The 2025 MLB season is almost upon us! With less than 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. We've already looked at the AL East, NL East, and AL Central. Before heading out west, let's analyze one of baseball's most fluid divisions: the NL Central.
Chicago Cubs
Best-case scenario: Kyle Tucker demonstrates his MVP ability and tops it off by agreeing to a long-term extension. Don’t hold your breath on the latter, but Cubs fans can hope.
Pete Crow-Armstrong asserts himself as a leadoff hitter capable of producing a .350 on-base average. That leads to a 60-steal season and the kind of baserunning dynamics the Cubs haven’t seen since the glory days of Javier Baez. Rookie Matt Shaw assumes a Santo-like grip on third base.
Miguel Amaya matures into a catcher capable of directing the rotation led by Shota Imanaga and Justin Steele, who combine for 60 starts and 330 innings of quality pitching. The Cubs reach 90 wins for the first time since 2018 and justify their status as the NL Central pre-season favorite.
Worst-case scenario: The wind blows out at Wrigley for most of Imanaga’s starts, and his 2.72 home ERA of 2024 balloons to somewhere around 4.50. Steele, who only once has given the team more than 135 innings, come up sore again and misses a third of the season.
The Cubs, who face the Dodgers, Padres, Phillies and Diamondbacks for 22 of their first 29 games, start badly and never recover. When Tucker bolts for the open market in November, he leaves behind yet another 83-win season on the North Side and a fan base wondering why the Cubs weren’t more aggressive this offseason.
Most-likely scenario: Shaw is the team’s breakout star, and Tucker leads a competitive offense. But Steele misses 10 starts, Imanaga lapses toward mediocrity and the pitching staff comes up average. With that mixed picture, the Cubs compete for a postseason spot, after which Tucker bolts for big bucks.
Cincinnati Reds
Best-case scenario: Elly De la Cruz matures into an MVP candidate, leads the league in steals again, and reduces his strikeout total below one per game. Spencer Steer and T.J. Friedl both add 50 points to their batting averages.
Will Benson rediscovers the power stroke that made him a solid find in 2023, and substantially deflates that 40 percent strikeout rate that made him a liability in 2024. Matt McClain returns to full health.
Terry Francona can rely on Hunter Greene and Andrew Abbott for 60 starts and 320 innings worth of All-Star-level performance. With De La Cruz leading the offense and Francona’s generalship, the Reds add a dozen wins to their 2024 total and hijack the NL Central title.
Worst-case scenario: Beyond Greene and Abbott, the rotation proves too shallow to support serious summer-long contention. Nick Martinez fails to justify the team’s faith in giving him a rotation spot, and Nick Lodolo confirms what 2024 suggested: that he’s a 4.70 ERA functionary.
The shoulder injury that cost McClain all of 2024 impacts his swing, putting the load on offseason acquisition Gavin Lux, who produces the same ordinary numbers he did in Los Angeles. Jeimer Candelario again hits .225 with limited on-base and slugging skills, re-enforcing the mystery of why the Reds ever gave him $60 million through 2027.
With De La Cruz as the only high-functioning offensive piece, the Reds stumble home in their usual fourth or fifth place slot.
Most-likely scenario: If you believe in De La Cruz, Greene and Francona — and why wouldn’t you? — the Reds are virtually guaranteed to contend. Nonetheless, in Spencer Steer, T.J. Friedl, Santiago Espinal, McClain, Lux, Lodolo, Benson and Tyler Stephenson, they have a lot of guys who could go big or go home.
That identifies the Reds as one of those fascinating 2025 teams who could win anywhere between 75 and 90 games, and it’s anybody’s guess where the actual number will fall.
Milwaukee Brewers
Best-case scenario: The Brewers have a knack for exceeding expectations, so the smart thing to do is probably to avoid analysis altogether and just write them in for 87 wins and divisional contention.
What would that take? Start with an early season return of Brandon Woodruff, who missed all of 2024 due to shoulder surgery. A big season from winter pickup Nestor Cortes would be nice, supplementing the reliable job staff ace Freddy Peralta can be counted on giving.
The Crew also need a serious MVP candidate to step up: William Contreras and Jackson Chourio have the potential. Joey Ortiz, following a 2024 initiation at third base, inherits shortstop with aplomb.
Rhys Hoskins hit 28 home runs at first base last season; could he push 40? Either way, Milwaukee’s best-case scenario always involves dominating the division as they did last season.
Worst-case scenario: The Brewers annually tempt fate by letting their big-money stars go. Last year it was Corbin Burnes; this past winter it was Willy Adames and Devin Williams. That budget-conscious trend finally catches up with them in their worst-case scenario.
The potential tripwires are abundant. What if Woodruff doesn’t come back fully healthy or — perish the thought — doesn’t come back at all? What if the sophomore slump strikes Chourio?
What if the league catches up with Tobias Myers, who had a 3.00 ERA in his rookie season? What if Ortiz can’t make the conversion from a reaction position to a range position? What if Oliver Dunn, Ortiz’s designated successor at third base, hits .221 again, but this time over 500 at bats rather than 101?
That’s a recipe for the Brewers to do something they haven’t done since the Covid-shortened season: fall below .500.
Most likely scenario: When assessing the NL Central, it’s always wise to write the Brewers in as a contender. But a lot does hinge on the X-factor that is Woodruff’s status. The hope is he’s back and pitching well by late May or early June. If so, Milwaukee’s season-ending three-game series with the Reds could be meaningful indeed.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Best-case scenario: The Pirates’ hopes for 2025 boil down to the top of their rotation. Paul Skenes, 2024 NL Rookie of the Year, is a valid Cy Young prospect. Mitch Keller and Jared Jones carry that ‘potential’ label, with the latter going largely overlooked in 2024 due to his arriving in the shadow of Skenes.
If those three can take their talents to the field game after game, the Pirates can be a daunting foe.
Beyond that, Pirate fans hope that somebody can hit. They were 13th in the NL last season in runs per game. Are you listening, Ke'Bryan Hayes and Oneil Cruz? If those two young stars fulfill long-held expectations, the Pirates can dream of contending for the first time in nearly a decade.
Worst-case scenario: The true nightmare would be a shoulder or elbow injury to Skenes. He has to hold up for Pittsburgh to be credible.
Setting that unthinkable thought aside, where will the Pirates produce offense? The current projected lineup includes Joey Bart, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Spencer Horwitz, Nick Gonzalez, Tommy Pham and Bryan Reynolds. With due respect to Reynolds, nobody’s pitching around any of those guys.
The 2024 Pirates finished 14th, 14th and 15th in the NL in the slash line categories. The major every-day additions were Pham, Kiner-Falefa and Horwitz, who as a trio combined for 29 home runs last season. It’s hard to win if you don’t score.
Most likely scenario: Since Skenes demonstrated last season that he is a front-rank arm, the interesting question will be the extent to which Jones can develop into a solid No. 2 starter.
But what the Pirates really need is for Cruz and Hayes to mature into offensive threats on a level with their established defensive abilities. If they don’t, it’s hard to see the Pirates keeping pace, even in the winnable NL Central.
St. Louis Cardinals
Best-case scenario: The Cardinals enter 2025 in a strange position: projected NL Central also-rans.
There certainly is potential to believe in St. Louis. What happens if Masyn Winn, Jordan Walker, Pedro Pages and Alec Burleson all blossom into the franchise-headlining stars Cardinal fans believe they can be? Despite the best efforts of Cardinal management to the contrary, Nolan Arenado is still around, and at 34. he projects to have at least a few good seasons remaining.
Sure, the pitching staff has question marks. But Sonny Gray (13-9, 3.84 ERA in 28 starts last season) is reliable, and Andre Pallante, just 26, could be an emerging ace. Nobody doubts Ryan Helsley at the back end of the bullpen; he finished 62 games last season, saving 49 of them with a 2.04 ERA.
Factor all that in with the mysterious and borderline magical ‘Cardinal Way’, and it would be foolish to discount the Cardinals’ chances at contending.
Worst-case scenario: Gray, entering his age 35 season, has to be the staff anchor because there’s no reason to believe his journeyman compatriots, Steven Matz, Erick Fedde or Miles Mikolas, are up to that challenge.
The Cardinals were 10th in runs allowed per game and 13th in runs scored, making their total of 83 wins something of a fluke. In fact, they performed seven games better than their Pythagorean projection. If you believe that the breaks even out, that alone spells trouble for 2025.
Most likely scenario: There’s an unusual amount of turbulence surrounding one of the game’s most historically stable franchises. John Mozeliak is playing out the string as team president while Chaim Bloom waits anxiously to take over in October. And who knows what may happen with Arenado next week or next month?
All that turbulence suggests that St. Louis is ripe for a fall, probably to somewhere below 81 wins. If they contend in 2025, it will be a great accomplishment for manager Oliver Marmol.