts as a contender, sat at 5-8 after dropping a four-game series in Tampa. Manager Brandon Hyde has shuffled his rotation twice already, sending right-hander Grayson Rodriguez to the injured list with right elbow inflammation. “We’re not panicking, but we’re not pretending either,” Hyde said Sunday. “We have to play cleaner baseball. The walks have killed us.”

The Seattle Mariners, who came into the season with playoff expectations after offseason additions, were 4-9 and last in the AL West, with a team batting average of .211. Owner John Stanton issued a brief statement Friday expressing “full confidence” in the front office and field staff, after a fan group circulated an online petition calling for changes.

The opening fortnight has produced its share of individual storylines. Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz is hitting .397 with five home runs through 12 games, the kind of start that has drawn All-Star buzz from broadcasters and analysts. In Houston, Astros shortstop Jeremy Pena has six stolen bases and a .368 on-base percentage, helping the club open 8-5 despite a banged-up rotation.

Pitching has also produced early standouts. Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal is 3-0 with a 0.85 ERA across three starts, including a complete-game shutout against the Minnesota Twins on April 9 in which he struck out 13. Skubal has not allowed more than three hits in any of his outings.

“Skubal’s locating his slider like it’s July,” said Tom Reinhardt, a pitching analyst at the Society for American Baseball Research, in a phone interview. “The velocity is up tick, the command is sharper. If he keeps this pace through June, he’s the AL Cy Young front-runner.”

Attendance has trended slightly higher than at the same point in 2025, with MLB officials citing the league’s expanded local broadcast deals and a smoother rollout of the pitch clock’s third year of operation. A league spokesperson, Tasha Coleman, said paid attendance was up 3.2 percent through April 13 compared with the same window last year, and that average game time had held steady at 2 hours 38 minutes.

The schedule’s first major test for the front-runners arrives this weekend, with the Dodgers traveling to Atlanta for a three-game set that pits Los Angeles’s leading rotation against a Braves team trying to climb back to .500. The Yankees host the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium beginning Friday, the first meeting of the season’s marquee rivalry.

April’s reshuffling has not yet meaningfully shifted the betting markets, where the Dodgers, Yankees, Braves and Phillies remain the four shortest World Series prices at most U.S. sportsbooks. The Brewers, at 60-1 on opening day, have shortened to 28-1 at several books, the largest two-week movement in the league.

“The clubs we expected to be there will be there,” said Mara Linville, an analyst at Pinpoint Sports, in a research note circulated to clients Monday. “But the next two months will tell us which of the early surprises is real and which fades. Last year’s Royals were 11-3 on April 14 and missed the playoffs. The sample is small.”

Teams begin a stretch of weekday cross-country travel this week, with several clubs facing their first long road swings of the season. League officials said the next round of injured list updates was expected by Thursday.