It’s a small sample size, sure, but there are some Major League Baseball teams scuffling right now.

Teams that had playoff aspirations. Teams that had visions of pennants and a World Series trophy.

Teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates.

No team is perfect and no team over the course of a 162-game season is going to sail through without some tough slogging.

Tough stretches at the beginning of the season are magnified because they aren’t lost in the middle of the year.

A slump in April is seen differently than one in July.

With that said, here are some teams that have gotten off to less-than-stellar starts and what it will take to turn things around:

Pirates’ hitting woes.

Tell me if you have heard this before? The Pirates’ offense slumped in April.

I know. Shocking.

The Bucs have made it a habit of getting off to pedestrian starts to a season at the plate. Through Monday, the Buccos were batting .231 as a team had scored just 93 runs in 25 games.

Amazingly, the Pirates have scored more runs and have a better batting average through 25 games this year than they did last year.

So, that’s hope they can turn it around as they did in 2014.

Red Sox pitching woes.

Rick Porcello is no Pedro Martinez.

Boston doesn’t have an ace. They don’t even have a king or a jack. The rotation has been a bunch of jokers.

The quartet of Clay Buchholz, Justin Masterson, Wade Miley, Porcello and Joe Kelly have the worst collective ERA of any rotation in baseball.

By a lot.

To make matters worse, the Sox haven’t hit consistently to make up for it.

It could be a long season (again) on Yawkey Way.

Nationals’ fielding woes.

The Nats are waving at ground balls as if actual gnats are buzzing around their collective heads.

Through 27 games, Washington “fielders” have committed 25 errors.

Still not the 1963 Mets (who made 208 errors), but bad enough to frustrate a loaded pitching staff.

The Nationals have coughed up 25 unearned runs, which is a record-pace. So is the nine errors made already by shortstop Ian Desmond.

Unless Washington can fix its poor defense, there will not be a World Series in the Nation’s Capital.

The White Sox just have woes — a lot of woes.

The South Siders are last in baseball in runs scored and home runs. Nelson Cruz has more homers than the entire White Sox team.

Chicago is also 26th in ERA.

This is a team that was expected to compete for the American League pennant.

It’s just competing now for baseball’s worst team.

Of course, in a few months, all of these troubles by all of these teams could be forgotten.

It’s a long season, after all.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle