The North American portion of the 2024 baseball season is scheduled to kick off on Thursday, with a full slate of games featuring all 30 teams. For the fourteenth consecutive year, I’ve looked into the crystal ball to make my picks for the upcoming season.
East: Rays
Central: Guardians
West: Mariners
Wild Cards: Astros, Blue Jays, Yankees
AL Champion: Yankees
Cy Young: Tristan McKenzie
MVP: Julio Rodriguez
The Baseball Writers of America have announced the finalists for their awards for the just completed baseball season, which will be announced next week. It is a good bet that few of my original predictions for the winners will be accurate. Hopefully, these new predictions will be slightly better, especially since I’ll have a 33% chance of being right.
Most Valuable Player: Mookie Betts, Jose Ramirez, Mike Trout
Giancarlo Stanton was was my pre-season selection to win the award this year and, while he was productive, he didn’t pull away from the pack as he did last year for the Marlins. Mookie Betts should run away and hide with this award.
Cy Young Award: Corey Kluber, Blake Snell, Justin Verlander
A late season injury kept my pre-season pick of Chris Sale from competing for his first Cy Young award. My guess is that Blake Snell takes home the prize.
Manager of the Year: Alex Cora, Kevin Cash, Bob Melvin
Once again, I didn’t make any predictions for this award prior to the season. Alex Cora should be a shoo-in for the award, given the Red Sox performance in his rookie campaign as skipper.
Rookie of the Year: Miguel Andujar, Shohei Ohtani, Gleyber Torres
Another award I didn’t predict prior to the season. Despite losing time due to injury, Ohtani seems to be the odds-on favorite.