Look, we didn’t want to ruin the baseball season for you, but we’re professionals, so when our bosses asked us collectively to predict the best players and best teams of 2025, we knew you’d take it as the gospel truth with no arguments or complaints.
Sure, there might be a few rogue outliers in the comments who disparage and disagree, but we figured the bulk of you would nod along and talk amongst yourselves about the wit and wisdom of our staff.
Then Sam Blum went and picked the Seattle Mariners to win the World Series, and we realized some of you in the comments have a point.
Anyway, The Athletic asked 33 of its MLB writers to predict the major award winners, pennant winners, and ultimately the World Series winner of the 2025 season. The result was far less consensus than you might expect. The Los Angeles Dodgers are our World Series favorites, of course, but most of our writers actually picked against them.
So, go ahead and bookmark this page to mock us in October — we’re ready for the fallout to come — but as the regular season gets underway, this is what our baseball writers are expecting from the seven months ahead.
American League Most Valuable Player
The American League hasn’t had a back-to-back MVP winner since Miguel Cabrera in 2012 and ’13. That might explain why only five of our writers picked Aaron Judge to win the MVP this season. Judge is projected by the ZiPS system on FanGraphs to have (by far) the highest position player WAR in baseball, but our staff seems hesitant to believe he can repeat after producing one of the all-time great seasons in 2024.
Instead, our writers are all-in on Bobby Witt Jr. who’s coming off his own elite season, one of the greatest ever by a shortstop. Witt got 18 of 33 votes for AL MVP. Gunnar Henderson got three votes, and no other player — other than Judge — got more than two. Astros third baseman Isaac Paredes was among those who got one vote, but keep in mind, weird things happen when Grant Brisbee is among your voters.
AL MVP vote totals: Bobby Witt Jr. 18, Aaron Judge 5, Gunnar Henderson 3, Corey Seager 2, Julio Rodríguez 2, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 1, José Ramírez 1, Isaac Paredes 1.
American League Cy Young Award
Our staff sees this pretty clearly as a three-man race between last year’s winner and two guys whose talent exceeds their resumes. Nearly 80 percent of our voters picked Garrett Crochet (10 votes), Logan Gilbert (eight votes) or Tarik Skubal (eight votes). The Skubal voters require no explanation as the 28-year-old Detroit Tigers ace won the AL Cy Young Award last year. But on paper, the other two seem far more surprising. Crochet has made 32 career starts, wasn’t especially good in the second half of last season, and got traded this winter. Gilbert has never finished top five for the Cy Young Award. But to see them pitch is to believe either one could be the best in the league this season.
None of our voters picked 2024 AL Cy Young Award runner-up Seth Lugo. Instead, Lugo’s teammate Cole Ragans got three votes. And if that Hunter Brown vote seems to be coming out of nowhere, may we — and Tim Britton in particular — suggest you go back and look at Brown’s second-half stats from last year. The guy’s good.
AL Cy Young Award vote totals: Garrett Crochet 10, Logan Gilbert 8, Tarik Skubal 8, Cole Ragans 3, Max Fried 1, Shane McClanahan 1, Bailey Ober 1, Hunter Brown 1.
American League Rookie of the Year
From a long list of possibilities, a clear favorite emerged among our staff. Despite a crowded field, 14 of 33 voters picked Tigers pitcher Jackson Jobe to win AL Rookie of the Year (only two of those voters also picked Tigers teammate Skubal to win the Cy Young). Jobe is a former third overall draft pick who made two regular season and two postseason appearances last season. His stuff is undeniable. Kristian Campbell, who made the Red Sox’s Opening Day roster and will likely start at second base, and Jasson Domínguez, who’s going to open the season as the Yankees starting left fielder, finished in second and third place in our predictions.
“I already regret picking Jacob Wilson,” Stephen Nesbitt wrote in a Slack message, apparently uncomfortable as an outlier among his peers.
Don’t worry, Stephen. We’re sure no one will call you out on it.
AL ROY vote totals: Jackson Jobe 14, Kristian Campbell 6, Jasson Domínguez 3, Kumar Rocker 3, Jacob Wilson 3, Marcelo Mayer 1, Roman Anthony 1, Carson Williams 1, Jack Leiter 1.
National League Most Valuable Player
Although our staff seems doubtful that Judge can win back-to-back MVP awards, we have no such trouble believing Ohtani can win his third straight. Ohtani was the AL MVP in 2023, the NL MVP in 2024, and more than half of our voters believe he’ll win the NL award again in 2025. (Ohtani was also AL MVP in 2021, further evidence that we may be witnessing one of the great stretches of dominance in major-league history.)
There’s a smattering of support for some of the other usual suspects in the National League, especially for Ohtani’s teammate Mookie Betts, but with Ohtani returning to the mound this season, it’s hard to see anyone else as a real favorite for MVP. So, while we are predicting that a player is about to win three MVP awards in a row, we’re not exactly going out on a limb to do so.
NL MVP vote totals: Shohei Ohtani 18, Mookie Betts 5, Juan Soto 3, Kyle Tucker 2, Elly De La Cruz 2, Corbin Carroll 2, Francisco Lindor 1.
National League Cy Young Award
We have a handful of Corbin Burnes believers, one who’s expecting a big return from injury for Spencer Strider, and another who thinks 35-year-old Chris Sale is going to repeat as the NL Cy Young Award winner. Otherwise, our staff sees this as a two-horse race.
Phillies ace Zack Wheeler is the reliable option. He’s twice finished as Cy Young Award runner-up, and he’s gotten down-ballot Cy Young Award votes in two other seasons. Fourteen of our voters think this is the year he finally wins it. Paul Skenes is the young sensation coming off a Rookie of the Year season in which he started the All-Star Game and finished third in Cy voting. A dozen voters think his ascent to the top of the league is inevitable. It’s worth noting that our resident pitching expert, Eno Sarris, is among those who voted for Skenes.
NL Cy Young vote total: Zack Wheeler 14, Paul Skenes 12, Corbin Burnes 4, Spencer Strider 1, Tyler Glasnow 1, Chris Sale 1.
National League Rookie of the Year
As the early votes were rolling in, this looked like a pretty even race between Roki Sasaki and Dylan Crews. But you know how some people in your office always forget a deadline is coming and finish their assignments at the last second? That group at The Athletic — we’re looking at you, Dan Hayes — voted overwhelmingly for Sasaki, giving him a sizable margin as our staff favorite for NL Rookie of the Year.
Sasaki is the 23-year-old offseason prize from Japan — the Dodgers really needed another good pitcher — while Crews was the second overall draft pick in 2023 and forms a one-two punch in the Nationals’ outfield with James Wood (who lost rookie eligibility last season). Andrew Baggarly thinks it will be a different Nationals outfielder, Robert Hassell, who ends up winning Rookie of the Year after an excellent spring training. (Don’t tell Baggs, but that excellent spring ended with Hassell being sent to Triple A. Hey, maybe he’ll find his way to the big leagues soon.)
NL ROY vote totals: Roki Sasaki 15, Dylan Crews 9, Matt Shaw 4, Bubba Chandler 3, Jordan Lawler 1, Robert Hassell 1.
American League pennant winner
Twenty-five ballots were cast before any of our writers picked the New York Yankees to win the AL pennant. The Yankees were widely seen as AL favorites heading into spring training, but the loss of Gerrit Cole to Tommy John surgery has left the field wide open.
The vast majority of our voters, though, wound up picking two teams that missed the playoffs entirely last season. The 2023 World Series champion Texas Rangers got 11 votes from writers believing a healthier roster will lead to far better results. Perhaps a bigger surprise is the resounding support for the Boston Red Sox, who got nine votes after trading for Crochet and signing Alex Bregman. (All of those Red Sox votes, by the way, came from writers based outside of Boston.)
AL pennant vote totals: Rangers 11, Red Sox 9, Orioles 6, Yankees 3, Royals 2, Mariners 1, Astros 1.
National League pennant winner
You’re shocked. We knew you would be. But, yes, 16 of our writers — seasoned professionals who have analyzed all the data and looked beyond the typical narratives of the common fan — have assessed the National League and picked, of all teams, the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the pennant. Go ahead and rip us on social media, but we actually think they might be pretty good! We’re huge fans of Alex Vesia.
What might actually be surprising is that more than half of our voters chose a different team to win the NL pennant. Most of those dissenting opinions have settled in the National League East where the Braves, Phillies and Mets combined to get 14 votes. Three voters not only voted against the Dodgers, but also picked another team in their division! Our own Hall of Famer Jayson Stark not only picked the NL West rival Arizona Diamondbacks to win the pennant, he picked them to win the World Series! Put that in your Weird and Wild column!
NL pennant vote totals: Dodgers 16, Braves 5, Mets 5, Phillies 4, Diamondbacks 2, Padres 1.
World Series winner
Of the 16 writers who picked the Dodgers to win the National League, all but two picked them to go on and win the World Series. But still, 14 out of 33 is not a majority, meaning most of our voters picked someone other than the obvious preseason favorite to win the whole thing.
For the most part, those contrarian voters were almost evenly split among the Red Sox (four votes), Braves (three) and Phillies (three). But, again, before you accuse us of hometown favoritism, none of the four who picked the Red Sox are based in Boston, none who picked the Phillies are based in Philadelphia, and none who picked the Braves are based in Atlanta.
It’s interesting that four of our national writers (Ken Rosenthal, Tyler Kepner, Jayson Stark and Eno Sarris) picked four different non-Dodgers teams to win the World Series, the Braves, Phillies, Diamondbacks and Red Sox, respectively.
World Series winner vote totals: Dodgers 14, Red Sox 4, Braves 3, Phillies 3, Diamondbacks 2, Mets 2, Yankees 1, Orioles 1, Rangers 1, Mariners 1, Padres 1.
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Greg Fiume, Masterpress, Quinn Harris / Getty Images)
#win #World #Series #staff #predicts #MLB #champions #MVP #Young
