First- And 99th-Percentile Projections: American League Edition

At this time time last year, I made a series of predictions. I explained why each team might make it to the promised land, as well as why each team might find itself dead in a pit. We’re running it back this year. Will your favorite team win it all? Will it perish in a factory fire? Here’s how it might go down. Consider these the first- and 99th-percentile projections. If you missed the National League edition yesterday, you can check it out here. Today we’re on to the American League.

Baltimore Orioles
Why They’ll Win It All: After two years of struggle, Adley Rutschman will come back and play like a star again. He’ll be a six-win MVP candidate. He’ll instantly look like he did in 2022 and 2023. Where has that guy been the past two years? The answer is simpler than you think. He’s been hiding in the basement while his secret twin, Badley Rutschman has limped to league-average performance. That’s right, he uses a double. This two-years-on, two-years-off gambit used to work well enough. Badley was more than capable of tearing up the Pac-12 and the high minors, but the big leagues are another story. Badley couldn’t quite hack it, but Adley will return and Badley will be back in the basement. (Don’t worry, it’s a nice enough basement.) The secret twin life is a tough one, but it’ll bring the O’s back into the first division.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Playing behind Alex Bregman in the World Baseball Classic will mess with Gunnar Henderson’s head. Do you know the last time Gunnar Henderson was a backup? Neither does Gunnar Henderson. He’s not meant to play third base second fiddle. He’s feeling like a second-class citizen for the first time. Number two’s supposed man the six, not bat seventh. By the Fourth of July, he’ll be striking out a third of the time and batting fifth and seven ate nine.

Boston Red Sox
Why They’ll Win It All: Do you know how many starting pitchers the Red Sox have? They have so many starting pitchers. Brayan Bello, their Opening Day starter from 2024, is now their number four starter. Johan Oviedo, the guy for whom they traded their second-ranked position player prospect, is their number five starter. That’s because Garrett Crochet, Ranger Suarez, and Sonny Gray are all top-15 talents according to ZiPS. The Red Sox have Patrick Sandoval coming back from Tommy John surgery. They’ve got a pair of preseason Top 100 Prospects in Payton Tolle and Connelly Early. Tyler Uberstine has a 70-grade name, and that’s got to count for something. Boston’s starting pitching is projected for 18 WAR. I went back and checked the positional power rankings. That’s the highest projection for a starting rotation since 2019.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Do you know how many outfielders the Red Sox have? They have so many outfielders. Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu just won Gold Gloves. Jarren Duran has put up more than 10 WAR in the past two seasons and batted over .400 in spring training. Roman Anthony is literally Roman Anthony. Masataka Yoshida just batted .375 with two homers in five games during the World Baseball Classic. You can never have too much starting pitching, but for the second year in a row, the Red Sox have too many outfielders, and the tension will finally boil over. That’s too many good players to keep on the bench and in the DH spot, and with the clubhouse in bedlam, Alex Cora will just run all five of them out there at once, but even that will pose a problem because two of them will have to begin each play in the infield. (Curse you, shift ban!) The two standing on the dirt will still feel slighted, so they’ll let every groundball roll through the infield out of spite, and they’ll chase after every fly ball to prove they belong in the outfield. They’ll bonk into each other all game. Upon fielding a base hit, Anthony will hold the ball up above the heads of Rafaela and Abreu and laugh as the 5-foot-10 fielders leap after it in vain.

Chicago White Sox
Why They’ll Win It All: Sometimes everything goes right. Upon returning from his hamstring injury, Kyle Teel will repeat his strong rookie campaign, and Edgar Quero’s time at Driveline will work wonders. Chase Meidroth will BABIP his way to a .330 average. Andrew Benintendi will pop 30 homers, just as someone on our staff foretold in our forthcoming bold predictions post. (No spoilers!) Austin Hays will keep hitting. It will turn out that not only is Luisangel Acuña a switch-hitter after all, but he’s a way better hitter from the left side than he ever was from the right. Most important of all, Munetaka Murakami will put the Sox over the top. He’ll quash all those concerns about swing-and-miss and stomach-churning strikeout rates. He’ll mash dingers, and then he’ll mash some more dingers, and then he’ll drink some coffee and start his day with a fresh batch of dingers.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Acuña won’t really be that great a hitter from the left side. In fact, he won’t bat left-handed at all.

Cleveland Guardians
Why They’ll Win It All: Gabriel Arias has heard your gibes and gambols about his chase and his whiff rates. He even saw that obscenely long supercut you (read: I) made of his whiffs at high fastballs. He’s spent the past four months in a cave, training. He’s going to move closer to the plate. He’s going to make contact. Did you notice that he’s running an 11% walk rate during spring training? Did you notice that he’s knocked eight points off his strikeout rate and 20 points off his chase rate? Prepare for the plate disciplined version of Gabriel Arias, who walks and homers and walks again and dares you to laugh at his plate discipline. He dares you.

Why They’ll Lose It All: One day, just as a joke, while everyone’s putting their uniforms on before the game, Austin Hedges will turn to Bo Naylor, look down at his jersey like he’s seeing it for the first time, and say, “The Cleveland Guardians, huh?” But he won’t pronounce it right. He’ll enunciate the U in “Guardians,” so it sounds like the “gua” in guacamole. “The Cleveland Gwardians.” And Naylor will laugh, uproariously. He won’t be able to stop laughing. He’ll collapse to the floor in convulsions.

Frozen in horror, Hedges will watch his teammates rush to Naylor’s side as Naylor wheezes “The Cleveland…GWARDIANS!” before passing out, and the rest of the players erupt in their own hysterical laughter and then pass out themselves. Hedges will still just be standing there, surrounded by the unconscious bodies of his 25 Gwardians. They’ll be fine, but 12 of them will end up in the hospital with core muscle strains. The Guards will spend all season playing uptight, trying in vain not to think of themselves as the Gwards, lest the injurious laughter sweep through the clubhouse yet again. It will happen three more times anyway. Hedges will never speak again.

Detroit Tigers
Why They’ll Win It All: Now that he’s got a taste of the big-time starting pitcher bucks, Tarik Skubal will want it all. He’s going for the mega-contract: 13 years, half a billy, full no-trade, extra hotel suite on the road, and unlimited Swiss Miss. He’ll do anything and everything he can to get this contract. That means sprinting into his walk year with a third straight Cy Young, an All-Star Game start, an MVP, a no-no, a couple short-rest starts down the stretch, and a relief appearance in Game 7.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Midway through the season, the Tigers will get together for a team dinner. As a show of support for the Ilitch family, they’ll get pizza from Little Caesars. None of them will have tried it before, so everybody will grab a slice, raise it high, and shout “Go Tigers!” before taking their first bite all at once. The experience will sour them on the idea of the Tigers as an organization, and they’ll listlessly go through the motions for the rest of the season.

Houston Astros
Why They’ll Win It All: Yordan Alvarez and Carlos Correa will get healthy. They’ll stay healthy. They’ll do Yordan Alvarez and Carlos Correa things for a whole season, and that’ll be enough to make the Astros winners.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Hunter Brown will pitch OK. He’ll pretty good, not that far off the projections, but he’ll suffer some bad batted-ball luck and his strand rate won’t be great. And with pretty much no starting pitching depth, that’ll be enough to knock the Astros out of the picture.

Kansas City Royals
Why They’ll Win It All: With the walls moved in at Kauffman Stadium, the hitters will rejoice. When they look out at the pitcher, the field will no longer look so vast. The very act of attacking the ball will no longer feel futile. For the first time in years, the Royals offense will pack a punch and walk with a swagger. They will hit homers. They will rope doubles into the gaps, and the doubles will actually reach the wall. Maikel Garcia will start lifting the ball. Bobby Witt Jr. will be pretty much the same.

Why They’ll Lose It All: With the walls moved in at Kauffman Stadium, the pitchers will collapse. Multiple pitchers will hit the IL with strained necks from whipping their heads around too fast to watch home runs rocket into the stands. The shell-shocked hurlers will finally know what the hitters have been going through, and they’ll lose all confidence. They’ll nibble at the corners of the zone. They’ll bury the ball in the dirt. They’ll make a pact to take matters into their own hands, sneaking into the park over the All-Star break and moving the wall back to where it used to be. They’ll think the coast will be clear because all the position players will be busy starring in the game, thanks to those gaudy home run totals, but when they get to the ballpark with their construction tools, they’ll find manager Matt Quatraro and the rest of the coaching staff waiting for them. Quatraro will have set up sandbag barriers in front of the wall. He’ll tell his rotation to go home and learn how to throw a damn sinker. The pitchers will try to explain that some of them are natural pronators, which can make throwing an effective sinker particularly difficult, but Quatraro will have anticipated this response, and he’ll start spraying them with a hose.

Los Angeles Angels
Why They’ll Win It All: Jo Adell will hit 37 home runs again. Mike Trout and Jorge Soler will match their career highs, too, blasting 45 and 48 homers apiece. In fact, everybody will match his career high. The Apostrophe Squad of Logan O’Hoppe and Travis d’Arnaud will chip in a combined 38 from the catcher spot, Jeimer Candelario will knock 22, Zach Neto 26, Jose Siri 25, Yoán Moncada 25, Josh Lowe 20, and so on. The Angels won’t get on base and their defense will be atrocious, but they’ll bring the dingers all day, every day.

Why They’ll Lose It All: The team will take owner Arte Moreno’s comments to heart. Safe in the knowledge that when it comes to the priorities of Angels fans, “winning is not in their top five,” they will play loose baseball. They will feel no pressure to succeed. They’ll be free and easy. They’ll feel like kids again, playing for love of the game. They’ll have so much fun they’ll barely even notice they’re on pace for the exact same 72-90 record they ran last season. They’ll have so much fun that the fans will somehow care even less about winning than they did before. They’ll have so much fun that one day, Anthony Rendon will show up and ask if he can join in after all. The team will huddle up and decide that it’s going to be a no.

Minnesota Twins
Why They’ll Win It All: The brute squad will deliver. The 6-foot-4 Matt Wallner and the 6-foot-3 Trevor Larnach will launch 45 bombs each. Together, these 443 pounds of corner outfield colossus will slug the Twins to victory. Pitchers will struggle to tell them apart. They’ll worry that they’re seeing double. They’ll rack up pitch clock violations as they argue with the umpire, because surely that guy who just hit a ball into Lake Como can’t round the bases and then walk right back up to the plate. Wallner and Larnach will dub themselves ‘Wallnach,’ and they’ll be genuinely confused and let down when the portmanteau fails to catch on, but they’ll slug their way through the disappointment.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Wallnach will combine for 30 home runs and 1.7 WAR, and Twins fans will begin to wonder whether the team wasn’t better back before it traded away all those good players. They’ll decide to spend their Sunday afternoons at the Mill City Museum instead of the ballpark.

New York Yankees
Why They’ll Win It All: The Yankees just had a pretty great season, and they’re going to get Gerrit Cole back at some point. They’re going to have a whole season of Cam Schlittler and Max Fried, and then they’ll have Cole for the stretch run. They’re not going to spend nearly the entire season with a shortstop who has a secret shoulder injury. Giancarlo Stanton will have a full, healthy season. (Sorry, just checking to see whether you were actually paying attention.) Point is, don’t sleep on the Yankees.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Right now, RosterResource sees New York’s bench consisting of J.C. Escarra, Paul Goldschmidt, Amed Rosario, and Randal Grichuk. All of those guys are over 30 and will come down with back spasms at the same time. This will happen in each month of the season. It will transpire that it’s hard to win with a spasmodically spastic geriatric bench.

[Still Unclear] Athletics
Why They’ll Win It All: Did you know that the A’s have hit 55 home runs during spring training? That’s the most in baseball. Their .369 wOBA? Also the best in baseball. They’ve got the most hits and the highest hard-hit rate. As always, this spring training performance will carry over to the regular season, and no one will be able to stop this offensive juggernaut.

Why They’ll Lose It All: As a team building exercise, Mark Kotsay will tell the players they should all get together and watch “That movie about the A’s.” He should be more specific. Brent Rooker will oblige and invite everyone over to his place to watch The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience. The A’s will get into it. They’ll get really, really into it. They’ll spend so much time bashing forearms that they’ll forget to take infield practice. They’ll spend all their time in the batting cages trying to hit ding-dong doodles with their bing-bong bats that their beautifully calibrated swings will fall to pieces. They’ll lead the league in forearm contusions. Jacob Wilson will get suspended for stepping into the batter’s box with a samurai sword instead of a bat. It will end badly. On the plus side, Nick Kurtz will, in fact, hit 72 ding-dong doodles.

Seattle Mariners
Why They’ll Win It All: Big Dumper will provide. Big Dumper will dump homers into the stands from the right side of the plate. Big Dumper will dump homers into the stands from the left side of the plate. Big Dumper will frame the ball beautifully and dump a heaping helping of stolen strikes into the pockets of the pitchers. If it can be dumped, Big Dumper will dump it.

Why They’ll Lose It All: You know that vaunted Seattle pitching system? You know how it just seems to churn out excellent starters and relievers without end? Well, as of Tuesday morning, the Mariners had a 7.08 ERA during spring training. That’s the worst in baseball. Nicaragua, which went 0-4 and got outscored 47-6 in the World Baseball Classic, had a better ERA than that. Spring training may not matter, but if the Mariners want to live up their best-in-the-AL projections, they might want to consider running an ERA below literally seven.

Tampa Bay Rays
Why They’ll Win It All: The Rays will devise a brilliant plan to help Yandy Díaz finally get the ball in the air. They won’t mess with the powerful infielder’s swing. Instead, as they rebuild Tropicana Field, they’ll secrete a row of trampolines just beneath the turf, 21 feet in front of the plate, the median distance of the preposterous 136 hard-hit grounders Díaz ripped in 2025. He’ll set a record with 55 ground-rule doubles. Statcast’s launch angle parameters will have an absolute meltdown. Díaz will run the highest BABIP in baseball.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Have you seen the American League East? Every other team is projected for at least 84 wins. It’s going to be a blood bath. The Yankees still have Aaron Judge and three legit aces. So do the Red Sox. The Blue Jays just came a whisker from winning the World Series and decided to get even better. The Orioles still have one of the most talented lineups in baseball, and all of a sudden, the pitching looks like it’s also going to be good. Plus, Badley Rutschman is back in the basement. The Rays might not be able to Rays their way out of this one.

Texas Rangers
Why They’ll Win It All: They’ve got J power. Jake Burger, Josh Smith, Josh Jung, Joc Pederson, Danny Jansen, Jacob deGrom, Jack Leiter, Josh Sborz, and Jakob Junis will form a tight bond around their eight-point-letter connection. They’ll call themselves J Squad and they’ll play like gangbusters. Soon, everybody on the team will get an honorary J name. Brandon Nimmo will be known as Jimmy so that everyone can call him Jim-O Nimmo. Nathan Eovaldi will be known as Joe so that he can be called Joe Nathan. Corey Seager will refuse to participate, but he’ll put up another five-win season, so nobody will mind much.

Why They’ll Lose It All: In Downtown Dallas, on a grassy patch just across the street from Starship Bagel, rests a 30-foot-tall sculpture of a human eyeball. It is called Eye, and in mid-April, it will come to life. The newly conscious sphere will wobble down Interstate 30, take Exit 29 South toward Ballpark Lane, and crash directly into Globe Life Field. The great unblinking orb will terrorize the thousands of people at the ballpark, and it will roll directly over one unlucky Rangers outfielder. That task completed, the life will go out of it. It will fall still just as suddenly as it awakened. It will sit there on the manicured grass, a harmless sculpture once again. The unfortunate trodden Ranger will find himself unharmed, but altered by the experience in a way he can never quite put into words.

After a thorough investigation, the eye will be returned to its idyllic abode across from the bagel shop. But for the rest of the season, it will awaken and bring mayhem to the Rangers once per series. After each ensuing rampage, the authorities will place the eye progressively farther from the ballpark, eventually removing it all the way across the state to El Paso. But no matter the distance, and no matter how thick the walls constraining it, the great reanimated eyeball will boulder its way across the state, bust onto I-30 and into the stadium to run down a Ranger. The team will find it difficult to concentrate.

Toronto Blue Jays
Why They’ll Win It All: After adding Dylan Cease and Cody Ponce, the Blue Jays will have enough starting pitching. I don’t mean to say that their starters will stay healthy. On the contrary, every single one of them will spend time on the IL, some more than once, often due to tragically Canadian injuries. But each time, the next man up will perform even better than the guy he’s replacing.

Cease will pitch like an ace for a couple months and then have a calf thing. Kevin Gausman will slip on a container of poutine and bump his elbow. Max Scherzer will get trampled at a Broken Social Scene show. Ponce will get bitten by a moose, a beaver, and a lumberjack in three separate incidents that require three separate IL trips. But Trey Yesavage will step up. Shane Bieber will step up. José Berríos will step up. Those last three starters are currently on the IL, but they’ll be back by the time the first four go down, though Bieber will take a puck to the neck at a Maple Leafs game and miss a couple more weeks. Eric Lauer and Ricky Tiedemann will pitch great. Even the made-up sounding minor league pair of Chad Dallas and Alex Amalfi will earn call-ups and excel before getting lost in a snowdrift.

By the end of the season, everybody will be back and healthy, and John Schneider will have to figure out what to do with 11 legitimate number one starters. They’ll piggyback their way through the playoffs, laying waste to the competition and taking the Dodgers to the limit again. But after Game 6, the team bus will crash into a Tim Hortons and every single starter will find himself injured. The Blue Jays will frantically call in Devereaux Harrison to pitch Game 7, only to learn that somehow this prospect named Devereaux is not Canadian. They’ll pull every string they have to get citizenship for him by game time, but it won’t arrive until the bottom of the ninth, just as he unleashes a 3-2 fastball by Shohei Ohtani to seal the deal. As the team sprints out onto the field to celebrate, Ponce will get bitten by another moose.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Are you familiar with the Swedish term ketchupeffekt? It’s exactly what it sounds like: the ketchup effect. You’re banging and banging on the stupid bottle but getting nothing, and then, all of a sudden, you’ve got way too much ketchup all over your Kraft Dinner. That’s the Blue Jays. After eight years of smacking their palm against the ketchup bottle and having nothing more than a few wild card appearances to show for it, the success exploded out of the bottle in 2025. In 2026, they’ll go back to banging on the stupid bottle.