What I Got Right and What I Got Wrong about 2024
Plus The Long Game's Most-Read Stories of 2024.
Hi friends-
Some housekeeping before we dive in:
Our book club selection for January is “Rickey Henderson: The Life and Legend of a True American Original” by the great Howard Bryant. We will discuss it over zoom the first week of February, date TBD— but I’ll let you know soon.
Our Saturday zooms for paid subscribers continue year-round. We’ll be chatting baseball again this Saturday…and the next Saturday…and the next Saturday. It’s a great way to make friends with other big baseball nerds who are kind and funny and who come from all over the country (and the world) to chat with us. Actual lifelong friends have been made, travel plans have been hatched, it’s great! Our book club and Saturday zooms are open to all paid subscribers. If you have a free sub and want to try this out, you can upgrade here so you don’t miss out:
Our East Coast Long Game meet-up for 2025 will be in Boston, for Dodgers vs. Red Sox on July 26th or July 27th (we are waiting to see if July 27th will be the Sunday night game before we buy). But mark your calendars if you are interested!
Before we dive into my 2024 predictions, here’s a list of The Long Game’s most-read posts of the year:
Nike’s New Uniform Pants are See-Through and Everyone is Furious
MLB Announces Investigation into Shohei Ohtani’s Interpreter
John Fisher Humiliates MLB, Announces A’s Will Move to Sacramento
Thank you all so much for reading and sharing with your friends! <3
Ok. *Andy Williams voice* It’s the most humbling time of the yeeeeeear.
That’s because it’s time to visit my Ten Bold Predictions for 2024. I remember when I made these predictions, my friend Tom texted me and gave me s—t because he didn’t think they were bold at all. “Oh geeeeez. Really going out on a limb here picking Spencer Strider as your NL Cy Young winner,” Tom said.
Well, the joke’s on him because I got nearly everything wrong.
Baseball is impossible to predict, especially because pitchers love to dominate for a month then disappear into an MRI tube for two years.
To give you an idea of how very wrong I was about the 2024 season, I used a Mariner as the cover boy for said predictions. LMAO. Literally, never again with Seattle (apologies to reader Jane). I’ve been begging someone to lock Jerry Dipoto and Mike Elias in a room together and only let them out when the Mariners and Orioles both have pitchers and hitters but Dipoto doesn’t think the M’s need hitters and frankly that’s his business. It’s no longer mine!!)
Anyway, without further ado, here were my 10 baseball predictions for 2024:
Julio Rodriguez will win the AL MVP.
What I wrote:
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 Judge is now dealing with a chronic toe injury after literally smashing through a Dodger Stadium fence last summer, and Soto went through a really rough adjustment period the last time he changed teams. If Soto gets off to a torrid start, Yankee fan intensity could propel him to a monster season and he could win the MVP award in a walk. But if he struggles out of the gate? Well, then he’ll have to deal with the back pages of the New York Post and Daily News finding new puns every day to call him a loser.
Julio Rodriguez is entering his third year in MLB, and I had to double-check that information, because it feels like the dude has been around forever. He just turned 23 on Dec. 29. I am predicting that he will become the first person ever born in the 2000s to win an MLB MVP award.
Rodriguez won the AL Rookie of the Year award in 2022, and finished 4th in the MVP voting last year. I think he’ll hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases and win the big prize this year. I will NOT, however, be picking the Mariners to make the playoffs ever again, after what they did to me last season.
Welp. J-Rod regressed this year and posted career low numbers in homers, RBI, steals, runs, hits, doubles, walks…basically everything except batting average (.273 this year, down from .275 last year). His .409 SLG was 100 points lower than his rookie season two years ago (.509). He did not receive a single MVP vote.
Meanwhile, Judge won the award, and Soto finished third. My…bad. lol.
Jackson Holliday will win the AL Rookie of the Year.
What I wrote:
Two Rangers’ Rookies—Evan Carter and Wyatt Langford—are the current favorites to win the award. This is because the Rangers are not stupid enough to start either player in the minors. Fresh off their first-ever World Series victory, they’re coming for everyone’s neck by rostering Carter and Langford and placing them in their starting lineup immediately.
The Orioles are… trying to give me a stroke.
As you all know, I’ve been screaming all off-season about how the Orioles have an ungodly amount of young talent that they need to build around RIGHT NOW, and begging the Angelos family to sell the team. They did sell the team, and GM Mike Elias did well to trade for Corbin Burnes.
The only reason Jackson Holliday is not favored to win the Rookie of the Year award right now is because he’s starting the season in Norfolk, which is 230 miles from Camden Yards. Holliday is thought to be the most talented player under age 23 in all of baseball, and he smoked the ball all spring.
Regardless of when Holliday is promoted, I think he’s good enough to catch up to, and surpass, whatever Langford and Carter have done, and win the ROY award. Langford was drafted last summer and tore through the minors. And while he’s inarguably incredible, he’s bound to take some lumps adjusting to hitting in pro ball at SOME POINT, because everyone does.
Yeah. Uh. Let’s pretend I never wrote that. Nothing to see here.
Holliday was godawful in his two stints in the bigs this year. In 50 games he hit 5 homers, struck out 69 times, and posted a .189 batting average and a .565 OPS. He was completely overmatched by big league pitching, and I’m more than a little worried he could flop. This probably isn’t fair, as he just turned 21 earlier this month. But ooof.
His younger, larger brother, Ethan, is a high school senior expected to go either first or second in next summer’s amateur draft. The Nationals won the draft lottery, and could select the younger Holliday to play just up the road. That would be fun and also weird (my two favorite things). Maybe they will turn out like Justin and BJ Upton— we just aren’t sure yet who will be who.
This was almost my worst prediction of the year, but not quite! Read on for that!
Corbin Burnes will win the AL Cy Young.
What I wrote:
The Vegas oddsmakers like Kevin Gausman to win the AL Cy Young, but whatever the Blue Jays are doing remains an absolute mystery to me. The last time we saw this team, they were getting picked off the bases in playoff games because their stadium was loud and they had failed to work out a system to communicate with their coaches. I cannot, in good conscience, count on any of them for anything until conditions improve.
But I know Burnes is going to shove like he always does, and those baby Orioles are going to play excellent defense behind him. Plus, Burnes will benefit from facing a bunch of hitters in a new league that haven’t seen him much at all before. I’m picking him for the top award.
At least my pick was better than what Vegas had. Burnes was great for the O’s. He finished fifth in Cy Young voting. and the Diamondbacks just rewarded him with a monster free agent contract. Gausman pitched fine, and finished with a 3.83 ERA. But his strikeout rate plummeted. In 2023 he fanned a league leading 237 batters in 185 innings. This year he struck out just 162 hitters in 181 innings. Striking out 3.4 fewer hitters over nine innings is….not what you want.
I would maybe pick Burnes to win the NL Cy Young award in 2025……if Paul Skenes did not exist.
The Rangers will repeat as AL champions.
What I wrote:
I was going to pick the Astros to win the AL pennant, then I remembered that Bruce Bochy is a witch.
The guy now has four World Series titles as a manager, two coming as the skipper of a wild-card team. He is 6-0 in winner-take-all games, and he’s won 14 elimination games. He led the Padres to one of their two pennants, the Giants to their only three titles in San Francisco and the Rangers to their only championship, period.
Had he been managing the Dodgers over the last decade, they would probably have at least three banners to show for it, instead of one.
The Rangers lost Jordan Montgomery to free agency and did not replace him.
They’re hoping to have Max Scherzer back in June and deGrom back in August. But the thing is, they won in October last year with a very limited contribution from Scherzer, and without deGrom at all. And they’ll have a full season of Langford and Carter.
I don’t think they’ll repeat as World Series champions, because that’s damn near impossible, but I expect to see them back in the Fall Classic.
This was my worst prediction. Uh. The Rangers did not make the playoffs. They finished six games below .500 and seven games worse than the Mariners.
Evan Carter was injured all year. Scherzer threw 40 meh innings. deGrom was only able to pitch 10 frames. Langford was pretty good, and finished seventh in rookie of the year voting—but it was nowhere near enough. Corey Seager was awesome, but missed 40 games due to injury as he is wont to do.
They stunk.
The Yankees will be fighting for the last wild card spot on the final day of the season.
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