Every year as a new season dawns, I do my best to come up with spur of the moment, lightly researched predictions for the upcoming season. I am not living completely under a rock, however, so these do tend
to be hunches that accumulate over months of casual offseason observance of happenings around the league, and while I don’t normally scour my spreadsheets prior to making these calls, there’s at least a smidgen of real reasoning behind why I go with them.
I also try to make them a bit outlandish, because nobody needs to waste time reading that Tarik Skubal is going to be really good.
Therefore, they start out as dumb predictions. And when the end of the season rolls around, they almost always end up looking even dumber!
Here’s the link to the Five Dumb Predictions for the 2025 MLB season I made in late March. We’ll start with these, and I’ll follow up with my Five Dumb Predictions for the 2025 Cincinnati Reds tomorrow.
Get out your red pens and start the grading!
1) Robbie Ray emerges from hibernation again, wins NL Cy Young Award
Through August 18th, I was kind of on to something – and I’d had him on my fantasy team all year with a big smile on my face. He’d made 26 starts and fired 154.2 IP of 2.85 ERA ball for a San Francisco Giants club that was fighting for a playoff spot, his innings ranking 5th in all of baseball on that date.
If he could finish strong, there could be a chance he’d take home his second CYA after several years of barely playing due to injury!
Alas, he immediately became the worst pitcher in baseball from that day forward, yielding 25 ER in 27.2 IP over his final 6 starts of the year. No, seriously – among 74 qualified pitchers from his next start through September 19th, he had the highest ERA of all of them!
He won’t get a single vote for the award given to the senior circuit’s best pitcher, let alone win it. This prediction fought a noble battle, but still lost in the end.
2) The Colorado Rockies lose 110 games, extend manager Bud Black through 2026
The Colorado Rockies lost 119 games and threatened to be the single worst team in the history of regular season baseball throughout. That part I got right.
The joke here, of course, is that they’d lost 103 and 101 games over their previous two seasons and still kept keeping Bud Black under contract for some reason. He was in his 9th season managing that moribund franchise! They’d finished dead last in the NL West for three straight seasons prior to this year, and no better than 4th since 2019! They’re run by perhaps the least adept owner this side of Cincinnati!
The Rockies did fire Black, eventually. They started playing better baseball after that, too.
I struck the meat of this prediction, but not the slapstick addendum.
3) Fernando Tatis, Jr. reminds us he’s an all-time great in the making
A 30/30 season with a return to Gold Glove defensive form is in the wings, and that will result in his third top-four finish in NL MVP voting already in his career.
I think he rekindles the kind of performance in 2025 that launched him onto the scene in the first place and landed him that $300+ million contract.
Fernando had been plenty good over the previous two seasons, but nowhere near the guy who led the NL with 42 dingers in 2021 prior to missing 2022 with a PED suspension. There were question marks galore with him, obviously.
His defense rebounded in a big, big way this year, leading all NL RFs in DRS while being named a finalist for a Gold Glove at the position. He also was valued at 6.1 fWAR and 5.9 bWAR – the former ranking 13th overall just ahead of Juan Soto. He stole 32 bags, which is more than 30, but alas, he smashed just 25 dingers, which is not quite 30.
Still, he played a career-high 155 games and reestablished himself as an All-Star at the still young age of 26, so I got the gist of this one correct. You can still give me an F on technical terms if you choose!
4) The Boston Red Sox win the AL East, represent the AL in the World Series
I was big on the Sox this year after they’d been sub .500 in both 2022 and 2023 and an even .500 in 2024, and that wasn’t all wrong. They won 89 games and made the playoffs, though they were quickly dispatched by the New York Yankees in the first round.
They did not win the AL East. They did not represent the AL in the World Series. Ope.
5) …where Boston will lose to the Atlanta Braves in the World Series
Boy did I get this one wrong!
I figured there was no way this talented Braves roster could be as banged up as they were while winning 89 games with both hands tied behind their backs in 2024. That roster is stacked, and they’d even be getting Ronald Acuña back mid-year this year!
Alas, Michael Harris pumpkin’d, Austin Riley did, too, Reynaldo Lopez was immediately injured, Spencer Strided didn’t look at all the same, and by September they were giving meaningful at-bats to the likes of [/checks notes] Jake Fraley? My goodness, what a disaster.
Atlanta won 76 games, not the World Series, you idiot. F- for this one.
