The Super Bowl is now more than a week in the rear view mirror and, for Eagles fans like myself, I’m still not done re-watching the highlights of their beatdown of the Chiefs. Not even close.
But this week, full squad spring training workouts began around Major League Baseball, and Grapefruit and Cactus League games begin as soon as this weekend. Yes, friends, it’s officially baseball season and there is lots to discuss.
Here are my top 10 storylines as players filter into camp and the fake games get underway!
Just How Good Will the Dodgers Be?
Last year’s Dodgers squad? Boy, what a bunch of underachievers. All they did was win an NL-best 98 games and their first World Series since the pandemic-shortened season of 2020, and first full-season title since 1988.
Clearly motivated by their galling inability to win 100+ games or outpace the 93-win Padres by at least 15 games in the NL West, L.A. this off-season decided to simply buy everything available not named Juan Soto. They won the Roki Sasaki derby, signed outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, Blake Treinin and two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, as well as relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, giving them a SuperTeam that is the overwhelming favorite to take home another World Series trophy. Oh, and Shohei Ohtani is likely to return to the mound, too.
The last team to repeat as World Series champions are the 2000 New York Yankees, done a quarter century ago. So sure, the Dodgers are absolutely loaded. They won the off-season and appear to have no weaknesses. But if history is our guide, it doesn’t matter if L.A. breaks Seattle’s single-season win record (116) or if they win the NL West by 25 games. Once the postseason tournament gets underway, all an opponent has to do is figure out a way to win three of five or four out seven to end the Dodgers’ dreams of repeating.
Still, it should be a runaway regular season for Los Angeles.
Bryce Harper’s Elusive First Title
This will be Harper’s seventh season in Phillies’ pinstripes. Now 32 years old, he is still an elite bat and has turned into a Gold Glove caliber first baseman, but has yet to win a World Series in what appears to be a Hall of Fame career. He and the Phillies got really close in 2022, falling two wins short against the Houston Astros. With each successive year, Philadelphia has fallen one step shorter.
The franchise should have won a title at some point during Harper’s six-year run, so entering year No. 7, the pressure to do so has never been greater. Not only that, the entire core is aging.
Zack Wheeler is 35, J.T. Realmuto is 34, Nick Castellanos is 33, and Aaron Nola, Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber are all 32. The front office hopes minor leaguers Andrew Painter, Aiden Miller, Moises Chace and Justin Crawford, all top-100 prospects, will help prop the window of contention open as these players age, but there is no guarantee of that. One can’t help but feel the 2025 season may be this particular core’s last, best shot to finally bring home the Phils’ first World Series title in 17 years.
There is no team in baseball under more pressure to win the World Series than this Phillies team.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr’s Future
One of the prizes of next year’s free agent class appears to be Toronto’s Vladimir Guerreror, Jr., the Blue Jays’ slugging first baseman, who may be playing his final season in the Great White North.
There had been speculation that Vlad may work out a contract extension this spring to stay with the Jays, but at a news conference on Tuesday, Guerrero said he and Toronto were “never close” on an extension.
“I want to be a Blue Jay for the rest of my career. But it’s free agency. It’s business. I’m going to have to listen to 29 more teams and they’re going to have to compete.”
Which makes the 2025 season an all-or-nothing endeavor for the Blue Jays, too. They signed Anthony Sanander to a big free agent deal over the winter, inked Max Scherzer, and return a solid core of Bo Bichette, catcher Alejandro Kirk, whiz defenders Ernie Clement and Daulton Varsho, and a rotation fronted by Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios and Chris Bassitt, not to mention landing the best right-handed reliever on the market in Jeff Hoffman.
It’s hard to pick them over the Yankees and perhaps the Red Sox in the AL East, but for Toronto, it’s now or never with Vlad.
Juan Soto, Meet the Mets
If there was ever a doubt how impactful one player could be to a team, one should look no farther than the impact Soto had on the Yankees last season. They would not have advanced to the World Series without him. He’s a generational offensive star, a sure-fire Hall of Famer, and this year he will begin the first of a 15-year, $765 million contract across town in Flushing for the Mets, who are seeking their first World Series title since Mookie Wilson knocked a dribbler through Bill Buckner’s legs in 1986.
New York is coming off a surprise postseason run that landed them in the National League Championship Series, and rode that wave of momentum to a ridiculously busy off-season. By re-signing Pete Alonso, Jesse Winker and Sean Manaea, owner Steve Cohen kept most of last season’s roster intact. Bullpen additions Clay Holmes, A.J. Minter and Ryne Stanek were smart additions, and the Mets’ pitching brains are hoping to fix Frankie Montas the way they remade Luis Severino and Montas a season ago.
But those additions pale in comparison to landing the winter’s biggest fish in Soto, a haul they hope will help them overtake the Phillies and Braves in the regular season in 2025.
Yankees Life Without Soto
Meanwhile in the Bronx, the Yankees moved on from their divorce from Soto just fine, spreading his money around the roster.
They signed Max Fried to an eight-year deal (that’s a really long time for a starting pitcher, by the way) as well as first baseman Paul Goldschmidt on a one-year contract, and pulled off two notable trades – Cody Bellinger from the Cubs and closer Devin Williams from Milwaukee. One can make the argument that the roster may be better having spread the money around and improving the pitching staff than by dumping it all at the feet of Juan Soto.
That being said, Soto’s bat will be dearly missed in the middle of that lineup. Giancarlo Stanton is already dealing with a “mysterious injury,” tennis elbow in both elbows. It’s unclear how much time he’ll miss this spring. Aaron Judge is a machine, but even he proved fallible in the World Series. The addition of Bellinger is nice, but he’s not nearly the same kind of slugger Soto is. Can they get by with a middle of the order featuring Jazz Chisholm, Judge, Goldschmidt, Bellinger and Stanton? Will they stay healthy? Can their top-four starters – Gerrit Cole, Fried, Carlos Rodon and Luis Gil, make up the difference in a competitive AL East?
A New Era in Houston
Since the mid-2010s, the Houston Astros have been synonymous with the American League Championship Series, but this will be a very different-looking Astros team than we’ve seen in recent seasons.
They traded Kyle Tucker and reliever Ryan Pressly early in the off-season to the Cubs. Alex Bregman signed a free agent contract with the Red Sox last week. Justin Verlander inked a one-year, $15 million contract with the Giants. Starter Yusei Kikuchi is now an Angel. And who knows how long Framber Valdez is going to stick around? He’ll be a free agent at the end of this season, too.
Houston still has some decent talent left. The cupboard is not bare. Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez are outstanding players, they signed third baseman Isaac Paredes and Christian Walker to free agent contracts, and still have shortstop Jeremy Pena hanging around, too. Ronel Blanco and Hunter Brown are a solid 2-3 in the rotation, and Josh Hader returns as the team’s closer.
They have holes (have you seen the outfield???) and may still be good enough to win the AL West, but it’s clear a new era has begun in Houston.
The Health of the Braves
When you stop and think, it’s actually a miracle the Braves made the postseason at all in 2024.
Spencer Strider was lost for the season after making just one healthy start. Ronal Acuna, Jr. tore his right ACL and was lost for the season, too. Austin Riley fractured his hand in August, Sean Murphy missed nearly two months with a strained oblique, Ozzie Albies was out two months in July and August with a wrist fracture and Michael Harris II’s hamstring landed him on the Injured List for two months, too.
The Braves were never going to be able to repeat their ridiculously productive offensive numbers from 2023, but last year’s regression was beyond the pale, so you can understand Atlanta being bullish about their chances of winning a division they had won six straight times before barely sneaking into the playoffs a season ago.
The big question is, when can they expect Strider and Acuna Jr. back? It sounds as though neither will be ready for Opening Day. Acuna Jr. doesn’t have a specific timetable, although the Braves say he’s on schedule in his recovery. It sounds like sometime in May. Strider has started throwing bullpens, but likely won’t return to the rotation until the end of April. Can they hang in there until their two best players are back in the swing of things?
Cubs Off-Season Additions Enough?
Milwaukee has won three out of the last four NL Central titles and have largely dominated this division over the last half decade. The last time the Cubs won the division was in Pandemic 2020, and their last playoff victory was in 2017, when they reached the NLCS.
Chicago hasn’t spent a ton of money, but has had one of the busiest off-seasons this side of Los Angeles. They added the second-most impactful player to change teams in Kyle Tucker, a huge upgrade over Bellinger, as well as Pressly to the bullpen. Smaller additions, like catcher Carson Kelly and reliever Ryan Brasier, help fill out the roster around the edges.
In a year in which the Brewers lost Corbin Burnes, Willy Adames and Devin Williams, the Cardinals appear to be wandering in the land of .500 and the Reds and Pirates seemingly still a year or two away from truly competing, the Cubs have the best chance at snagging a mediocre division in 2025.
Salary Cap Talk
Much of the winter’s discourse surrounded baseball’s economic system, the Dodgers’ wild spending spree, the Soto contract, and the seeming disparity in resources between the so-called “rich” and “poor” teams. The collapse of nearly a dozen regional sports network deals have thrown some franchises into a tizzy, but the larger issue is there are some teams that simply do not want to pay what’s required to put a competitive team on the field. Most fanbases don’t want to see the Dodgers become a dynastic Super Team like the Yankees and Red Sox were in the 1990s and 2000s, and they believe a salary cap could be a way to keep teams like the Dodgers, Mets, Phillies and Yankees from lapping the rest of the sport in terms of payroll.
Of course, conversation will also turn to a salary floor to accompany any potential cap, and the player’s union has vowed to never allow a salary cap to be implemented in their sport. It’s reasonable to believe the owners will either lock out the players after the 2026 season, or the players will strike beforehand, in order to prevent this from happening.
It’s a low rumble right now, but definitely a conversation that is being had this spring.
Balls and Strikes Challenge System
In certain spring training ballparks, Major League Baseball will test an automatic balls and strikes challenge system that could be coming to every MLB stadium starting next year. In short, if a pitcher, catcher or batter disagrees with a ball or strike call by the home plate umpire, they can challenge that call. A video on a scoreboard will then show whether the path of the pitcher crossed the plate in the strike zone.
Each team will only get two challenges per game, and one of the things to be ironed out this spring will be the speed at which the challenge takes place and how reliable the system will be. But barring anything going haywire, it’s likely this will be a preview of what’s to come in 2026.
It’s not exactly robot umps, but it’s a start.
