The 2026 Season Prediction Sweepstakes
Happy New Year! There are only a scant few months remaining before our ritual of daily suffering begins (or daily joy and wonder, I guess, if you like a team that wins all the time). Though the calendar has changed, most things have stayed the same: the weather is still miserable, the air is still brisk, the Bills are still guaranteed to be in the playoffs, and baseball is still beautiful.
In honor of the upcoming season, I got together with some of my friends and established a little season prediction game, loosely inspired by Triple Click’s annual video game industry predictions. The rules are minimal, and largely boil down to: create 10 baseball-related predictions that aren’t super vague, almost guaranteed to happen, or identical to anyone else’s, and whoever gets the most right by the end of the season gets to go home feeling proud of themselves.
My first round of predictions was too focused on winning and not enough on having fun, so I reworked some of them to better embrace the spirit of whimsy. My predictions ended up more or less as follows, roughly ordered from least to most fantastical:
- Julio Rodríguez wins AL MVP.
The people need this very badly after last year’s outcome, and by “the people”, I mean me. Julio has all the makings of an MVP, as the voting results have shown since he debuted; he just needs to take his second-half magic and play like that all year.
- Nolan McLean wins NL Rookie of the Year and a Gold Glove.
McLean is already an ROY favorite, so it’s not the most exciting thing to predict on its own, but the glimpse of his fielding we’ve seen in the majors is very high-quality stuff. If you haven’t seen the behind-the-back double play from his debut—which I was lucky enough to catch in person—it’s one of the coolest things you’ll see from a 2025 pitcher that isn’t, well, pitching. I might be a little biased since he reps my hometown on my favorite team, but who doesn’t want to see more stuff like that?
- Devin Williams posts a sub-2 ERA.
He’s done it before! Four times, in fact, because that’s just how he normally is. I imagine the transition to the Yankees was rough for a number of reasons, and am optimistic that he can bounce back well and return to form. We also really, really need him to.
- Ernie Clement breaks the Blue Jays’ regular season hit streak record.
Yes, I am a Mets and Mariners fan first and foremost, but I really grew to love the Blue Jays over the course of the World Series, and I wouldn’t have started paying any attention to football if it weren’t for Ernie Clement. For those of you not watching at home, on top of being an outstanding utility player defensively all season, he batted .411 in the 2025 playoffs to set the new MLB single-season postseason hit record at 30. In the process, he broke the Blue Jays’ postseason hitting streak record by hitting in 13 consecutive games. I firmly believe he has it in him to break their regular season record, which currently stands at 28 games, as set by Shawn Green in 1999.
- Carson Benge finishes top 3 in Rookie of the Year voting.
At this point, I think every Mets fan is pretty desperate for Benge to come up and be the best thing since the invention of the curveball. I’d like to manifest that happening, but prospects are prospects. (And don’t get it twisted: I am exceedingly fond of Tyrone Taylor and will always be happy to see him on my screen.)
- Marcus Semien has a big comeback offensively and builds a heartwarming relationship with the younger Mets, making him a massive fan favorite.
Assuming he heals well from his foot injury, I don’t see why Semien can’t return to the kind of offensive success we saw from him prior to 2025. Furthermore, he could fit in nicely right alongside players like Sean Manaea and Starling Marte that have visibly served as friends and mentors to younger players new to the team. The fanbase has understandably had strong reactions to an upheaval of the longstanding core, but that’s no reason to not embrace this guy!
- An active MLB player explicitly comes out as queer.
Folks, it’s 2026. Heated Rivalry is all the rage, and there are serious conversations being had about homophobia in professional men’s sports. While it’s encouraging to see players openly support the community, I’m hopeful that this can finally be the year that someone at the highest level of the game feels safe enough to come out before they retire, and I’m far from the only queer fan who would like to see it happen.
- An umpire-centric gambling scandal breaks.
Gambling on the game is well-trodden ground by now, especially with big neon signs encouraging it flashing in your face everywhere you look, but the highest-profile cases have long been players. It’s not really a huge leap to think that someone else is going to do it and get busted eventually.
- The Rockies shape up to win at least 60 games, fueled in part by a breakout season from young infielder Ryan Ritter.
As my friends know, I’m a big fan of Ryan Ritter; I saw his debut against the Mets at Coors Field, and he was really down-to-earth and nice when I got his autograph at Fenway, which pretty much immediately made him one of my favorite players. I think him having a great season is completely plausible! Whether or not the rest of the team can back that up is much less certain, but I’ll be rooting for them nonetheless.
- Refusing to be outdone by some of the more interesting celebrations around the league (looking at you, Drew Gilbert and the Giants) and in other sports, an MLB team sees its players debut a celly that involves fully kissing each other on the mouth.
I think it would be fun, and that’s probably all the explanation needed.
If you have any hot predictions sizzling away on the stove, serve them up in the comments! Or, you know, keep them to yourself, but then you won’t be able to tell everyone you called it from day one. If you're looking for a little inspiration, my friend David has offered up one of his own predictions as an example: "An NL catcher arrives to spring training having clearly really worked their glutes in the offseason in hopes of creating an NL rival to “Big Dumper.”"