The 2025 MLB season is almost upon us! With about one week to go before the Cubs and Dodgers do battle in Tokyo, each team is gearing up for the long, annual 162-game grind.
Each day this week at Call To The Pen, we'll take a look at every team in every division and analyze their best and worst-case scenarios for the 2025 season. Let's start off with the home of the reigning American League pennant winners in the AL East:
Baltimore Orioles
Best-case scenario: The upside to the Orioles roster is immense. Could Jackson Holliday, as a 21-year-old survivor of a dispiriting rookie season, blossom? That’s hardly out of the question. Adley Rutschman, 27, is coming off the worst offensive season of his career, so increased production is almost inevitable from the star backstop.
Colton Cowser had a 24-homer rookie season, and there’s no reason to expect less. Gunnar Henderson hit 37 homers with an .893 OPS; that’s pushing the elite level.
Jordan Westburg, 26, looks to be established at third base and Tyler O’Neill, coming over from Boston, has a good body of work. A lineup featuring fully matured and productive versions of Henderson, Westburg, O’Neill, Cowser, Rutschman and Holliday would be legitimately intimidating. Could that lineup carry the Orioles to a division championship? Absolutely.
Worst-case scenario: The rotation leads off with Zach Eflin, Dean Kremer, Grayson Rodriguez, Charlie Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano. As a group, that fivesome went 19-28 in MLB last season — Sugano pitched in Japan — so it is at best unproven., and Rodriguez is already sidelined with elbow concerns.
The Orioles were league average on the mound in both ERA and runs allowed per game in 2024, and that was with Corbin Burnes at the top of the rotation. Morton is Burnes’ designated replacement. He’s savvy, but he’s also 41 and it’s fair to wonder how much he has left.
And for all the potential star power in Baltimore’s every-day lineup, the reality is that Holliday has not yet shown he’s up to big league pitching, and perhaps he’ll show that he’s not. Ditto for Heston Kjerstad.
If the pitching sags, the Orioles will fade from contention.
Most realistic scenario: Holliday makes modest progress, the pitching is a constant irritant, and the Orioles do well to hang around the fringes of playoff contention in both the division and wild card races.
Boston Red Sox
Best-case scenario: As strange as it sounds, former White Sox hold the key to the Red Sox’ 2025 success. Boston can be a championship contender if most of the following happens:
Garrett Crochet, obtained from the White Sox in a December trade, continues a growth rate that saw him produce a 3.58 ERA and 12.9 strikeouts per nine innings in 2024.
Lucas Giolito rebounds from UCL surgery to show the form that made him the ace of Chicago’s 2021 division championship team.
Liam Hendricks shows he is fully recovered from non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and finds the form that led him to 75 saves for the White Sox in 2022-23.
It would also be helpful if the Red Sox got a full, productive season out of shortstop Trevor Story, something that hasn’t happened since they signed him to a six-year, $140 million deal in March of 2022.
A big boost would occur if outfielder Jarren Duran emerges as an MVP candidate again. And if top prospect Roman Anthony forces his way into the outfield picture, he makes the Sox more dynamic.
Finally, the Red Sox need peace and tranquility in a clubhouse rattled by the importation of Alex Bregman to apparently take over at Rafael Devers’ third base spot.
If all that happens, the Sox can make a serious run at their first division championship since 2018.
Worst-case scenario: Giolito doesn’t rebound, leaving a gaping hole in the rotation. Story plays 50 games, leaving a gaping hole in the middle-infield defense.
Meanwhile Bregman, whose OPS has declined each of the past two seasons, declines some more and lapses into the category of ‘average.’ Devers, flitting between third, first and DH, sulks around, threatening team chemistry.
The Sox fail to break above .500 for the fourth consecutive season, their longest such stretch of mediocrity since the mid-1960s.
Most realistic scenario: Boston is dependent on a lot of guys staying healthy whose track record suggests they won’t do so. That list begins with Giolito, and it also includes Story and Walker Buehler.
If those three are sidelined for their usual significant chunks of time, it will be hard for the Sox to keep pace with the division’s upper echelon, making the most likely finishing spot somewhere around .500.
New York Yankees
Best-case scenario: Expectations are always high in the Bronx, especially since the Yankees enter 2025 as the defending American League champions. Granted, Juan Soto is gone, but what of it? New York added Max Fried, Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Devin Williams, buttressing four positions at the cost of one.
Jasson Dominguez is a rising talent in left field. Aaron Judge moves to right, a switch that can only enhance his already staggering offensive potential. Last season Judge hit 58 homers with 144 RBIs, and there’s no real reason to expect him to back off that historic production, besides lacking Soto's protection and on-base skills in the lineup.
Bellinger has one of his ‘up’ seasons, Goldschmidt reverses his decline phase, and Williams runs up 40 saves. That sounds like the core of a potential World Series team.
Worst-case scenario: Cole misses all of 2025 (which seems likely given his Tommy John prognosis). Gil misses most of it, and the rotation is forced to lean on Marcus Stroman plus a late-spring pickup from the discard pile.
The bad elbows cost Giancarlo Stanton, 35, most of yet another season, marking the fourth straight when he plays fewer than 115 games.
If Cole is gone, Gil issues half a season of work and Stanton is a part-timer again in 2025, the Yanks could have a hard time keeping up with their younger, hungrier rivals.
Most realistic scenario: Discount the Yankees at your peril. They’ve qualified for postseason play every season but one since 2017, and even in a crippled state, they should contend again in 2025. New York has averaged 92 wins since 2021 and if Aaron Judge has anything to say about it, they won’t retreat very far from that figure this year.
Tampa Bay Rays
Best-case scenario: Begin with Christopher Morel, a youngster with unlimited potential who was obtained from the Cubs last summer. If the Rays can instill some strike zone discipline, Morel has the tools to be an All-Star and a dynamite middle-of-the-order threat.
Follow with first baseman Yandy Diaz adding 100 percentage points to his 2024 .755 OPS. Again, the raw talent is there.
The Rays are, at heart, a pitching-first team, but last season they were basically middle of the pack in both staff ERA and runs allowed per game. They need a full return from projected staff aces Shane McClanahan and Drew Rasmussen. The former lost all of 2024 to Tommy John surgery; the latter pitched half of 2024 following a 2023 elbow surgery.
In that best-case scenario, the Rays can do what they usually do: over-perform expectations and contend for a division title.
Worst-case scenario: The heart of the Tampa Bay order consists of the Lowe boys, Josh and Brandon, plus Diaz and Morel. There is neither an established power nor batting average threat among them. No surprise, then, that Tampa Bay ranked 14th in the AL last season in runs per game.
The big offseason addition was free agent middle infielder Ha-Seong Kim, formerly of the Padres. He’s a capable fielder but lacks on-base and slugging potential, the two qualities the Rays need most.
If the Rays offense drags again in 2025, it will put too much pressure on the pitching staff and Tampa Bay will struggle to reprise its 80-82 record of 2024.
Most likely scenario: It’s asking a lot of the star-less Rays to compete in the loaded AL East. Staying out of last place would be an accomplishment.
Toronto Blue Jays
Best-case scenario: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a free agent at season’s end. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the Jays’ best-case scenario begins with Guerrero amassing a classic ‘walk year’ — how about 45 homers, 130 RBIs and a batting title — as the centerpiece of the team’s postseason bid.
It’s not too late for Alejandro Kirk and Ernie Clement to show up big, for Bo Bichette to return to his pre-2024 form, and for Anthony Santander to prove worthy of his contract.
If Jose Berrios and Kevin Gausman reproduce their 2024 seasons — a combined 30-22 record for 270 innings and a 3.70 ERA — they constitute a good start to a reliable rotation. It’s not implausible to think that Chris Bassitt will rebound from a poor 2024, and that Max Scherzer will at minimum be a useful No. 5.
If that all happens, the Jays can contend.
Worst-case scenario: The stalled contract extension talks with Guerrero go nowhere, prompting the Jays to dump him at the trade deadline. Bichette continues his 2024 funk, Bassitt and Scherzer contribute nothing, and the staff — bottom third in the AL last season in ERA — sinks again.
In those dire scenarios, Santander finds himself without meaningful offensive support. Result: The Jays are fortunate to avoid a second straight season in the division cellar.
Most likely scenario: Guerrero has a big season, but with no hope of extending him, the Jays take the best trade deadline offer. That neuters the contributions of Santander, Bichette, Kirk and trade addition Andrés Giménez.
Combine that deficiency with the lack of pitching depth, and Toronto fights it out with Tampa Bay for last place in the division.