The season is about to start, so there are predictions. Some players get traded. Others get cut. A look back at Freddie Freeman’s dramatic World Series home run and other news from MLB.
Good morning. Last day without baseball for a while, no?
- On the eve of (domestic) Opening Day, ESPN dot com previews all 30 teams and ranks them into tiers.
- Tom Verducci has 30 questions for 30 teams.
- R.J. Anderson has ten big questions for 2025.
- Anthony Castrovince has the top storylines for the 2025 season.
- Eno Sarris has ten bold predictions for 2025. (The Athletic sub. req.)
- Mike Axisa has a bold prediction for every team.
- David Schoenfield simulated 25 seasons. These are the most surprising results that turned up. (ESPN+ sub. req.) If Pete Crow-Armstrong wants to have a 7.5 WAR season (as in one of those seasons), I won’t complain.
- The CBS dot com baseball staff make their season predictions. Everyone picks the Cubs to win the Central.
- Gabe Lacques has the five teams with the most “volatile” wins predictions.
- Dan Szymborski has his predictions for “Boom and Bust” pitchers for 2025.
- The Mariners have agreed to a six-year, $105 million extension with catcher Cal Raleigh.
- Catcher Alejandro Kirk signed a five-year extension with the Blue Jays. Leo Morgenstern evaluates the deal.
- You’ve probably heard this by now, but rookie Cam Smith made the Astros Opening Day roster.
- Joshua Koch has the details on how Smith was told he made the roster by his mother.
- Ryan Johnson, the right-hander who was the Angels’ second-round pick last year, made the Opening Day roster without playing a single game in the minors.
- The Angels also released former number-one draft pick Mickey Moniak.
- The Astros released first baseman Jon Singleton.
- Cody Stavenhagen has a nice story about the difficulties that players face when they are the last player cut at the end of Spring Training. (The Athletic sub. req.)
- The Diamondbacks spent the spring trying to trade pitcher Jordan Montgomery and got no takers. Now Montgomery is going to miss the entire season after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
- The Pirates lucked out as pitcher Jared Jones will not need elbow surgery. He is expected to miss several months rehabbing, but they believe he will be back sometime in 2025.
- Michael Baumann evaluates the trade that sent Ian Anderson to the Angels for José Suarez.
- And Jay Jaffe examines the Rockies trading outfielder Nolan Jones to the Guardians for utility player Tyler Freeman.
- The Guardians still don’t have a television deal for the 2025 season.
- Ben Weinrib of MLB Pipeline compares all the Top 100 prospects lists from the major outlets and sees where they agree and disagree.
- And Brendan Samson has where all the Pipeline Top 100 prospects will start the season. Iowa is going to be loaded, folks.
- Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes announces that he’s ready to be a leader, on- and off-the-field. Hannah Keyser reports.
- The Athletics will all wear number 24 on Opening Day in honor of the late Rickey Henderson. As others have noted, they could honor Henderson more by playing in his hometown of Oakland and not Sacramento.
- Mike Petriello notes that new Statcast data indicates that hitters do the most damage making contact in front of the plate.
- Dan Hayes, Ken Rosenthal and Brittany Ghiroli report on the latest on a possible Twins sale. (The Athletic sub. req.) The Pohlads are reportedly asking for $1.7 billion and they report the team is carrying $425 million in debt. Also, team executive Joe Pohlad wants to keep operational control of the team. No wonder they’re having trouble finding a buyer.
- Dejan Kovacevic goes through the Pirates books and notes that the team actually lost money in 2024 despite their low payroll. Not a lot of money—about $2.2 million—but they didn’t turn a profit.
- J.J. Cooper goes through those two articles and looks at how teams can lose money and the revenue divide between big and small markets.
- Former Phillies coach Sarah Edwards will become the first woman to be an on-field coach in Asian professional baseball as she was named the new hitting coach of the CTBC Brothers of Tawain’s CPBL. Michael Clair has Edwards’ story.
- The Mets are joining the racing mascots craze as they unveiled five new mascots who represent New York’s five boroughs. They really missed a chance to have Staten Island represented by vampires.
- Dodgers star Mookie Betts lost 18 pounds with an illness, but he says he should be ready for (domestic) Opening Day.
- Jordan Schusterman reports on new Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott and how his journey through baseball led him to Los Angeles.
- Many Dodgers have said the best part of the trip to Tokyo was the team dinner hosted by Shohei Ohtani that featured a Tuna that weighed over 400 pounds.
- Costa Rican authorities have ruled out asphyxiation in the death of former Yankee outfielder Brett Gardner’s 14-year-old son.
- Jorge Castillo asks if the Yankees can recover from the “nightmare ending” of the 2024 season for them.
- And finally, it was Game 1 and not Game 5, but Ken Rosenthal has the oral history of Freddie Freeman’s game-winning grand slam in the World Series. (The Athletic sub. req.)