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It’s that time of year: The projection systems for the 2023 MLB season have been released and baseball analysts are divulging their secret-sauce prophecies, so let’s dig into the five teams that are most likely to take a step forward and possibly emerge as playoff surprises in 2023.

And, yes, no matter how loaded the top teams look now, there will be a surprise team or two in the postseason come October. When making predictions, I tend to default too easily to the previous year’s standings even though the logical side of my brain that has studied these things understands that won’t happen. This is called the Law of Competitive Balance or the Plexiglass Principle: Teams that improve one season tend to decline the next — and vice versa.

It’s really just a fancy way of describing regression to the mean, which applies to players as well. Aaron Judge probably won’t hit 62 home runs again. Jarred Kelenic will likely hit better than .141. The Dodgers won’t win 111 games. The Nationals — well, the Nationals might lose 107 again. Projection systems follow this model. As a result, while they will be more accurate in the total than someone just eyeballing things and making guesses, they are also, by nature, more conservative than the actual results we might see.

The latest PECOTA projection at Baseball Prospectus, for example, sees the Yankees as the best team at 96.9 wins. In 2022, five teams beat that win total, including four with at least 101 wins — and three beat that figure in 2021 and six in 2019, so barring a drastic change in competitive balance across the league, we’ll likely see at least a couple of 100-win teams in 2023.

At the same time, every season we usually get at least one losing team from the previous season that makes the playoffs. There were three in 2022: the Mets went from 77 wins to 101; the Guardians went from 80 to 92; and the Padres went from 79 to 89 (and that doesn’t include the Orioles, who went from 52 wins to 83, one of the biggest single-season improvements in MLB history). The Mets and Padres weren’t necessarily big surprises since New York spent a lot of money in free agency and San Diego had been a strong team in 2020 (although it improved despite losing Fernando Tatis Jr. for the entire season). There were four such playoff teams in 2021, one in 2019 (we’ll skip 2020), two in 2018 and three in 2017. The last season without a losing team from the year before making the playoffs was 2016.

OK, let’s pick five sub-.500 teams that might break out in 2023 …

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Follow live: Jets, Stars battle in Game 3 as series shifts to Dallas

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Jung hits HR for mom while facing brother Jace

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Jung hits HR for mom while facing brother Jace

DETROIT — Josh Jung delivered a special Mother’s Day gift to his mom, Mary.

The Texas Rangers third baseman hit a two-out, two-run homer in the fifth inning off Beau Brieske at Detroit on Sunday. Jung’s brother, Jace, was in the Tigers’ lineup at the same position.

Before the game, Mary Jung delivered the game ball to the mound and her sons joined her on the field.

“My heart is just exploding,” Mary Jung said in an interview on the Rangers’ telecast. “I mean, I couldn’t ask for a better Mother’s Day gift. We’re all in the same place, to begin with. But then to watch them live their dream, do what they love to do, I couldn’t be more proud.”

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was the first home run by a player facing his brother’s team on Mother’s Day since at least 1969.

The Jungs’ parents, Mary and Jeff, have been in attendance throughout the three-game series. The brothers also started Saturday when Texas recorded a 10-3 victory.

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Yankees’ Stroman has setback in rehab of knee

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Yankees' Stroman has setback in rehab of knee

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — New York Yankees pitcher Marcus Stroman had a setback as he tries to return from a left knee injury that has sidelined him for the past month.

Manager Aaron Boone said Sunday that Stroman still had “discomfort” in the knee after throwing a live batting practice session in Tampa, Florida, on Friday and will be reevaluated before the team figures out the next step in his rehabilitation process.

“He’s gotten a lot of treatments on it and stuff,” Boone said. “It just can’t kind of get over that final hump to really allow him to get to that next level on the mound. We’ll try and continue to get our arms around it and try and make sure we get that out of there.”

Stroman hasn’t pitched since allowing five runs in two-thirds of an inning against the San Francisco Giants on April 11. He was placed on the 15-day injured list the next day with what Boone hoped at the time would be a short-term absence.

But there is no timeline for the right-hander’s return, and Boone said the injury likely impacted the way Stroman pitched before going on the IL. He was 0-1 with an 11.57 ERA in three starts.

“Certainly that last start, I think he just couldn’t really step on that front side like he needed to,” Boone said. “I talk about how these guys are like race cars, and one little thing off and it can affect just that last level of command or that last level of extra stuff that you need. So we’ll continue to try to get him where we need to.”

Stroman had surgery March 19, 2015, to repair a torn ACL in his left knee. He returned to a major league mound that Sept. 12.

Stroman, 34, is in the second season of a two-year contract guaranteeing $37 million. His deal includes a $16 million conditional player option for 2026 that could be exercised if he pitches in at least 140 innings this year.

Last season, Stroman was 10-9 with a 4.31 ERA in 30 games (29 starts) when he threw 154⅔ innings, his most since 2021 with the Mets. Stroman struggled in the second half and did not pitch in the postseason, when the Yankees made their first World Series appearance since 2009.

In other injury news, DJ LeMahieu played for the second straight day on a rehab assignment at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Sunday and could join the team in Seattle this week to make his season debut. LeMahieu had a cortisone injection last week in his right hip, dealing with an injury stemming from last year.

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