Opening Day can’t get here soon enough, before another Yankee or Met gets hurt. Indeed, injuries have dampened spirits a bit for the local teams this spring, but there is still plenty of reason to believe they’ll both be playing October baseball again.
So it figures to be an eventful season here in New York, even if the Los Angeles Dodgers loom as a burgeoning dynasty with their huge payroll and galaxy of stars.
Who knows what surprises lay ahead, but here are my 10 bold predictions for the 2025 MLB season, centering mostly around the Mets and Yankees.
10. Jacob DeGrom wins AL Cy Young award
Seems crazy considering the former Mets’ ace turns 37 in June and has thrown only 41 innings in two seasons with the Texas Rangers, before and after the second Tommy John surgery of his career. For that matter he hasn’t thrown anything close to a full season, other than the shortened pandemic year, since 2019.
Yet deGrom was once again making it look easy in his brief return at the end of last season, as overpowering as ever in three abbreviated starts. It’s just a matter of staying healthy, and you’d think his latest elbow surgery would provide him some rope in that area. It doesn’t take 200 innings to win a Cy Young anymore either and if Justin Verlander can win the Cy Young at age 39 after missing two years from TJ surgery, well, why not deGrom?
9. Shohei Ohtani gives up pitching
At some point it’s just going to make too much sense for Ohtani and the LA Dodgers not to do it. The Dodgers probably would prefer it right now but they will bow to their superstar’s wish to resume pitching after Tommy John surgery in 2023.
And maybe he’ll be successful as a starter. But if he’s not immediately dominant and there’s any sense his pitching is taking a toll on his offense, the pressure will mount on him to just hit home runs and steal bases. The Dodgers, after all, have a loaded starting rotation without Ohtani but they need his impact in their lineup to win another championship.
8. Dedniel Núñez replaces Edwin Diaz as Mets closer
Diaz’s strong finish in 2024 made it easier to forget his up-and-down season but his shaky spring has resurrected concerns about whether he can still be an elite closer. His velocity has been down slightly and his inability to prevent baserunners from stealing at will against him is looming as a potentially costly problem.
Núñez, meanwhile, returned this spring from the flexor tendon injury that shut him down after he emerged as a surprise bullpen weapon in 2024, throwing 98 mph again. If Diaz can’t regain his 2022 dominance, in his second season back from knee surgery, the Mets could be better off with Núñez closing and Diaz in a setup role.
7. Jasson Dominguez goes 30/30, wins AL Rookie of the Year
The Yankees didn’t actually sign Dominguez when he was 12 years old, it just seems that long since the hype began. Yet his talent is legit and, despite all the hand-wringing over his misadventures in left field, I think he proves to be the real thing in his first full season in the big leagues at age 22.
He’ll settle in defensively, allowing him to relax and let his tools take over. He stole 40 bases in the minors two years ago and scouts continue to marvel at how quickly the ball leaves the ballpark when Dominguez squares one up. That could well add up to a 30/30 season and the emergence of a star.
6. The Red Sox are back in a big way
After several years of angering their fans with a lack of spending and a patient approach to building through the farm system, the Boston Red Sox will take a huge leap forward, winning the AL East and reaching the World Series for the first time since 2018.
They made some key moves in the offseason, trading for Garrett Crochet, signing Walker Buehler and Alex Bregman, to complement the young talent that is ready to blossom. The timing is right for them in a watered-down American League, all the more so considering the Yankees’ injuries.
5. Yankees trade for Sandy Alcantara
The idea was to pair Gerrit Cole with Max Fried and ride dominant starting pitching to a championship in the wake of losing Juan Soto to the Mets. But with Cole lost for the season and Luis Gil for months, the only way to replicate that formula is to trade for Alcantara this summer.
This is assuming the Miami Marlins’ ace returns with dominance after Tommy John surgery, and he appears to be on his way after a strong spring training. The cost will be high, as Alcantara is under contract through 2027, including a team option year, but the Yankees could well be desperate to win before Aaron Judge gets old. And the Marlins seem to be at the beginning of another rebuild.
4. Clay Holmes makes NL All-Star team
Holmes’ dominance in Florida is among the happiest developments for the Mets so far in spring training, making them look smart for the decision to sign him as a free agent and convert him from a reliever to a starter.
I don’t think it’s a fluke either. He’s added an effective change-up to his reliever arsenal and has begun complementing his turbo-sinker with a four-seam fastball up in the strike zone. What about stamina? Well, when Seth Lugo made a similar conversion upon signing with the San Diego Padres in 2023, he threw 146 innings in his first year there. No reason Holmes can’t do that and earn an All-Star nod along the way.
3. The rivalry is back: Yankees lose to Red Sox in ALCS
Baseball needs the Yankees and Red Sox to hate each other again, and while the intensity may never reach the 2003-2004 level, this looks like the year the rivalry will get hot again.
Injuries obviously have hit the Yankees hard but they still should have enough to earn a wild card spot and move on to an ALCS meeting with the division-champion Red Sox. Judge will have another monster season but the Yankees will miss Soto in the post-season and fall short of a second straight World Series appearance
2. Mets fall in NLCS again as the Soto-era begins with promise
This time it may not be as much of a love-fest as 2024, considering how high the expectations are with Soto on board, as the Mets earn a wild card berth but lose again to the Dodgers in the NLCS, mainly because their starting pitching can’t match up with LA.
Yet in the big picture I think the Mets in 2025 will take another step toward winning it all under Steve Cohen, as Soto establishes himself in Queens with an MVP-type season and the farm system starts to produce, most importantly on the pitching side, starting with Brandon Sproat making an impact at some point.
1. Dodgers tie ’98 Yankees and go back-to-back
Obviously it’s not all that bold to predict a second straight championship for the Dodgers after their Evil Empire-like off-season, but I also think they go a step farther and deliver one of the great seasons in major league history by winning 114 games, as the Yankees did in 1998.
That’s still two short of the all-time record of 116, set by the 1906 Chicago Cubs and the 2001 Seattle Mariners, but it would be quite a feat while validating all of LA’s spending, while also officially make them the team to hate around baseball.
The Dodgers have so much elite pitching, both in the rotation and the bullpen, to go with their dynamic lineup, that 114 seems very much within their reach. And while the post-season is always a crapshoot, as the saying goes, the Dodgers have the weapons to win their second straight title and set up a possible dynasty.
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