Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’ll go out on a limb and pick the Phillies over the Royals in the World Series.
In today’s SI:AM:
🎓 Behind the scenes at ump school
Play ball
The MLB regular season technically began last week in Japan, but now Opening Day is here for real. Here are a few things I’ll pay attention to throughout the season.
Juan Soto’s debut season with the Mets
Soto inspired an unprecedented bidding war when he hit the free agent market this winter, eventually signing a 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets that shattered the record for the largest in the history of the sport. Signing a contract that big while playing in a city press corps as notoriously unforgiving as New York’s is obviously going to put a target on a player’s back, so get ready to see the Post make Soto the subject of an unflattering back-page headline as soon as he goes through his first slump.
The pressure on Soto to perform will be especially high because it looks like the Mets will need all the offensive help they can get. Three pitchers who had been expected to be part of the starting rotation (Sean Manaea, Paul Blackburn and Frankie Montas) will start the season on the injured list. Christian Scott, one of the Mets’ top pitching prospects, will miss the entire season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in September. Those injuries leave the Mets with a disconcertingly thin starting rotation. The Opening Day starter will be Clay Holmes, another free-agent addition from this offseason and a two-time All-Star. But he’s attempting to transition to starting after spending the first seven years of his career as a reliever. He hasn’t been a full-time starter since 2018.
A wide-open AL East
The division Soto left could end up being the most interesting one in the majors this season. The Fangraphs playoff odds have the AL East as the tightest race of any division, with the New York Yankees at the top with a 32.9% chance of winning and the Tampa Bay Rays fifth at 11.2%. That 21.7% difference between first and last is the narrowest of any division.
The AL East was the tightest division race last season, with the Baltimore Orioles finishing three games behind the Yankees. But a return to the World Series seems a lot less likely for New York now than it did at the beginning of the spring. A rash of injuries—most notably a season-ending elbow injury for ace pitcher Gerrit Cole, but also lesser injuries to Giancarlo Stanton, D.J. LeMahieu, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt—will test the team’s depth. At the same time, other teams in the division are on the rise. The Boston Red Sox signed former Houston Astros star Alex Bregman and acquired starter Garrett Crochet from the Chicago White Sox to join a roster with several top prospects ready to debut. The Baltimore Orioles had a relatively quiet offseason but still made several moves to improve around the edges. The Toronto Blue Jays had a disappointing offseason in which they lost out on signing Soto and Roki Sasaki but also acquired a few decent consolation prizes (Max Scherzer, Anthony Santander and Andrés Giménez, to name a few).
An equally open NL Central
The other tight division race to watch is the NL Central. Although Fangraphs projects only two teams to finish with a winning record, the other three are projected to be close behind. Fangraphs projects the Pittsburgh Pirates to finish last but gives them an 11.5% chance of winning the division.
Pittsburgh’s success will depend heavily on pitcher Paul Skenes's continued progress, who was a runaway selection for NL Rookie of the Year last season and finished third in Cy Young voting. Skenes debuted in May and was immediately one of the most dominant pitchers in the league. Now we’ll get to see what he does over the course of a full season.
The rest of the division is also fascinating. No team went out this offseason and made big moves in an effort to improve significantly. The St. Louis Cardinals have admitted they’re in a rebuilding phase, and the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs both made a bunch of moves to simultaneously add and subtract. Fangraphs projects the Cubs to finish first with 83 wins, the lowest win total of any projected division winner. The winner of the NL Central probably won’t make anyone too nervous in the postseason, but the fight to get there will be a fun one.
What will the Royals do for an encore?
The Kansas City Royals were the biggest surprise in baseball last season, winning 30 more games in 2024 than they did the year before and making the playoffs for the first time since they won the World Series in ’15. Now, the question is whether they can repeat that unexpected success.
Star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. emerged as one of the best players in the majors in his third big-league season, finishing second behind Aaron Judge in MVP voting. As long as Witt continues to excel and the Kansas City rotation (ranked second last season in Fangraphs WAR) continues to quiet opposing bats, the Royals should be in good shape.
Teams in weird places
Fans tuning in to games this season will see some unfamiliar backdrops on their televisions. The Athletics (they’re officially just the Athletics, no city name, because they’re currently without a permanent home) and Rays will both be playing this season in minor league parks. In the case of the A’s, it’s because of their ugly breakup with the city of Oakland and the delay in moving to Las Vegas. (That move is still very much in question, as Vegas has yet to break ground on the new stadium. But that’s an issue for another day.) For the Rays, it’s the result of forces beyond their control. In October, Hurricane Milton tore the roof off of Tropicana Field; repairs are expected to take over a year.
The A’s will play in Sacramento, in the ballpark that typically hosts the Triple A Sacramento River Cats (the San Francisco Giants’ top affiliate). The Rays will play at Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees’ spring training home in Tampa.
Both stadiums have been upgraded in preparation for hosting big league games, but how will players react to playing in what are still substandard ballparks. The Sacramento ballpark features clubhouses that are not attached to the dugouts like they are in big league parks. That means players can’t leave the dugout to take swings in the batting cage during the game like they’re used to. The facilities are better at Steinbrenner Field, which hosts major leaguers every spring.
Both stadiums have serious weather concerns, too. In Sacramento, summer temperatures routinely soar above 100 degrees, and the average high temperature in July is 94.4 degrees. Tampa is subject to frequent afternoon and evening thunderstorms in the summer, and because Steinbrenner Field lacks a roof, there is concern that the Rays’ schedule could be derailed by weather. MLB has attempted to minimize the impact of the weather by having the Rays play 37 of their first 58 games at home and 35 of 51 games in the peak summer months of July and August on the road. It’s a logical decision, but players probably won’t be happy to have such extended road trips during the dog days of the season.
The best of Sports Illustrated
• Today’s Digital Cover is Emma Baccellieri’s dispatch from MLB’s umpire school, where a new generation of umps are learning to do a rapidly changing job.
• Here are our experts’ picks for every MLB division champion and award winner.
• Will Laws and Nick Selbe wrote up detailed previews for each MLB division. Click here for Nick’s AL East preview and use the links at the top of the page to see the other divisions.
• Tom Dierberger ranked all 30 teams by how fun they’ll be to watch this season.
• As the Sweet 16 tips off, the men’s teams’ rosters are full of guys who started their careers on the periphery of college basketball. Pat Forde looks at how underdogs and transfer portal success stories are impacting this NCAA tournament.
• Gilberto Manzano identified the biggest draft needs for each AFC team now that free agency has quieted down.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. Kiefer Sherwood’s perfect deflection goal.
4. A nifty spin move by Karl-Anthony Towns that left Ivica Zubac in the dust.
3. Jaxson Hayes’s ferocious dunk on Myles Turner.
2. This outrageous no-look pass by Nikola Jokić.
1. LeBron James’s game-winning tip-in at the buzzer.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Five Things to Watch This MLB Season.
