And, sure, they are great. Dodgers leading here in the Official Power Rankings. But I’ve already pointed out that they are far from a sure thing and they certainly aren’t good enough to elicit this level of hullabaloo. Hate them? Yes. Feel good whenever bad things happen to them? Absolutely! What’s the fun in sports if you don’t have a villain against whom to root?
MLB Power Rankings: Dodgers leading at start of 2025, plus what we’re looking forward to as hope springs eternal
The Super Bowl is behind us and that’s always the sign that we can move full speed ahead with baseball talk. Yes, I’m aware some popular winter sports — sports I love, too — are still going, but there’s an easy division point with football ending and spring training starting.
There will be plenty of time for that, but how about some positivity as well?
If you’re a White Sox fan and are excited for this season, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise (though I wouldn’t advise scrolling down the rankings or looking at any projections). If you’re a Mets fan and see someone predicting them to finish third place in the NL East, don’t get all furious, just laugh it off. If you are a Reds fan and want to believe they’re gonna take the NL Central, believe it.
With the spring comes a clean slate. I’ve mentioned before that I often hear the great Catherine O’Hara as Kevin’s mother saying that Christmas is “the season of perpetual hope,” in Home Alone. Well, as baseball fans, spring training is our season of perpetual hope.
As an example, Fangraphs’ projections have every AL East team finishing within six games of one another. Same with the NL Central. The top three AL West teams are within one game of each other in those projections while the AL Central top three are within two games. Only three NL teams are not projected to be within six games of a playoff spot and that number on the AL side is also three — but two of those three are eight back.
The chance to win the World Series
And for as much consternation as there has been in the offseason, an awful lot of teams do look to have a good shot to make the playoffs this year and, given the small-sample nature of the playoffs, that means they have a chance to win the World Series.
Replace the whining with optimism and hope. It is time for spring training. And on that note, every team comment below will simply be something for which I’m excited.
This means we can safely call 24 teams likely contenders heading into the season, if those projections are to be trusted even slightly — and could even run the tally to 26 if we wanted. That leaves just the White Sox, Nationals, Marlins and Rockies out in the cold, but there are reasons to follow all of those teams and, to reiterate, those fans bases should ignore the noise right now anyway.
