2 Cubs earn spots in the season's first look at NL Central hitter power rankings

All National League Central teams have wrapped at least two series, including the Chicago Cubs who just completed their third series of the year with a sweep of the Athletics in Sacramento. Let's rank the top five hitters in the division based on early results at the dish this season..

1. Kyle Tucker, Cubs RF

I'm not sure how it's possible but Kyle Tucker is somehow exceeding Cubs fans' sky-high expectations just 10 games into the season. The highlights? A 1.228 OPS, more walks than strikeouts, tied for the league lead in RBI, a couple stolen bases, and a Statcast chart that is lit up with mind-numbing percentiles. It's silly to project out a full season of stats after nine games, but let's do it anyway. At his current pace, an 155 game stat line comes out to 69 homers, 189 RBI and 34 stolen bases.

Let's hope Tom Ricketts is practicing writing zeros on a check, because he's going to have to write a lot of them to keep the three-time All-Star around past this season.

2. Lars Nootbar, Cardinals LF

Lars Nootbar's advanced numbers have looked better than his baseball card stats in the past, but the stats are following the numbers this year to the tune of a 1.200 OPS. His chase rates have stayed in the extraordinary category and his already strong average exit velocities have taken a huge jump to nearly 98 MPH. The outcomes will start to regress for Nootbar but it's still easy to see him forcing his way into an All-Star roster spot if his slugging improves just marginally from previous seasons to pair with his elite contact skills.

3. Elly De La Cruz, Reds SS

Elly De La Cruz is already in mid-season form this year with his elite bat speed producing strong results, and figures to be Kyle Tucker's main challenger on this list throughout the season. The dynamic speedster hits the ball hard, but still needs to figure out how to make more contact to be on the same level as a Tucker at the plate. His strikeout rate has decreased substantially from 2024, which is a promising sign for Reds fans.

4. Nolan Arenado, Cardinals 3B

Almost shockingly, Nolan Arenado is still in the division to start the year and has raced out of the gate with an OPS above 1.000. He reportedly was working on increasing his bat speed most of the offseason, and there's been an uptick so far. The underlying data is a bit concerning still (it's really hard to outperform an xBA of .217 by 170 points for very long) - it will be interesting to see if Arenado has truly found some of his slug again or if there's just been lots of luck so far.

5. Seiya Suzuki, Cubs RF

Seiya Suzuki exploded in the A's series, posting seven hits and three homers to push his OPS to .958. We thought Suzuki was going to get a ton of opportunities to drive in runs this season hitting behind on-base machines Ian Happ and Kyle Tucker, and that has already started to play out with him tied for the league lead with 11. One concerning thing to keep an eye on: Suzuki's strikeout rate has exploded to 41 percent in the early-going.

A lot of that is due to facing a sequence of tough righty starters so far, but his K rate took a substantial increase last year as well. It's still not overly concerning: Suzuki is still one of the most underrated hitters in baseball and forms one of the best 1-2 combos in the league alongside Tucker.