There are so many bold predictions out in the sporting atmosphere that I¡¯ve lost track of what qualifies as truly bold anymore. But in an annual exercise in fun and futility, I¡¯m going to forecast some outcomes for the 2025 MLB season that I think would catch most observers off-guard.
Having already taken some big swings with my award picks at the start of the calendar year (I already disagree with a few of them, but whatever), here are nine other guesses -- a starting nine of new things that I¡¯m probably wrong about.
To the cracked crystal ball!
1) The entire American League playoff field will be different from last year.
This would be bizarre but actually not without recent precedent. According to MLB.com reporter and researcher Brian Murphy, it happened one other time in the Wild Card era ¨C in the National League in 2007.
2006: Mets, Cardinals, Padres, Dodgers
2007: Phillies, Cubs, D-backs, Rockies
Of course, the format has been expanded twice since then, and we now have six playoff teams per league. This makes it even less likely for total turnover to occur.
But if it can happen anywhere, it can happen in the AL this year. (The math insists there¡¯s maybe a 2% chance of it happening, and that¡¯s better than zero!) It¡¯s looking like a wide-open league.
Let¡¯s take it division by division:
East: The defending division champion Yankees had a brutal spring, with their rotation and Juan Soto-less lineup both seriously ravaged by injury (and it¡¯s not at all unusual for a pennant winner to struggle to repeat after a deep run, in the first place). The Orioles have pitching depth concerns of their own, having done nothing substantive to account for the loss of ace Corbin Burnes. Meanwhile, the Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rays all made meaningful efforts to improve going into this year. So yes, the East could absolutely be shaken up.
West: The Astros aren¡¯t going gently into that good night but certainly look a heck of a lot different today than they did a year ago. The Mariners finished just 3 1/2 games back of them last year, the Rangers have the potential to bounce back from their World Series hangover year, and the A¡¯s and Angels were among the most active clubs of the offseason.
Central: Here¡¯s where this prediction probably falls apart (if it didn¡¯t fall apart already), because you¡¯d be talking about three teams falling from October grace ¨C the reigning division champion Guardians, as well as the Tigers and Royals. But hey, the Guards thrived last year chiefly because of the aid of a likely-unrepeatable performance from their ¡®pen, while the Tigers and Royals had what I consider to be good winters but certainly not remarkable ones and could potentially see regression from key pieces, if only because ... this is baseball.
If we all agree the White Sox aren¡¯t going to roar to playoff life after 121 losses, then, for this prediction to come true, the Twins would have to win the Central and be the only Central team to advance. FanGraphs¡¯ projections give the Twins the highest-percentage odds of winning the division, so ... maybe? Also, mere regression to the mean would mean fewer losses for the White Sox and, ergo, fewer wins for their division foes and, ergo, less chance of the Central producing multiple playoff teams. (Did I just talk myself into this prediction? I think I did!)
Here¡¯s how I¡¯ll put it down for predictive posterity: The Red Sox, Twins and Rangers win their divisions, while the Mariners, Rays and A¡¯s claim the Wild Cards.
Oh wait, did I bury the lede there, because, yes ...
2) The A¡¯s and Rays will both make the playoffs.
These are easy clubs to underrate, given that their rosters aren¡¯t overflowing with household names and they are encountering bizarre ballpark situations. But the A¡¯s active winter, combined with their second-half surge last season, has opponents in the industry looking at them a lot differently, and they¡¯re going to have a lot of small-but-vocal crowds in West Sacramento.
The Rays pick might be sketchier, because the AL East is stronger and their home schedule stands a good chance of being completely upended by inclement weather at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. But they do have a high-ceiling (albeit high-risk) pitching staff, and their lineup has a path to being really good, especially if young Junior Caminero breaks out and signee Ha-Seong Kim makes a smooth transition once healthy.
Postseason games in Minor League ballparks would be absolutely wild. So of course ... that¡¯s what I¡¯m rooting for!
3) Both New York teams will miss the playoffs.
We already covered the Yankees¡¯ plight, but, just to belabor the point, Aaron Judge played 106 games in 2023, 102 in 2019 and 112 in 2018. He¡¯s 33 years old now. If he has a season in which he isn¡¯t able to post up in, say, 25-33% of this team¡¯s games again, I think there¡¯s a very real possibility, given what has already transpired on the injury front, that the Yankees finish under .500 for the first time since 1992.
I don¡¯t see that low a floor for the Mets. But if the Phillies and Braves have healthy years, I would take their pitching staffs over that of the Mets. And as for the Wild Card spots, the NL is simply stacked and could be unforgiving to a Mets club that obviously upgraded its lineup a huge deal but has an iffy pitching picture.
The Mets have a wily front office and an aggressive owner, and those are traits that are going to suit them well in the navigation of these early injuries and perhaps at the Trade Deadline. But they outperformed peripherals (they were 28-16 in one-run games) and expectations last season. Because of the relative strength of the league, I don¡¯t know that the Soto signing is the automatic playoff entry so many might assume it to be.
The NL field will be the division champion Phillies, Cubs and Dodgers and the Wild Card-entry Diamondbacks, Braves and Reds.
So it is written, so it shall(?) be.
How about a few individual predictions?
4) Garrett Crochet will strike out 40% of batters faced.
Though Gerrit Cole came within a whisker of this feat with the Astros in 2019 (39.9%), a qualified pitcher has never done it in a full season. (Shane Bieber struck out 41.1% in his pandemic-shortened 2020 Cy Young season.)
The protective gloves are off for Crochet in his new home with the Red Sox, and he has the deep arsenal of sizzling stuff to reach this magic mark.
5) Elly De La Cruz will steal 80+ bags.
I was going to predict that De La Cruz, the superstar Reds shortstop who describes himself as ¡°The Fastest Man in the World,¡± will reach 100 steals, but that seems absurd even by bold prediction standards.
So let¡¯s put it at 80, which may not sound as sexy as triple digits but would indeed be a major achievement. We haven¡¯t seen anyone steal 80 bags since Rickey Henderson swiped 93 way back in 1988!
De La Cruz can absolutely do it. He stole 67 bags despite striking out an MLB-high 218 times last season. He actually cut his K rate last year by 2.4 percentage points, to 31.3%. Knock that down to 28% while making a similar number of trips to the plate, and that would be about 24 fewer strikeouts. Let¡¯s turn half of those at-bats into singles or doubles, giving him another 12 trips to first or second.
Now, the walk rate. Last year, it increased from 8.2% to 9.9%. Let¡¯s bump that to 10.5%. That¡¯s six more walks.
OK, we¡¯re at 18 more times on base, in a position to steal. That¡¯s a 7.7% increase over Elly¡¯s 2024 total times on base. If we increase his stolen base attempts by that same percentage, he¡¯s around 90 attempts. If he maintained the same success rate as last season in 90 attempts, he¡¯d have 73 steals. Not enough.
But wait! De La Cruz has a goal of improving his robbery rate from around 80% to around 90%. This could of course mean fewer stolen-base attempts, not more, but that doesn¡¯t help this prediction any. So let¡¯s put him at 90% of 90. And that¡¯s 81. Yay!
(If any of my math is wrong, please forgive me. But Vince Coleman once stole 107 bags while reaching base only 30% of the time, so I don¡¯t really know why I¡¯m bothering with all the math.)
6) Someone other than Luis Arraez will win the NL batting title.
Water is wet, the sky is blue and Padres infielder Luis Arraez out-hits everybody.
Well, not this year. (The Arraez part, not the water and sky stuff.)
This is not a prediction that Arraez, who has three consecutive batting crowns (2022 in the AL and 2023 and ¡¯24 in the NL) suddenly forgets how to hit. No, he is absolutely capable of joining Honus Wagner, Rod Carew, Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn in winning four straight.
The problem is that Arraez is a pending free agent, and I can envision a scenario in which Padres GM A.J. Preller gets antsy near the Deadline and makes moves to try to improve his top-heavy team that include Arraez going to an AL club and screwing everything up.
So who will win in Arraez¡¯s place?
The NL qualifier with the best batting average. Duh.
7) Vinnie Pasquantino will tie the sacrifice flies record.
I¡¯ve written about this before, but I realized recently that Vinnie P. had 13 sacrifice flies despite logging only 496 at-bats last season (he fractured his right thumb and missed September). Only six other players in history have had that many sac flies in fewer than 500 at-bats.
This is all I think about now.
The most sac flies on record were Gil Hodges¡¯ 19 in 1954, which just so happened to be the year the sac fly was adopted as an official rule. Hodges never again had more than 10, which shows how fluky this can be. So Pasquantino¡¯s 13 were probably a fluke, too.
But now I need to put this prediction on record so that I have reason to track Pasquatch¡¯s sacrifices. The Royals seemingly improved their on-base presence from the leadoff spot by acquiring Jonathan India, so that could spell more sweet, sweet sac opportunities (sacortunities?) for our guy.
8) Sandy Alcantara is a Cub by summer¡¯s end.
There is no more obvious trade candidate going into 2025 than the Marlins¡¯ newly healed ace, Alcantara. Maybe it¡¯s too obvious. Maybe Alcantara gets hurt again. Maybe he doesn¡¯t recapture his Cy Young form from 2022 and is not as hot a commodity as anticipated. Or maybe a Marlins team with nothing firm on the books beyond the last guaranteed year of Alcantara¡¯s extension in 2026 extends him again.
But I¡¯m going with the premise that Alcantara is the darling of the Deadline, and the Cubs look like a team that will have the need to amplify its pitching, the desire to nail down the division and the financial might and farm system depth to get this done.
Though rookie third baseman Matt Shaw won¡¯t be going anywhere, the Cubs have six other guys on MLB Pipeline¡¯s Top 100 prospects list. With Kyle Tucker a pending free agent, the Cubs shouldn¡¯t be prospect-hoarding this summer. They should be making every effort to return to October for the first time in a full season since 2018 and with a roster capable of going the distance. And nobody goes the distance better than Alcantara, a throwback capable of a 200-plus-inning campaign and these little-known, old-fashioned things called complete games.
All right, let¡¯s cut to the chase and finish with a flourish (or should I say phinish with a phlourish?) ¡
9) The Phillies will win the World Series.
I¡¯m old enough to remember when the Phillies were the best team in baseball at last year¡¯s All-Star break. They had fallen in the 2022 World Series, gotten overconfident (and overzealous in the batter¡¯s box) in the 2023 NLCS and learned the hard lessons it would take to reach their rightful destination as champions.
Or so it appeared. Turns out, the Phillies were just a .500 team in the second half and were swiftly eliminated by the upstart Mets in the NLDS last fall.
So now this can go one of two ways: Either the Phillies regroup and finish the job with their elite core, or they rapidly show their age and go off a cliff.
I¡¯m going with the first one, because that¡¯s way more fun. If the Phillies stay healthy, they have as good a pitching staff as exists in this league. And when the lineup is on one of its heaters and making good swing decisions, it¡¯s a mash unit.
It¡¯s not just the average age on the Phillies¡¯ roster that¡¯s creeping up there. Dave Dombrowski is (presumably) not going to do this forever, and he has a chance to become the first chief executive to win the World Series with three different franchises. Owner John Middleton is 70 and will leave no stone unturned in giving this devoted fan base the parade it wants. That¡¯s going to matter at the Trade Deadline.
The NL is an absolute beast, and the Dodgers, especially, will be tough to top. But this is the year Bryce Harper and the boys get their ring.
Oops. I forgot to add one qualifier to all of the above: Maybe.