Five Dumb Predictions for the 2025 MLB season

They’re here! They’re dumb!

The 2025 Major League Baseball season has arrived, with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs having already kicked off the season in Japan last week. Stateside, the rest of the league will pop the top on their 2025 campaigns on Thursday, with the next seven months set to be chock full of the greatest sport in the history of sport.

Of course, that means it’s also officialy prediction season. That means it’s time around these parts for Five Dumb Predictions, an annual tradition in which five declarations are made with inevitably shocking inaccuracy.

We’ll get to the Reds-specific dumb predictions later this week. For now, here are Five Dumb Predictions about the MLB season as a whole.

Robbie Ray emerges from hibernation again, wins NL Cy Young Award

Ray, the 2021 AL Cy Young Award winner, has been valued at a combined -0.3 bWAR since the beginning of the 2023 MLB season. He’s been dealt from Seattle to San Francisco in that time, and also went under the knife for Tommy John surgery in early 2023 (and also needed surgery to repair the flexor tendon in his left arm).

Ray, an 11 year veteran of big league play, had only once ever received CYA votes in his career prior to his breakout 2021 season, and that came back as a 25 year old in 2017 in a 4.8 bWAR year with the Arizona Diamondbacks - a season that saw his 12.1 K/9 lead the NL en route to a 7th place finish in the voting.

He’s back to 100% for 2025, however, and he’s even got a new pitch in his arsenal - a changeup that he picked up from reigning AL CYA winner Tarik Skubal. So far, he’s been electric in Cactus League action and once again looks like a dominant force from the left side.

I don’t think he’ll be back to the ~190 IP threshold he reached in 2021 and 2022, but 150+ IP for a Giants club on which many are sleeping is completely in the cards, with a K/9 that may well lead the NL again. As dark horse candidates go, him taking home the NL CYA is certainly one, and it’s dumb prediction number one.

The Colorado Rockies lose 110 games, extend manager Bud Black through 2026

The Colorado Rockies have a particular set of skills, skills they have acquired over a very long history of being the most inept, poorly run franchise in Major League Baseball.

Is it tough to win games at an elevation of a mile high? Obviously! They’re the only ones tasked with attempting to, and they can’t do it!

Whether or not it’s the elevation or simply the horrid attempts at drafting, developing, signing, and trading for players who can perform well enough is hard to say for some. What we do know, though, is that it just simply never works out, and their current roster sure suggests that’s going to be the case once again.

They’ve lost 103 and 101 games over the last two seasons, respectively, and frankly I think that’s just going to escalate. Kris Bryant may play 84 games, he may play 19, but it’s not going to matter one bit. I say they lose 110 games in yet another defunct season at Coors Field, an effort that will once again prompt the team to extend manager Bud Black for another season for whatever reason.

(For the record, this is not a knock on Black, it’s a knock on the front office/ownership for giving him nothing to work with and yet insisting the status quo remain.)

Fernando Tatis, Jr. reminds us he’s an all-time great in the making

Yeah, Fernando got bonked with a PED suspension and eventually ended up missing the entire 2022 season due to that and injury.

Yeah, he’s only been worth 7.3 fWAR since the start of the 2023 season - good for 36th best among all position players in baseball.

Still, 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. He is, after all, younger than the likes of Juan Soto, Oneil Cruz, Jazz Chisholm, and Adley Rutschman, and was born in the same year as Matt McLain. In other words, there’s still a ton more for him to tap into in his age-26 season, and I think he does just that.

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.

The Boston Red Sox win the AL East, represent the AL in the World Series

The Sox have been in a very pre-2004 Sox slump of late. They won just 78 games in both 2022 and 2023, respectively, and only upped that to 81 wins last season. That said, they made big splashes this offseason in the form of the Garrett Crochet trade and Alex Bregman signing, and they rebuilt their bullpen around Liam Hendriks and Aroldis Chapman.

On top of that, they’ve got the best trio of prospects in the game ready to emerge at any point this year, and a farm system that’s deep enough for their front office to remain aggressive at the trade deadline. If one, or both of Lucas Giolito and Walker Buehler regain form, they’ve got the kind of depth in their rotation that should make them once again a viable force in an otherwise deep, brutal AL East.

I also think Rafael Devers is about to knock the cover off the ball to show the world just how good he is after being pushed off 3B by the Bregman acquisition. That’s a big enough snowball to push them to the top of the AL’s deepest division in the regular season and through the playoffs...

...where Boston will lose to the Atlanta Braves in the World Series

Look, there is zero possible way that the Braves get barraged with injuries the way they did in 2024.

Ronald Acuña will be back by mid-May. Austin Riley and Michael Harris II aren’t missing 50+ games each again. Ozzie Albies will play way, way more than the 99 games he played in last year, and Sean Murphy won’t be sidelined for two months with a torn oblique again (even if his busted ribs will keep him on the shelf for a few weeks to begin the year).

Matt Olson, meanwhile, is going to look much more like the guy who swatted 54 homers with a .413 wOBA in 2023 than the one who socked just 29 with a .339 wOBA in 2024. At least, that’s precisely what I keep telling myself.

Pair all of that with the return of a healthy Spencer Strider, and this team is going to wreck other clubs. Hell, they won 89 games last year even with all of that bad news!

The Braves, the 2025 World Series champions!