Ten Bold MLB Predictions for 2024, Part 1

One more sleep until baseball!

Julio Rodriguez will win his first AL MVP award this year. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

Hi friends-

Programming note: All readers are invited to our Opening Day marathon chat, tomorrow in the Substack app! We will start chatting at 9 AM PT/12 PM ET, and keep it rolling until the final pitch is thrown tomorrow night. You’ll receive an email with a link to the chat tomorrow morning, or you can find it in the Substack app. Hope to see you in there! <3

Welcome to our second annual edition of Ten Bold Predictions! Last year I went, uh, 3/10. Neither Corbin Carroll nor Gunnar Henderson were betting favorites to win the Rookie of the Year award when the season began, but I picked them both and they both won—so I got those right. I also had Ohtani winning the AL MVP.

The rest of my picks were… off.

I whiffed on the Angels and Mariners making the playoffs (LOL), and the Braves winning the World Series (though they were definitely the best team!). I thought Trea Turner would win the NL MVP, but he was atrocious in April and May—before turning it on down the stretch and salvaging a decent season. I missed on both Cy Young award winners.

But I *did* predict the Dodgers would go further than the Padres (which they did, because San Diego did not make the playoffs and the Dodgers flamed out in the first round lol). I also had AL Cy Young favorite Jacob deGrom’s arm falling off again (RIP). I strangely made Ronald Acuña Jr. the cover boy of my 2023 predictions piece, and wrote about how his return to health for a full season, post-ACL tear, was going to be enormous for the Braves. Yet I failed to predict Acuña as the NL MVP, because I bonked my head before I hit “publish” or something.

Since no prediction I made was *that* obvious, I’m not embarrassed for swinging out of my shoes and going 3/10. That kind of batting average earns one millions of dollars in real life. I could, for sure, juice my average this year by forecasting that nepo baby John Fisher will continue to be the worst owner in professional American sports, Rob Manfred will put his foot in his mouth during a crucial moment when MLB needs him not to do that, and that the Guardians, Twins and Reds owners will stay as cheap as possible when spending even a little bit would go a long way. But pointing out what we all know will happen isn’t as fun as taking wild stabs. So! Here is Part One of my 10 bold predictions for 2024. I’ll do five from the AL today, and the other five from the NL tomorrow.

10. Julio Rodriguez will win the AL MVP.

At press time, Las Vegas has Aaron Judge and Juan Soto neck-and-neck as odds-on favorites to win the award, with Rodriguez and Corey Seager tied for a (somewhat) distant third. We all know that both Judge and Soto have huge talent and power. Judge hit 62 (!) homers in 2022, and when Juan Soto’s mind is right, he is perhaps the greatest hitting prodigy since Ted Williams.

But