Rankings/List

Our position-by-position MLB player rankings will once again be a monthly staple throughout the upcoming season, and it's time for our first update roughly three weeks removed from Opening Day.

The preseason edition of these rankings was published March 4, and that will serve as a jumping-off point for our first update.

Let’s begin with this caveat: We are a little more than two weeks into the 2016 MLB season.

Making definitive predictions about a season not even 10 percent finished is as futile a task as predicting the Republican nominee. Depending on your loyalties, if these were two random weeks in July, emotional reactions wouldn’t be nearly as polarizing.

Two weeks are now in the books here in the 2016 MLB season, and already there has been no shortage of excitement and intrigue around the league.

That being said, we are dealing with an incredibly small sample size at this point, so it's important not to put too much stock in the early returns—both good and bad.

That's especially true with our weekly power rankings, as this exercise is not meant to simply be a mirror of the current standings.

In the grand scheme of things, one week in April doesn't mean a whole lot over the course of a 162-game MLB season.

However, for a handful of players around the league off to slow starts, one week must feel like an eternity when the scoreboard shows a sub-.200 batting average or a double-digit ERA.

With that in mind, what follows is a look at Week 2's biggest duds of the 2016 MLB season, with one player chosen to represent each position along with a starting pitcher and a closer.

We saw a lot of old and new during Week 2 of this baseball season, but little in between.

MLB’s youngest grabbed this week’s headlines, whether it was Bryce Harper reaffirming his status as the face of baseball or rookies Trevor Story, Jeremy Hazelbaker and Kenta Maeda continuing stellar freshman campaigns.

We're two weeks into the 2016 MLB season, which means—well, who knows?

The Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers are in first place in their respective divisions, which sounds about right. On the other hand, the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox are also in first, which fewer would have predicted.

The point is, it's way early.

Here's something we do know: Some players stuffed the stat sheet over the past week, and for that, they deserve to be recognized.

As the Washington Nationals learned in painful fashion just a season ago, in the bigs, everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

While the neighboring New York Mets rose as the power in the the National League East, a flood of injuries combined with underwhelming play by just about everyone not named Bryce Harper ensured that the Nats would be left out of the October conversation.

One of the most exciting parts of any new MLB season is watching the next wave of stars arrive on the scene with breakout performances.

Whether it's a rookie making a major impact in his first season or an established MLB player taking that next step, there are always a handful of emerging stars each year.

The tricky part in the early-going is deciding whether a hot start over the first couple weeks is the real deal or significant regression will follow in the days and weeks to come.

The minor league season may only be just over a week old, but there have already been a number of impressive performances put forth by some of baseball's most highly touted prospects.

But not all impressive performances are of the head-turning variety—and they don't all belong to baseball's top young talent.

Major League Baseball isn't hurting for young stars these days. It has enough. More than enough, even.

But since more are on the way, you might as well get to know them ahead of time.