The home ballparks of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels are just 30 miles apart, but the teams might as well be playing on different planets.
That was certainly the case in the month of May, when Shohei Ohtani's performance at the plate finally started matching his Cy Young start on the mound for the Dodgers ... while Angels fans watched their team lose 11 of 13 at one point, including getting swept by Ohtani's Dodgers in three games by a combined score of 31-3.
Not just in California, but across Major League Baseball, there were some big winners and losers last month, not to mention some astounding numbers put up by individual players. And, with the calendar now flipped to June, what we saw over the past four weeks has helped shape some of the storylines (and matchups) to keep an eye on.
With that in mind, we asked ESPN MLB experts Jorge Castillo, Bradford Doolittle, Alden Gonzalez, Buster Olney, Jeff Passan, Jesse Rogers and David Schoenfield to break down the best and worst of May -- and what they're looking forward to in June.
Who (or what) is your biggest winner of the month?
Passan: Not only did the Milwaukee Brewers surge to first place in the National League Central in May, they carried the best record in Major League Baseball (19-7), allowed the fewest runs (72) and did so while hitting the fewest home runs of any team (18). Each of the past three winters, the Brewers have traded an All-Star pitcher -- Corbin Burnes, Devin Williams, Freddy Peralta. Yet, between Jacob Misiorowski's ascent to the Best Pitcher In Baseball discussion and Kyle Harrison going from failed project in San Francisco and Boston to the fourth-best ERA in MLB among pitchers with at least 50 innings, the pitching machine simply doesn't stop churning. At some point, one would think, the offense is going to catch up to Milwaukee, and it might. It didn't in last year's NLCS, and it was a disaster. But if Misiorowski and Harrison are what they've been, they can stifle lineups from the Dodgers to the Atlanta Braves and beyond.
Rogers: The Chicago White Sox were three games under .500 and trailing the first-place Detroit Tigers in the American League Central standings at the end of April. After closing out May with a weekend sweep of Detroit, Chicago entered June five games over .500 with the Tigers in last place. The White Sox are rolling into the summer, firmly in playoff position thanks to a trio of sluggers -- Munetaka Murakami, Colson Montgomery and Miguel Vargas -- and an emerging ace in Davis Martin. In May, Martin went 4-0 with a 2.05 ERA, and those three hitters combined for 22 home runs, accounting for more than half of the team's MLB-leading total for the month. Chicago even won its first three games after Murakami went down with a hamstring strain. But the best part of this story is that 11 White Sox players have made their MLB debuts already -- the most for a team before June since the 1946 Brooklyn Dodgers.
Olney: Shohei Ohtani had an incredible month after a slow start to May. He went hitless in the first four games, and a lot of the media discussion about him was whether he could handle a simultaneous pitching and hitting load -- and what we've heard from other Dodgers is that Ohtani is very aware of what is being said about him. In the last three weeks of May, he raked, with nine multihit games among the past 22, batting .341 with an OPS of 1.018. And he dominated in his four starts on the mound -- maybe not to the level of a Misiorowski or Cristopher Sanchez, but for a guy starting once a week, he fared well: three runs over 25 innings, keeping his ERA under 1.00. We can never take for granted what Ohtani is doing, and what he's doing in 2026 is staying in the Cy Young race and again setting himself up for a unanimous MVP vote.
Who (or what) is your biggest loser of the month?
Castillo: Angels fans. There are plenty of disappointed fanbases to choose from for this question, but the Angels have MLB's longest postseason drought -- they haven't qualified for the playoffs since 2014 or won a postseason game since 2009. The 2026 Angels went 11-17 in May after going 9-17 in April. With four months left, they're 23-38 with a less than 1% chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. Not even a bounce-back year from Mike Trout (156 OPS+) is saving them. The continued losing has prompted "sell the team" chants directed at owner Arte Moreno, who before the season said winning isn't a top priority for fans. The Dodgers drubbed the Angels in a three-game series at Angel Stadium, outscoring their neighbors in Anaheim 31-3. During that series, a fan caught a wild possum in the stands. Not much is going right, and the future doesn't look any brighter. Moreno has refused to conduct a full rebuild, leaving the Angels with one of the worst farm systems in baseball even as they're failing at the major league level. Rookie manager Kurt Suzuki is on a one-year contract. General manager Perry Minasian's deal expires after the season. The franchise lacks direction, and Angels fans aren't happy.
Gonzalez: The New York Mets. This offseason saw them part ways with fan favorites like Edwin Diaz, Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo in an effort to rid themselves of the stench from last year's collapse -- only to be even worse. Their current four-game winning streak is not enough to mask the reality that the 2026 Mets have been a bad team, not just an underperforming one. June just started, and it might soon be time to think about next year, which introduces another problem: How, exactly, are the Mets getting significantly better in 2027? Is anyone taking on the contracts of Bo Bichette, Luis Robert Jr., Marcus Semien or Jorge Polanco? Or Francisco Lindor's, for that matter? Sure, the Mets could trade Peralta, a pending free agent, before the deadline, but he hasn't pitched like a bona fide ace, either.
Schoenfield: The Tigers. The Tigers last played in the World Series in 2012 and last won in 1984. After signing Framber Valdez to provide another top-of-the-rotation starter alongside Tarik Skubal, this looked like their best team since the peak Miguel Cabrera-Justin Verlander days. But May was an unmitigated disaster, as the Tigers went 6-22, worst in baseball. The month began with Skubal going on the injured list on May 4, featured an eight-game losing streak that included four losses at home to the Cleveland Guardians, and ended with a three-game sweep by the White Sox in which the Tigers scored just five runs. Last Aug. 23, the Tigers were 78-53 and led the AL Central by 11.5 games. Since then they've gone 32-60 (while the Guardians have gone 58-37 in that same span). This isn't one month of bad baseball for the Tigers; it's going on three-plus months now.
What is your most astounding stat of May?
Doolittle: You can take your pick between anything Sanchez or Misiorowski did in May, but let me focus on Misiorowski's one run allowed over 38⅓ innings. After posting seven more zeros in Houston on Sunday, Misiorowski finished the month with a 0.23 ERA over six starts, during which he went 5-0 with 57 strikeouts, six walks and zero homers allowed. The most astounding part: Because of Sanchez, Misiorowski"s ERA wasn't the best qualifying ERA in May and, despite that overall stat line, Misiorowski probably isn't going to win NL Pitcher of the Month, unless they give it to both pitchers. As they should.
Passan: Sanchez did not allow a run in 39 innings pitched in May. The only other time a pitcher threw at least 30 innings in a calendar month and finished without a runner crossing the plate was Orel Hershiser in September 1988 during his 59-inning scoreless streak. Sanchez's stretch of scoreless ball is at 44⅔ innings, and all his peripherals during that period -- 26 hits, five walks, 52 strikeouts -- exceed Hershiser's. Yes, Hershiser did throw five consecutive shutouts and capped that September with 10 innings of scoreless ball in his final regular-season start, which is unimaginably impressive considering pitchers have thrown four shutouts combined in 1,774 starts this season. One of those belongs to Sanchez, the Philadelphia Phillies left-hander who has put himself in the driver's seat to start the All-Star Game at his home park in July.
Schoenfield: Your major league leader in wins through the end of May: Aaron Ashby of the Brewers, sitting on a 9-0 record with a tidy 2.00 ERA. But here's the fun part: All nine wins have come in relief. Is there a better summation of how the Brewers are leading the NL Central despite ranking last in the majors in home runs? They find ways to win -- especially after Ashby has entered the game. He's halfway to Roy Face's record for wins in a season by reliever, as Face went 18-1 for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1959. The most wins for a relief pitcher since 2000 is 14 by Ryan Yarbrough for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2018, but that was when he was being used as a bulk reliever following an opener. Adrian Morejon won 13 last season for the San Diego Padres with more conventional usage.
What is one thing you are watching in June?
Rogers: Skubal's return to the mound is highly anticipated because once he's pitching again, you can start the clock ticking on his departure from Detroit. The Tigers are dead. They are deader than dead. And they're beat up. This is not their year, so getting something for the pending free agent should become a priority over the next 60 days. But first Skubal has to show he's still on top of his game. That should come sometime in June, when his outings will become must-watch -- just not for the reason Tigers fans expected when the season began.
Castillo: Whether any of the underachieving teams struggle to the point that they reach July ready to make trades -- or even open trade season in June. The Tigers, with their Skubal dilemma, are in this category. They're joined by the Mets, Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Royals. Those disappointing clubs have plenty of talent that could impact the playoff race. Or, perhaps, they make trades among themselves to shake things up before quitting on the season. Just two teams were more than seven games out of a playoff spot entering June: The Colorado Rockies and San Francisco Giants. That means the next month could shape the trade market.
Olney: Jesse's right -- with the Tigers seemingly buried deeper and deeper in the standings by the day, we've officially kicked off the Tarik Skubal watch. Teams will be closely monitoring his progress in coming back from the Skubal Surgery, as Scott Boras called it, and front offices will begin to assess whether they want to make an aggressive play for a left-hander who might be the best pitcher made available pre-deadline in decades. (Tom Seaver might be the best comp, in 1977.) Could the Chicago Cubs, needing swing-and-miss, make a run? Will the Padres again position themselves to be the most aggressive team at the deadline, or will they focus on offense? Will the Dodgers stick out their elbow again, despite already having a rotation loaded with stars, to build a Yamamoto-Skubal-Ohtani-Snell quartet?
What one series should fans circle as a must-watch for the month ahead -- and why?
Gonzalez: The Cubs were swept by the Brewers in mid-May, part of a 10-game losing streak that knocked Chicago out of first place. The Cubs have seemingly gotten back on track since. Let's hope that continues, because they'll visit Milwaukee at the end of the month, from June 26 to 28, in a series that could go a long way toward a division crown. Since Craig Counsell left Milwaukee to manage the Cubs in 2024, the Brewers have won back-to-back Central titles, further solidifying their reputation as one of the sport's most well-run organizations. But this is supposed to be the Cubs' year. And it must run through Milwaukee.
Passan: Rays at Dodgers, June 15 to 17. With the NL looking like the clearly better league this season, the AL's best team testing its wares against the two-time defending World Series champions makes for a delicious little middle-of-the-summer affair. The Rays are not a sexy bunch. They've got three excellent hitters in Junior Caminero, Yandy Diaz and Jonathan Aranda, and beyond that, their offense is more the scratch-and-scrimp sort than mashers. Their rotation has been a distinct strength, but then so is Los Angeles'. Their bullpen is perfectly meh, as is their defense. And here they are, 36-21, the best record in the AL, their run differential (+18) nearly the same as their win differential (+15). Tampa Bay might not finish the year with the best record in the league. They might not finish June with the best record in the AL East. But this will be a nice test that shows them they can hang with the Dodgers -- or that they'll need more should a rematch come in October.
Doolittle: Cleveland at Milwaukee, June 16 to 18. In some ways, these franchises are each other's doppelganger, though they don't go about things in precisely the same way. But all they do is win, even as the projection forecasts miss on both teams year after year. No one seems to be able to figure them out, but now they get to try to figure each other out over three days in a clash between teams very likely to be ensconced atop their respective divisions when they play.