2 Angels' hot starts snubbed in MLB.com's rankings of early MVP-caliber performances

The 2025 season is just two weeks old, but that hasn't stopped MLB.com from putting together a list of 11 players with MVP-caliber starts in the early going. Notably absent are two young Angels hitters who have taken the league by storm.

While you could say lists like these are often a popularity contest, and this one in particular certainly includes household names like Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman (sorry Astros fans), it also includes lesser-known players like Lars Nootbaar of the St. Louis Cardinals and a youngster like Anthony Volpe of the New York Yankees.

As noted in the piece, this is far from a preview of the MVP race. The MLB season is a marathon, and hot starts fizzle and fade while cold starts are quickly forgotten during the year's of ebbs and flows.

Still, this is about recognizing top performances, and if you really want to talk about players who have been among the best in the game over the first two weeks, you can't have that conversation without including two promising young Angels -- Kyren Paris and Logan O'Hoppe.

MLB.com snubs Kyren Paris and Logan O'Hoppe, who have been hotter than anyone to start the season

Perhaps the glaring omissions are due to a simple filter -- "qualified plate appearances." The distinction is somewhat meaningless this early in the year, but Paris and O'Hoppe are left off the top of the leaderboards due to this simple caveat.

For Paris, he's played in nine of the Angels' 10 games to start the season, however, some of those appearances came as a pinch hitter later in ball games. For O'Hoppe, he's paying the catcher tax as backstops typically get more days off due to the physically demanding nature of their work.

Still, any conversation this early in the year about MVP candidates, as ridiculous as that may sound this early, has to start with Kyren Paris. On the verge of becoming the league's next great super utility man, Paris stands alone at the top of the offensive leaderboards among players with at least 20 plate appearances this season.

The 23-year-old leads the league in wRC+ with a mind-boggling 309 mark that is 89 points better than the number-one ranked player on MLB.com's list, Kyle Tucker, all while bouncing back and forth between centerfield and second base.

In addition to his offensive assault on big league pitching, Paris has also swiped four bases while playing some pretty solid defense at both of these crucial defensive positions.

As for O'Hoppe, the 25-year-old catcher's consecutive games with a homer streak was snapped at four, after hitting a single in his pinch-hit appearance in the series opener against the Tampa Bay Rays.

From a wRC+ standpoint, O'Hoppe ranks sixth with a 255 mark that is 11 points ahead of the reigning AL MVP, Aaron Judge. With a total of five home runs on the year, O'Hoppe is looking to put his second-half swoon from 2024 behind him and is quickly establishing himself as one of the game's brightest stars behind the dish.

Regardless of the national recognition, these two Angels youngsters have outplayed nearly every MVP candidate so far this season, and while there will certainly be some regression, the future looks very, very bright.

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