Dodgers miss playoffs? Holliday MVP? 7 outlandish predictions (or are they?!?)

Over the years, I’ve written all kinds of predictions for MLB.com.

In the uncorrupted innocence of an optimistic youth, I wrote predictions that my heart and soul believed to be true, based on input from trustworthy evaluators, brilliant baseball minds.

They were wrong.

As I became more familiar with advanced analytics, I wrote predictions based on batted-ball data, pitch value metrics and other potentially prognostic stats.

They were wrong.

Figuring I must be the problem, I even once wrote a batch of predictions that were the exact opposite of what my actual predictions would have been.

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Amazingly (and hilariously), all but one of them were wrong, which means all but one of them should have been right.

I bring all this up only to assure you that these bold 2024 MLB predictions are not the work of some pot-stirring Hot Take Artist desperate for clicks.

No, the only thing I am desperate for is correctness. This is my audacious effort to beat the baseball gods at their own twisted game and concoct some absolutely crazy baseball outcomes before they occur.

Actually, to call the following predictions “bold” undersells them. These are outrageous predictions. In order to put them forward, I’m going to have to dismiss the earnest individual awards predictions we published a few months ago (they were all going to be wrong, anyway) and dream up some drama, in the hope of looking like a genius six months from now.

Let’s get reckless… because clearly, nothing else has worked.

Jackson Holliday will win the AL MVP Award as a rookie.

A rookie has won an MVP Award only twice in history -- Fred Lynn in 1975 and Ichiro Suzuki in 2001. So we’re due. And with the game increasingly impacted by young talent and teams incentivized to roster their best Major League-ready players from the outset of the season, perhaps it’s actually plausible.

If anybody can do it this year, it’s Holliday, the consensus No. 1 prospect in all of baseball. But first, he'll have to spend some time at Triple-A Norfolk to start the 2024 season after he was sent to Minors camp on Friday.

• The must-watch player in every division this season

Now, I must acknowledge that in the futile awards predictions piece referenced above, I didn’t even pick Holliday for AL Rookie of the Year, opting instead for the Rangers’ Wyatt Langford, so as not to go chalk. But as of now, it appears the bulk of any at-bats Langford receives in the bigs this year would come at DH. There’s just no way a rookie DH is going to win the MVP, even in the outrageous reality we’re forecasting here.

So Holliday it is. The 20-year-old middle infielder had a great performance in the Grapefruit League, figures to have a prominent role on a good team and has the total package of power, plate approach, defensive instincts and baserunning ability.

Don’t let me down, Jackson. I need this.

The Dodgers will miss the postseason.

Do I really believe this? No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.

But again, to get ahead of the baseball gods, we have to entertain some uncomfortable ideas.

It would not be bold to predict the Dodgers losing or not even reaching the World Series, because … October. But prior to the Seoul Series, FanGraphs was giving the Dodgers “only” a 93.5% chance of making the playoffs, which means there is a [phones a friend who tutors fifth graders in math] 6.5% chance they don’t.

So, how would that happen? Probably something like this:

They succumb to the pressure. L.A. is the second-largest media market in the country, and the Dodgers are no strangers to attention. But it’s fair to say the baseball fishbowl there has never been as intense as it can be in New York or Boston.

Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and/or Freddie Freeman miss significant time. Not inconceivable. Ohtani is fresh off elbow surgery and had an oblique issue late last season, and Betts and Freeman are both north of 30. So things happen.

The rotation doesn’t gel. Even more conceivable, given Yoshinobu Yamamoto having never pitched in MLB, Tyler Glasnow’s lengthy injury history, Walker Buehler coming back from Tommy John, Clayton Kershaw coming back from a shoulder procedure at age 36, etc.

The bullpen blows it. Not a comment on the current bullpen concoction, just an obvious observation that bad bullpens can emerge out of nowhere to undermine a lot of good elsewhere, and sometimes they’re not as easy to fix on the fly as we assume.

The D-backs, Giants and Padres all bring the heat. Hey, they were all on our list of offseason winners, so… maybe!

The total solar eclipse of April 8 changes the entire trajectory of mankind, and suddenly the mighty Dodgers forget how to play baseball. Don’t laugh at this one; it might be my only chance to get a baseball prediction right.

The Rangers will miss the postseason, too.

This one I could actually see. Heck, none of Bruce Bochy’s previous World Series winners reached the postseason the following year, which is not a knock on Boch’s managerial skill but a comment on the difficulty of running it back.

Remember, as mighty as they were in October/November, the Rangers nearly coughed up their playoff position in the first place, thanks to a pedestrian 38-33 record in the second half. It was a mercurial team that got ludicrously hot when it mattered most, and sometimes that magic is hard to summon again.

A quiet offseason did nothing to ease concerns about the rotation holding down the fort until Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom return, and it’s not as if Scherzer and deGrom are sure things, given their ages and injury histories. Texas’ bullpen has question marks, too.

I happen to think the lineup will keep rolling, especially with the injection of youth and upside from a full season of Evan Carter and the arrival of Langford. But that doesn’t mean it happens, especially if pitching struggles or injuries amplify the pressure on the run-producers.

The A’s will be better than you think.

The A’s probably won’t contend for a playoff spot, but even if they lost, say, 90 games or fewer, that would greatly surpass most people’s expectations for a club that dropped 112 games last year, 102 the year before and is playing with a move to Las Vegas looming over the final season of the team’s Oakland Coliseum lease.

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Here's why such improvement is possible: Ross Stripling and Alex Wood won’t be vying for the Cy Young or anything, but they lend doses of needed capability to the rotation. Likewise, the recent J.D. Davis signing for the lineup. More to the point, the 2023 arrival of Zack Gelof precedes the possible 2024 arrivals of Darell Hernaiz and (the new) Max Muncy, giving the A’s the seeds of an intriguing infield. The pitching staff could get jolts in the starting department from No. 10 prospect Joe Boyle and in the back end from No. 2 prospect Mason Miller and his 101-mph heat.

A Trade Deadline selloff of anything respectable that’s not nailed down could thwart this bold prediction (as, of course, could the roster, in general). But this weird organizational limbo situation can bring out either a malaise or a chip on the shoulder (you’ve all seen “Major League,” right?) for the current big league club. Here’s hoping it’s the latter.

Patrick Corbin will be an All-Star and midseason trade chip.

The first season of Corbin’s six-year deal with the Nationals went exactly as hoped. He had a 3.25 ERA in 202 innings, then won two games in the postseason as Washington won it all.

In the four years since? Corbin has been arguably the least effective regular starter in baseball, with the highest ERA (5.62) among those with at least 300 innings pitched. (That he’s actually been one of the most durable pitchers in baseball in that span is some sort of cruel irony.)

Well, it’s the final year of the Corbin deal now. And wouldn’t it just be so baseball for this guy to suddenly figure it out again?

The data doesn’t offer much hope, aside from above-average walk and ground-ball rates. Corbin is 34 years old and gets hit too hard and doesn’t induce enough swing-and-miss to lead anybody to expect a happy ending in 2024.

That must be why it’s going to happen.

Division winners will include the Mariners (!), Phillies (!!), Blue Jays (!!!), Royals (!!!!) and Pirates (!!!!!).

Spaghetti, meet wall. One of these has to stick, right? Right?!

The M’s, having finished just two games back in the division last year, are the least spicy of these. But they reside in the same division as the last two World Series champs, so, yes, the judges should allow that as a bold entry. They have arguably the best rotation in MLB, an improved lineup, a penchant for putting together effective bullpens, and Julio Rodríguez. I actually think it can happen.

The Phillies pick is bold only because the Braves, winners of six straight division titles, still appear unbeatable. Even as good as the Phillies are, FanGraphs projects a 13-game gap between these two clubs. So sure, I’ll take the underdog in that battle. We already know the Phillies can beat the Braves in the month of October; now they just have to beat them in the other months.

The Blue Jays had such a bummer of a postseason and offseason that I think most of us mentally cast them off to the side of the road in the AL East. But if the young O’s can’t quite live up to the growing hype, the Yankees can’t overcome the early (or perhaps prolonged, for all we know) absence of Gerrit Cole in their iffy rotation, the Rays can’t continue to work their magic, and the Red Sox’s Netflix documentary winds up falling in the “dramedy” category, there’s Toronto’s opportunity to pounce (if and only if Vladimir Guerrero Jr. cooperates, of course).

The Royals? Well, considering the Tigers finished second in the AL Central last season and the Guardians won the division in 2022, we’ve got to go down another level to reach a truly outrageous (but also plausible… sorry, White Sox) pick to overtake the Twins. Kansas City had a busy offseason… but also lost 106 games last year. So there’s a mountain to make up. But this is the AL Central we’re talking about. It’s the only division in history to produce a team that lost 100-plus games one year and reached the playoffs the next (the 2016-17 Twins). Let’s do it again!

Last but not least, we have the Pirates. The NL Central is wide open, but, uh, probably not this wide open. Alas, it wouldn’t be outrageous to pick any of the Cubs, Reds or Cardinals. And the Brewers were the Central champs last season, so, even in their depleted state, they are not eligible for our outrageousness. So let’s live a little. Buccos Fever broke out in a big way with a 20-9 March/April last year. With a healthy Oneil Cruz and the pending promotion of Paul Skenes, maybe the Pirates can shock the world for a full season. (Nobody would be more shocked than me, the only person to have predicted it.)

Oh, who will dethrone the Dodgers out West, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you…

The D-backs will return to the World Series -- and win it this time.

Arizona was arguably the most unlikely pennant winner in MLB history last year, and the math tells us a run to the World Series this year is also unlikely. FanGraphs gives them just a 2.2% chance of winning it all, and the NL has had just two repeat pennant winners going back to 1997 (the 2008-09 Phillies and 2017-18 Dodgers).

So while the Snakes have a lot of good things going for them -- especially after the offseason additions of rotation help from Eduardo Rodriguez (whose bout of lat tightness hopefully isn’t serious) and power from Eugenio Suárez and Joc Pederson -- it would be stunning to see them again reach and this time win the Series. Even taking the West, where they are given just a 9.5% chance of coming out on top, would be an amazing achievement.

The most amazing achievement of all? Me getting a prediction right. Come on, baseball gods. Let’s see some outrageous outcomes in 2024.