Official baseball starts in a few days, but it’s time to focus on what’s important: insane preseason predictions! Before we dive deep into countless hours rearranging lineups, FAAB bids, and making trade offers in order to win a couple hundred dollars in our friends and family league, which equates to roughly twenty-eight cents per hour, we here at Razzball want to take a moment and document some predictions for the upcoming season. These preseason predictions are a mix of real baseball (MVP, ROY, Cy Young, etc.) and fake baseball (who’s our infatuation; who will return the most value; who will flop). We do this every season, and we haven’t learned any lesson ever, so here it is again! Here is LAST YEAR‘s post if you’re interested. For every correct prediction, there are plenty who thought Oscar Colas and Alek Manoah were going to matter.
Without further ado, here are the Razzball staff picks for the upcoming season along with a few blurbs from the staff on why they made the choices they did. Be sure to let us know your picks down in the comments, put your name on it so we can praise you in October, or look back next year and point and laugh.
Psyche! One further ado, this season’s first Buy/Sell is now available on our Patreon. It will be posted early on the Patreon all year, so sign up for that. Anyway II, the picks:
AL Cy Young
Kevin Gausman: “Yep. The hometown bias is working overtime with this one. In my defense, though, it all lines up this time. With the favorite, Gerrit Cole, going down with an injury for an extended period of time, the door is wide open for the AL Cy Young award. I’ve liked Gausman for a long time that dates back to his days in Baltimore, which coincides with how long the Jays had chased Gausman until finally signing him in 2022. That strikeout splitter helped silence any whispers from the naysayers who thought the move to the AL East would be his downfall. Last Thursday he threw a two inning simulated game with no problems so if he can continue to build up arm strength and avoid starting the year on the IL, he’s a front runner in this race.” – MarmosDad
NL ROY
Michael Busch: “Why not? He was the PCL player of the year, has a long runway in Chicago who paid a premium prospect price to obtain his services. .260 with 25 HR seems reasonable with upside.” – Kelder
Comeback Player
Rhys Hoskins: “After being out with injury in 2023 Hoskins returns as the key in the middle of a Brewers lineup. He’ll have plenty of chances to drive in runs hitting cleanup. In 2022 he finished 48th on the Razzball player rater and as long as he didn’t forget how to hit while out last year he should be retuning well above investment for fantasy and has a great chance to win the comeback player of the year in MLB.” – The Great Knoche
Tyler Kinley (also pick for MVFP): “As the resident bullpen writer, I gotta go with a pen arm. Tyler Kinley didn’t pitch much in 2023, and when he did, he was pretty ding dang terrible. I feel like folks forget 1). how good he was in 2022 and 2). that he’s openly competing for a closing job he’s already won with a nearly-flawless Spring, while counterpart Justin Lawrence has been nearly-flaw…full? Rockies closers are scary, but if Daniel Bard can do it, Tyler Kinley can do it as well.” – JKJ
Sleeper
Jung Hoo Lee: “Am I widely excited to see what he can do in the MLB? Yes absolutely. From a points league standpoint, his game looks like it will be absolute gold. I almost put him as my rookie of the year pick, but that felt like dipping into the well too many times.” – Butters
Most Valuable Fantasy Pitcher
Shota Imanaga: “While I won’t go as far as some to say that Imanaga will outperform Yamamoto (yes, even after the bad start in Korea. It’s early…too early.) I do think Imanaga is in that sweet spot of the draft where you can grab him around pick 200 (though that’s up to around pick 150 now as the hype grows) and get near ace-like numbers for a fraction of the cost. Value central.” – MattTruss
