There were plenty of teams other than the Astros -- who won the World Series, after all -- that were happy with how their 2022 season went. The National League champion Phillies, surely; the Mets and Braves each won 101 games; and the Cardinals had a nostalgia party essentially every night out. All those teams expect more goodness in '23 as well: They think this is just getting started.

There were, however, some teams that had a disappointing season in 2022 but should have just as much optimism for '23 as some of those teams named above. They might not be thought of as immediate World Series contenders, but they are all teams that had a losing record in '22 that have a legitimate chance to get above .500, or even more, this season.

These are the turnaround teams that could make their fans forget 2022 really quickly. (Listed in alphabetical order.)

Angels
2022 record: 73-89

Remember early in the 2022 season, when the Angels got off to a hot start and it looked for all the world, particularly with the new playoff format, that we’d finally get Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani in the postseason? A rough June and July -- they were an avert-your-eyes 16-36 over those two months -- ended those hopes fast, and it ended up looking like just another disappointing season for the Halos.

But if you look closely, you can see plenty of reason for hope. The Angels' pitching was actually a little better in 2022 than it has been in recent years -- there might be five solid starters on this team in '23 for the first time in recent memory -- and you would have to think the injury woes can’t be as awful again, right? And while their offseason moves were not splashy, they seemingly raised their floor with the additions of reliable veterans such as Hunter Renfroe, Brandon Drury and Tyler Anderson, among others. If the Halos can just keep Trout, Ohtani, Anthony Rendon and company on the field most of the time, and everything else is just league average, this team could sail into the playoffs.

Cubs
2022 record: 74-88

Heading into 2022, the hope was that the Cubs would be good enough to finish in third place in the NL Central, and maybe everything would fall just right so that they could compete for a playoff berth. The first part of that statement was true; the second, quite definitively, was not. You can make whatever argument you want about the long-term outlook for the Cubs, but it’s undeniable that they are trying to be better in '23. The big-ticket item is shortstop Dansby Swanson, but there are new faces everywhere, from Trey Mancini to Tucker Barnhart to Eric Hosmer to Jameson Taillon to the fascinating question mark that is Cody Bellinger. Sure, the general thesis is the same that it was last year: Be the third-best team in the division, and then see if you can make a run to get higher than that. But it sure looks like they’ve got a lot more horses to potentially make that happen this time.