Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across Major League Baseball. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Yankees fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
The MLB regular season is less than two weeks away, and teams and players across the league are just about geared up and ready, whether they’re fine-tuning in Arizona or Florida or letting it fly in the World Baseball Classic. Thanks to the WBC, relevant baseball is already
here, and not a week after the tournament concludes will we have Opening Night between the Yankees and Giants to greet us.
With the season about to kick off, we asked Yankees fans who they thought was the Yankees’ primary foe entering the year:
Unsurprisingly, the reigning AL champs won this poll in a landslide. The Blue Jays tied with the Yankees for the most wins in the American League last season before handling the Bombers in the ALDS en route to the pennant. Though they fell just short in the World Series, Toronto moved aggressively in the offseason to bolster their chances at a repeat run through the AL, landing Dylan Cease on a seven-year deal, while also adding NPB star Kazuma Okamoto and pitchers Cody Ponce and Tyler Rogers. To wit, most projections have the Yankees and the Blue Jays neck-and-neck at the top of the AL East.
The Red Sox come in second here above the Mariners, in part perhaps because Boston is obviously a direct (and hated) division rival, while Seattle feels like a far-off threat. But the Mariners, in the grand scheme of things, might be strongest AL team the Yankees have to deal with this year. Those projections that have the Yankees and Jays locked at the top of the AL East? They also have the Mariners projected to lead the AL in wins. The M’s didn’t have a super flashy offseason, but made a couple solid moves to augment a roster that came achingly close to the pennant last year, re-signing Josh Naylor and then adding Brendan Donovan in a trade with the Cardinals. If Seattle’s typically strong rotation bounces back from an iffy 2025, they will be a force to be reckoned with.
Now, on to the cellar of the Junior Circuit:
This is Chicago’s crown to lose, though the Angels are pushing them in the race to the bottom. The White Sox “rebounded” from their historically poor 2024, looking more like a normal, terrible team rather than a mind-bendingly bad one. A few young talents, like Kyle Teel, Colson Montgomery, and Shane Smith provided bright spots, though unfortunately Teel is already down after injuring his hamstring in the World Baseball Classic. The White Sox also added Munetaka Murakami to the mix, the kind of risky but high-upside play that it feels like the Pale Hose should be making.
If you squint, it’s possible to see the White Sox rebuild moving in a positive direction. The Angels, though, seem stuck in purgatory, aimlessly wandering through the desert. Their roster is close to barren beyond Zack Neto, Yusei Kikuchi, and the still-fighting Mike Trout, and their farm system looks unlikely to provide much help any time soon. Dark times indeed in Anaheim.
These next two are MLB-wide polls:
PED’s are unfortunately in the headlines right now, with Jurickson Profar getting suspended for the entire 2026 season after a second positive test, while Phillies outfielder Johan Rojas received an 80-game suspension after his first positive test. Profar has fully torpedoed what was once a great story, one of a former top prospect finally making good after a decade-long journey through the majors. Instead, he will likely always be remembered for his two PED suspensions.
Less than half of fans feel that PED’s aren’t a major problem, and it’s easy to argue that recency bias is suppressing that number bit. As disappointing as it was to see two big leaguers popped in the span of a week, from 2023 to 2025, just five players were suspended under the league’s doping policy. Unless MLB is simply failing at detecting juicers, there just haven’t been many guys turning to PED’s in recent years, with the exception of the couple of cases that just came down.
Fans are rather split on whether the league’s current punishments are harsh enough. Currently, a first positive test nets an 80-game suspension, a second yields a season-long suspension, and a third leads to a lifetime ban. These punishments, which have been in effect for 12 years now, are notably harsher than previous PED policies, which had much shorter suspensions for first- and second-time offenders. That those harsher policies have coincided with a pretty low number of positive tests would suggest that players are being sufficiently deterred from turning to drugs, but it stands to reason that unless the league adopts a literal zero-tolerance policy, some fans will be left feeling that the rules aren’t stringent enough.
These survey results are sponsored by FanDuel.
