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Our beat writers are back to start National League division previews in the West today, plus Eno Sarris shares his annual bold predictions for the upcoming season. Welcome to The Windup!
NL West Preview: The league’s highest floor …
Los Angeles Dodgers
Best-case scenario: What do you get for a team that seemingly has everything, including back-to-back World Series titles? Baseball’s first three-peat since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees. The Dodgers get bounce-backs from Mookie Betts and Tesocar Hernández, Kyle Tucker gets MVP votes and their dominant pitching staff remains at full strength.
Worst-case scenario: A veteran lineup continues to show signs of age. Injuries start to pile up, and their high-end pitching never quite gets going. Their bullpen once again remains the issue. The floor is likely too high to foresee even missing the postseason, but an exit feels like the start of the end of something instead of the continuation of a dynasty.
Most interesting scenario: The first-ever Japanese-born pitcher to win a Cy Young award is a Dodger — either Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Shohei Ohtani.
— Fabian Ardaya
San Diego Padres
- 90-72 in 2025 — lost National League Wild Card Series to Cubs in three games
- Prospects and depth chart
Best-case scenario: Months after being sold to an owner worth billions, the Padres finish with 90 or more wins for a third consecutive season. Then, they take advantage of October randomness, leaning on a deep bullpen on their way to the first World Series title in franchise history.
Worst-case scenario: Sunk by pitching injuries and a top-heavy roster, the Padres finish fourth in the division, missing the playoffs by a mile. Meanwhile, an unexpected snafu in the sale process delays a potential ownership change until next offseason, when an expiring collective bargaining agreement will create even more uncertainty.
Most interesting scenario: After selling for a record price, the Padres pull off a postseason upset of the Dodgers, proving that parity in baseball still exists.
— Dennis Lin
Let’s take a quick break for Eno before finishing up the division.
Eno’s Predictions: Ten bold bets for the 2026 MLB season
It’s prediction season. But these aren’t your run-of-the-mill predictions. These are bold predictions, which are aiming for a different success rate. Let’s say your standard predictions hope to be right six out of 10 times — they’ve got to beat a coin flip, after all — then these bold predictions are looking to be right about half as much as that.
Here’s one: Roman Anthony wins AL MVP.
The one knock on Anthony as a Red Sox prospect was that he hit too many ground balls. That was definitely true at the lowest levels, but then he went to work on his swing path and hit a few more balls in the air at every level he reached. Still, a 50 percent ground-ball rate doesn’t seem to presage a big power hitter.
That notwithstanding, he swings the bat really hard, and when he does put the ball in the air, it goes really far. Though the science of giving batters “bat path grades” based on their swing characteristics is in its infancy, Anthony does well there. Over at Driveline Baseball, they used the publicly available Statcast bat-tracking metrics to create a suite of grades evaluating hitters’ swings for their ability to make contact and hit for power, and then in an overall capacity.
Here are last year’s best bat path grades for players 26 and under with at least 200 MLB swings:
There’s a lot of good players on here, but you might notice that some have bat paths that don’t lend themselves to a ton of contact. This is on the 20-80 scouting scale, so Anthony actually joins an even smaller list when you consider that he should have above-average ability to make contact (45+) while also having elite power (60+). Now he starts to look a lot like a Junior Caminero who has the potential to put up better defensive numbers in the outfield.
Of course, he also has some commonalities with Jordan Walker. And only two players have ever won the MVP in their second season. That’s what makes this bold.
Read nine more predictions in my latest piece. I’m also hosting a live chat on the site at 2 p.m. ET today — this link for it goes live at 1.
Back to the beat writers.
More NL West: … and the lowest ceilings?
San Francisco Giants
Best-case scenario: A postseason berth, whether it’s as the NL West champ, the sixth wild card or because of a court order. Just get into the tournament and see if all of the veteran hitters can get hot at the same time. In this scenario, the only people paying attention to new manager Tony Vitello are the players, which is the dream equilibrium of most managers.
Worst-case scenario: The speed of the game is too fast, too different for the new manager, and the personalities of established multimillionaires turn out to be much, much different than impressionable college players with everything to prove. Also, the pitching collapses (and how!). All of it adds up to a big ol’ 90-loss mess.
Most interesting scenario: Bryce Eldridge doesn’t just hit his way into the starting lineup, but wins awards doing it.
— Grant Brisbee
Arizona Diamondbacks
Best-case scenario: Corbin Carroll’s February hamate surgery has a minimal impact on his season and the D-Backs’ offense is elite again (sixth in runs last season, first in 2024) thanks to three top-25 position players (Carroll, Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte) and an underrated supporting cast. Corbin Burnes returns from Tommy John surgery in the second half and provides a much-needed ace for the playoff push.
Worst-case scenario: Perdomo regresses from elite to merely good, and a pitching staff that projects for a bottom-third rotation and the second-worst bullpen in the league gets pummeled by opposing lineups. Marte gets traded in July, and Jordan Lawlar experiences significant growing pains while trying to secure an everyday role in the lineup.
Most interesting scenario: The D-Backs’ rotation exceeds expectations by staying healthy, and Zac Gallen recaptures his 2022-2023 form to bridge the gap until Burnes’ post-TJ return.
— Derek VanRiper
Colorado Rockies
Best-case scenario: Seemingly small transactions (T.J. Rumfield, anyone?) begin to click over the course of the year and opposing teams dread their late-season trips into the Coors Field funhouse again, with Ezequiel Tovar, Hunter Goodman and Brenton Doyle along with Jordan Beck, Mickey Moniak, Charlie Condon and a few surprises (Zac Veen?) forming a new core that strikes fear into opposing pitching staffs.
Worst-case scenario: A fifth consecutive year at the bottom of the division with Year 1 of the Paul DePodesta-Josh Byrnes era looking like more of the same, given the difficulty of turning this organization around. Tovar, Goodman and Doyle have mediocre seasons at the plate despite their potential, and the offense continues to lag as a below-average unit despite the run environment at Coors Field.
Most interesting scenario: DePodesta and Byrnes embrace the right mix of tech, data and a staff of coaches to bring the Rockies’ player development into the 21st century while immediately breaking conventions necessary to win consistently while playing at altitude.
— VanRiper
That does it. Thanks to our beat writers for their insights.
Handshakes and High Fives
MLB officially has a prediction-markets partner after striking a deal with Polymarket. There are mixed emotions around both the decision, and prediction markets themselves. (For a refresher on prediction markets, our Hannah Vanbiber has a great video breakdown.)
One of the stars of the World Baseball Classic, Italy’s espresso machine, is up for auction. Other items, like a Shohei Ohtani game-worn jersey, are up for grabs, too.
Speaking of the WBC, its championship between the U.S. and Venezuela drew the largest-ever viewership of the event with nearly 10.8 million watchers.
Keith Law gives us his thoughts and observations on MLB prospects from the Spring Breakout, the minor league’s spring-training prospect showcase.
A confident Bo Bichette is ready for the big stage that New York has to offer. There, he wants to be “one of the best players in the game.”
After undergoing surgery for a brain tumor in November, a Rockies prospect lost his ability to speak. Now, following a hard-fought rehab process, he’s back in minor-league camp.
Most-clicked in our last newsletter: The 2026 Aces Project, surveying experts to rank pitchers from aces to “just a guy,” by tiers.
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