Spring training has just started, and it is entirely too early to know what exactly will happen in major league baseball this year. That being said, here are my predictions on what will happen this season.
1. The Boston Red Sox are going to win an absurd amount of games.
Mookie Betts had an amazing rookie year last year and this year will only bring even better results. He will be an All-Star and might possibly be in contention for MVP if he really steps it up. The Red Sox also just acquired one of the best pitchers in baseball: David Price. With him, Clay Buchholz, and Joe Kelly on the mound this year, they have a very strong pitching rotation that we can expect to see a lot from.
2. The Kansas City Royals will not be as relevant this year.
They had a rather uneventful off-season after winning the World Series. This may not be such a bad thing. They had a very good team last year, but with a lot of other teams making big moves, I do not think that they will have the skill and energy to keep up the intensity that they had last year.
3. The Chicago Cubs are going to win the NL Central.
They finished very strongly last year and they appear ready to take on this year. The only place that they really struggled much with was pitching and they just brought in LPH C.J. Riefenhauser from Baltimore during the off-season. While he may not have the MLB experience that he needs, I think that he could still be a valuable asset to them.
4. The New York Yankees will start off strong and fast like they usually do, but then, around mid-summer, they will start to fall.
GM Brian Cashman will then do something stupid like trade away Brett Gardner and the team will barely make the wild card spot.
5. The New York Mets are going to have another very strong year.
RPH Matt Harvey is going to win the Cy Young Award. He's one of the most dominant young pitchers in all of baseball, even after just having Tommy John surgery. This will be his second year back from it, so we can expect to see an even better performance from him in this coming season.
6. The San Diego Padres had some excitement last year with their new manager, A.J. Preller.
All that excitement has now died down and this will be a fairly straightforward year of rebuilding. They might make a few trades that end up screwing them up later, but that is just a part of the process.
7. The Detroit Tigers still have Justin Verlander.
They probably are not going to put up numbers that are playoff worthy, but Verlander alone will bring in 15 or so wins for them. He is 32 now and not quite as good as he used to be, but he is still a very good pitcher.
8. The Arizona Diamondbacks are going to have a very good season.
They just brought in one of the best pitchers in the league: Zach Greinke. He can provide some much-needed defense to go with the sheer offensive power that is brought to the team by Paul Goldschmidt. He is a two-time MVP runner-up and he will help to carry this team to a possible NL Wet championship.
9. The Los Angeles Dodgers did not really do anything in the off-season, but that is not really a bad thing.
They are a very solid team with one of the best pitching rotations in all of baseball, led by Clayton Kershaw. They also have one of the best shortstops in the league: Corey Seager.
10. The Cincinnati Reds are a horrendous baseball club.
Being from Cincinnati and growing up while going to Reds games, this is painful to say. They had a very disappointing year last year and it will not be much better this year. Joey Votto is one of the best first basemen playing the game right now, but he is about all that they have. The only thing that they can look forward to this year is Billy Hamilton maybe breaking a stolen base record.
