This past spring, MLB.com put together a group of writers, editors, researchers and analysts to take their best shots at predicting how the upcoming season will play out. These prognosticators peered into their crystal balls and attempted the difficult task of seeing the future, tackling the following nine categories and looking at both favorites and dark horses. Here are those stories:

Batting average leaders | Home run leaders | Stolen base leaders | Strikeout leaders | Saves leaders | MVP candidates | Cy Young candidates | Breakout picks | Rebound picks

A number of these picks worked out quite well, but many, of course, met a less pleasant fate. Baseball is a game of failure, as they say, and that’s certainly true for baseball predictions as well.

Good or bad, though, we are going to face our record head-on. In that spirit, we gathered eight of our more prolific pickers and asked each to review two of their selections catalogued in the articles listed above: One successful and one they would like to have back.

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David Adler - Senior Coordinator, Data & Research

One to savor: Hunter Brown -- Breakout pitcher
Brown was one of only six pitchers to throw 150 or more innings with an ERA over 5 in 2023, but I bet on his strikeout numbers (10.3 K/9) and great stuff (a 96 mph rising fastball, low-90s slider, sharp dropping curveball and more) to make him a breakout candidate in 2024. Well, the Astros righty ended up chopping more than a run and a half off his ERA, finishing at 3.49 with 179 strikeouts in 170 innings. His pitch arsenal got even better. And he was great in his playoff start, throwing 5 2/3 innings of two-hit, one-run, nine-strikeout baseball against the Tigers.

One to regret: Adley Rutschman -- Batting average leader (Dark horse)
I could have gone with my Jesús Luzardo dark horse Cy Young pick here (only made 12 starts and had a 5.00 ERA). But Rutschman played all year, and he just stopped hitting. I thought Rutschman's elite plate discipline, contact hitting and growth into an MVP contender for the Orioles would carry through the 2024 season. Instead, he couldn't buy a hit for the entire second half. Rutschman was batting .294 at the end of June. Then he hit .194 for the final three months and finished at .250. His slump was a big reason the O's scuffled down the stretch, too.

Jason Catania -- Supervising Editor, Breaking News

One to savor: Ryan Helsley -- Saves leader (Dark horse)
Surprisingly, several of my predictions proved particularly prophetic -- including Aaron Judge as AL MVP (duh); Tarik Skubal as dark horse strikeout leader; Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Chris Sale as rebound candidates; and Elly De La Cruz and Hunter Greene as breakout players -- but the most unexpected one to hit was Helsley as the MLB saves leader. After all, the hard-throwing right-hander was coming off an injury-plagued 2023 in which he recorded only 14 saves across 33 games. Helsley showed enough when healthy, though, to make for a reasonable pick, and then he proceeded to more than double his career saves total entering the season by posting 49 – the most since Edwin Díaz racked up 57 in 2018.

One to regret: Jordan Lawlar -- Stolen base leader (Dark horse)
Back in Spring Training, it seemed like Lawlar -- the D-backs’ top prospect who had made his MLB debut late in 2023 -- would have an opportunity to work his way into Arizona’s infield mix in 2024. After swiping 75 bags (and being caught only 11 times) across 2022-23 in the Minor Leagues and registering an elite sprint speed of 30.0 feet/second in his limited MLB action in ’23, Lawlar looked like a base thief in the making. Alas, he tore a ligament in his right thumb before the season started, then suffered a significant left hamstring injury, limiting him to all of 23 games in the Minors. He never returned to The Show this past season.

Thomas Harrigan - Manager, Research and Breaking News

One to savor: Bobby Witt Jr. -- Batting average leader (Dark horse)
After hitting .254 as a rookie in 2022, Witt improved his batting average by 22 points in his second season (.276), but he was still outside the top 25 among MLB qualifiers. That said, there were some signs that the shortstop was going to be a potential contender for the AL batting title in 2024, as he hit .323 over his final 56 games of 2023 and finished the year with an overall .294 expected BA. The 24-year-old ended up leading the Majors with a .332 batting average last season, one of many impressive stats he recorded during a season that saw him ascend to superstar status.

One to regret: Spencer Torkelson -- Breakout hitter
After struggling as a rookie in 2022 (.604 OPS, 404 PA), Torkelson made significant strides in 2023, looking more like the player the Tigers took No. 1 overall in the 2020 MLB Draft. Although his .313 on-base percentage and 107 OPS+ were nothing to write home about, he showed impressive power potential -- swatting 31 homers while ranking in the 94th percentile in hard-hit rate and the 89th percentile in barrel rate. But instead of continuing his upward trajectory in 2024, Torkelson went backwards, spending more than two months in the Minors and slashing .219/.295/.374 (89 OPS+) with 10 homers over 92 games for Detroit.

Sarah Langs - Manager, Research & Analysis

One to savor: Aaron Judge -- Home run leader (Favorite)
The only credit I can take here is for being quickest to the doc and getting Judge with the No. 1 pick. He had three home runs through April 23 -- 62 players had more at that point. But that didn’t last long. Then he went out and did exactly what we all expected, leading MLB with 58 homers. Judge now has three seasons with at least 50 home runs, tied with Alex Rodriguez for the fourth-most such seasons, behind only Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who have four each.

One to regret: Spencer Strider -- Strikeout leader (Favorite)
Yet another where I rushed to get the top pick. I was thrilled to get to pick Strider. Unfortunately, he only made two starts before undergoing season-ending elbow surgery. He had 12 strikeouts in nine innings. I will pick a healthy Strider any chance I get and can’t wait to see him back and better than ever.

Brian Murphy - Reporter, Research and Breaking News

One to savor: Dylan Cease -- Bounceback pitcher
Predicting a bounceback year from Cease was based heavily on the premise that he would be less unlucky in 2024. His .330 BABIP in ‘23 was the highest among qualified starters. Sure enough, his BABIP plummeted this past season to .263, tied for 10th-lowest. But beyond that, Cease was just better. His walk rate decreased (10.1% to 8.5%) while his strikeout rate increased (27.3% to 29.4%). His expected ERA went from 4.13 to 3.31. His expected wOBA went from .313 to .283. It wasn’t a return to his 2022 form, when he produced a 180 ERA+ over 184 innings, but Cease did finish inside the top five in the NL Cy Young Award voting and celebrated his first no-hitter this year.

One to regret: Kodai Senga -- NL Cy Young candidate (Favorite)
A few of my predictions totally missed the mark -- Jung Hoo Lee to win a batting title? Robert Stephenson as a saves leader? -- but at least those guesses were still feasible upon Opening Day. This one, conversely, became invalid almost immediately. We published our Cy Young Award predictions on Feb. 12. Ten days later, the Mets announced that Senga would start the season on the injured list due to a strained right shoulder. He was soon placed on the 60-day IL and didn’t debut until July 26. He then suffered a regular-season-ending calf injury during that start. Woof.

Mike Petriello - Director, Stats and Research

One to savor: Tarik Skubal -- AL Cy Young candidate (Favorite)
This was the easiest prediction of the year for me, because entering the year I’d dug deep into his outstanding post-surgery return to close 2023, trying to determine if his excellent 80-inning run was real or a small-sample fluke, and the answer was certain: real. All Skubal did to back that up was to win the AL pitching Triple Crown, sweep the Cy voting unanimously and post one of the finest pitching years in Tigers history. Sometimes, apparently, you can predict baseball.

One to regret: Bobby Miller -- NL Cy Young candidate (Dark horse)
I also had Strider (NL Cy) and Mookie Betts (NL MVP) as choices that didn’t work out, but at least they had the decency to get injured to ruin my predictions. Miller admittedly did too, missing much of the first half with shoulder trouble, but when he came back, he posted an 8.52 ERA -- one of the highest marks in history for pitchers with 50-plus innings -- and eventually fell so far off the radar that he wasn’t even in the picture to help out a Dodgers team that almost literally could not staff enough pitching in the playoffs. He’s still only 25. The fastball is still 98. Maybe this was his “Roy Halladay 2000 or Corbin Burnes 2019” season.

Manny Randhawa - Reporter, Research and Breaking News

One to savor: Shohei Ohtani -- NL MVP candidate (Favorite)
I wasn’t exactly going out on a limb by picking Ohtani to win the NL MVP Award this past season. But it was by no means a cinch, either, given that for the first time, he would not enter the year as a two-way player due to elbow surgery. With a new team, a then-record contract to live up to and the fact that he would not be able to add to his unprecedented two-way resume, there was some question as to whether he could make it two straight MVP Awards and three overall.

But Ohtani, focused solely on hitting, delivered a historic campaign, becoming the first player in MLB history to hit at least 50 home runs (54) and steal at least 50 bases (59) in the same season. That earned him his third MVP Award (all unanimous) and the first by a full-time designated hitter in MLB history.

One to regret: Bo Bichette -- Batting average leader (Favorite)
Bichette led the AL with 555 hits from 2021-23. He had never hit below .290 in any of his five Major League seasons entering ’24. And it was no fluke in any of those years -- from 2020-23, he ranked in the top 10 percentile each season in expected batting average. So, naturally, he was a prime candidate to win his first batting title. But that’s why they play the games -- Bichette hit just .225/.277/.322 over 81 games in an injury-limited campaign for the Blue Jays.

Andrew Simon - Director, National Content

One to savor: Brice Turang -- Stolen base leader (Dark horse)
This was a bet on Turang improving his .285 OBP as a rookie and letting his elite sprint speed play. That’s exactly what happened. Turang started 142 games for the Brewers as a sophomore, raised his OBP by 31 points and nearly doubled his 2023 steal total (from 26 to 50) while maintaining a superb success rate (89.3%). It wasn’t quite enough to lead the Majors, but Turang finished third to De La Cruz and Ohtani, which I would consider a successful outcome for a dark horse pick.

One to regret: Jordan Walker -- Breakout hitter
Frankly, I have a lot of ill-fated picks to choose from here, but I’ll go with Walker, who reinforced the lesson that progress is often not linear -- even for highly touted prospects. The ingredients seemed to be there for Walker to take a step forward. He had held his own at the plate as a 21-year-old rookie in 2023 (113 OPS+ in 117 games), showing high contact quality and improving both beneath and above the surface as the year went along (big drop in ground-ball rate; .853 OPS in the final month). Instead, Walker got about twice as many plate appearances at Triple-A Memphis as he did in St. Louis in 2024, struggling mightily in the big leagues while regressing pretty much across the board. Then again, there were some positive signs again late in the season, so I can hang on to the idea that perhaps I was just a year too early with this pick.