Going out on a limb with 1 prediction for every division

For the past several weeks, we’ve been running a series of weekly season previews, breaking down major storylines from the perspective of all six divisions. With the Seoul Series in the rearview mirror and all 30 teams set to play on Thursday’s Opening Day, here is the final entry.

Last week: The likeliest division winners
Today: Out-on-a-limb predictions

We’ve reached the end of this preview series, which means it’s time to have some fun. In the past we have done, right before the season begins, a huge predictions piece, with an often absurd number of predictions. (We did 113 of those things two years ago!) We’ve decided to scale that down all the way to six this year: One bold, out-on-a-limb prediction for each of the six divisions. Some of these won’t come true; most of them probably won’t. (It’s possible none of them will.)

• 7 outlandish predictions for 2024 (or are they?!?)

But they’re all reasonable, or at least I think so, and would point to a fascinating, potentially wild season ahead.

What could happen that you don’t suspect? Let’s take a look.

AL East: The Red Sox won’t finish last.
Obviously, considering the Red Sox’s history and their dedicated, intensely devoted fanbase, it’s a little bit shocking that the idea that Boston won’t be the worst team in its own division could be considered in any way “bold.” But it is, right?

• Each team's projected Opening Day lineup

The other four teams don’t just plan on not finishing last, they all have legitimate World Series dreams. It’s difficult to find a pundit who isn’t picking Boston last in this division. But the Red Sox are a lot better than your traditional last-place team. They have an established star in Rafael Devers; exciting young players like Ceddanne Rafaela, Triston Casas, Jarren Duran and Opening Day starter Brayan Bello; and talented veterans due for some good fortune like Trevor Story, Tyler O’Neill and even Masataka Yoshida.

The Red Sox are certainly thin in places, particularly with their pitching, but this is not some empty husk of a team. (Do you think if they were in the AL Central, they would win it? I kinda do!) The floor on this team is higher than any consensus last-place-predicted team I can remember. All it takes is one team above them to realize their collapse potential -- looking at you, Yankees, and maybe even you, Rays -- and the Red Sox could easily pass them. I’m not sure the Red Sox are a playoff team. But a .500 team? Yeah -- and maybe even a little more.

• 2023-24 key additions and departures

AL Central: The Royals hype train will falter
You’ve heard the rumblings all spring in the wake of the (excellent) Bobby Witt Jr. extension. The Royals are making some moves. They’ve got some solid young hitters. Can they sneak out this division title? Color us skeptical.

I get the Cole Ragans excitement, but this is still a guy who started only 12 games for the Royals last year; let’s pump the brakes a little bit on the “next ace” talk. After him, the rotation has the sort of competent veterans you’d expect a contending team to add as a fifth starter or so, except the Royals have four of them. The bullpen is weirdly old and soft-tossing, flying in the face of how every other team is composing the bullpen these days. The offense is OBP-challenged in the extreme, an area where the lineup’s biggest addition (Hunter Renfroe) doesn’t figure to offer much of a boost.

You know who the 2024 Royals remind me of? The 2022 Tigers. That was a rebuilding team that finished the previous season with some momentum and pulled off some offseason additions, making the baseball world think they were about to make a move up the standings. That team was 14 games under .500 by May 12. The Royals are trending in the right direction -- but in the long term.

AL West: The post-Ohtani Angels are going to reach .500.
All right, all right: I know this one sounds wacky. But remember: The Angels never once won more than 80 games during Shohei Ohtani’s entire time with the club -- an absurd factoid that makes less sense the more I look at it.

How in the world could they possibly be better without him? Well, obviously, they’d rather have him on the team; subtracting a Shohei Ohtani from your roster is not, shall we say, an optimal strategy. But you don’t have to look that hard to see a .500 team here. All those years of focusing on their pitching is starting to (slowly) pay off. This rotation, 1 through 5, looks reliable, if not particularly electric. Their bullpen additions this offseason were strong. The lineup, if Anthony Rendon can stay healthy and Logan O’Hoppe, Nolan Schanuel and Zach Neto continue to progress, is deeper than Angels lineups usually look.

But most of all: Aren’t we due for a year where Mike Trout stays on the field and just wrecks the place again? How great would a vintage Trout year be? If they catch some breaks that they typically don’t catch, the Angels could sneak up to .500, absolutely.

NL East: The Braves are due for a (minor) step back.
For all the moves the Dodgers made this offseason, the cool-guy-skeptic stance on them has remained: They still haven’t caught the Braves. The Braves have laid waste to the NL East the last two seasons, putting together back-to-back 100-win seasons and notching the second-most wins in franchise history last year. They’re still my favorite to win this division, but they won’t run away with it this year.

That’s partly because they’ll be competing against what looks like the best Phillies team since the Lee/Halladay/Hamels/Oswalt teams more than a decade ago. But the primary reason is that just about everything fell perfectly for the Braves last year. Ronald Acuña Jr. had a face-meltingly amazing MVP season, but one in which he played 159 games and was encouraged to steal bases in a way his health may not allow him to this year. The whole lineup stayed healthy in 2023; the only regulars who played fewer than 142 games were Michael Harris II and Orlando Arcia, who played 138 and 139, respectively. Some of those players are going to get hurt, and that’s going to affect an offense that was great last year largely because it was so deep, 1-9.

Meanwhile, the rotation is counting on Charlie Morton, who is 40, and Chris Sale, who is about to turn 35. (Also: The bullpen’s really old.) The Braves are too stacked to fall off entirely. But 100 wins? Here’s betting they don’t get there this year.

NL Central: The Reds are still a year away. (And maybe more.)
For all the justified excitement the Reds generated last year, the things people got most excited about (Hunter Greene throwing fastballs, Elly De La Cruz doing anything) tended to generate better highlight reels than actual results. (I feel terrible saying this, but De La Cruz was a below-average hitter last year. Way below average, actually.)

Their actual best players (Matt McLain, TJ Friedl) are the sort of solid players that every team needs but not exactly the sort you build whole marketing campaigns around. (And both those guys are hurt right now.) While the Reds made some additions this offseason, some of them caused roster redundancies (Jeimer Candelario), while others can’t necessarily be counted on for reliable performance. (Frankie Montas has looked fantastic this spring, but he still is someone who threw 1 1/3 innings last year and was completely shelled over his two months in the Bronx in 2022.)

There are enough young players here that you’d expect to take a step forward, so you can see why Reds fans already love this team. But it’s possible that the young player who was most primed to break out this year was Noelvi Marte, and he’ll spend the first 80 games serving a suspension. It feels like we’re always talking about what the Reds could be rather than what they are. This year might not be any different.

NL West: The Padres will finish second and make the playoffs.
The D-backs have all the post-World Series momentum, and the Giants have been impressively aggressive (and finally successful!) in bringing in free agents. Meanwhile, the Padres lost Juan Soto, Blake Snell and Josh Hader.

How could this team be better? Well, any Padres fan can tell you the 2023 version of this club had horrendous luck, going 2-12 in extra-inning games and a downright stunning 9-23 in one-run games. (And don’t get them started on the lack of clutch hitting.) Those are the sort of statistics that are highly unlikely to be repeated, and besides, it’s not like the Padres lost everything: Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, Jake Cronenworth and Ha-Seong Kim are all still here, mainstays of an imposing lineup. And you could argue that despite losing Snell, the Padres have a deeper rotation than they did last year, thanks to the additions of Dylan Cease, Michael King and Jhony Brito.

This isn’t the potential juggernaut team we thought it would be last year -- the one that was supposed to come for the Dodgers’ throne. But they look like playoff contenders even before you account for the good fortune they are clearly due after how 2023 turned out. These Padres may make new manager Mike Shildt look like a genius.