The actual start to the 2025 MLB season has already happened, but those two Cubs-Dodgers games in Tokyo were a mere primer. MLB is even sticking with Opening Day branding for this coming Thursday and that’s when we’ll share the overwhelming majority of the teams finally playing their first game of the 2025 season.
As has become an annual tradition in these parts, it’s time for me to check out the win total lines (or “over/unders”) and pick a few of them. Again, the numbers below will be gambling win totals, which means there will be a .5 attached to avoid pushes (ties). For example, if you see “84.5,” you’ll be betting whether the team is going to win more (over) or fewer (under) games.
Here are the win totals, via DraftKings, in order of highest to fewest:
There shouldn’t be anything sticking out as obvious, because these lines are usually spot on compared to how the teams are viewed heading into the season. It’s hard to win for a reason. Even the ones where you like a team a bit more than others are tough. For example, I’m predicting the Royals to win the AL Central and their odds are set at one game worse than the Twins. And yet, the line still seems very tough and I could easily see them coming in under it.
Still, let’s start there.
Royals over 83.5 wins
They won 86 games last year and I like them slightly better this time around. Yes, I fully expect Seth Lugo to take a step backward from when he finished as the Cy Young runner-up at age 34, but I don’t feel like anyone else returning after getting significant playing time last year is due a big backslide. I also believe the front office will be aggressive in looking for upgrades during trading season and they’ve shown the ability in recent years to come away with some pretty nifty deals.
Also, I apparently have Royals fever because I’m picking Bobby Witt Jr. to win MVP and Cole Ragans to win Cy Young.
Twins under 84.5 wins
Many of the projection systems like the Twins to come out on top in the AL Central and they do have the talent to do so. My concern, though, is that too many of their biggest producers are injury-prone and we’re already seeing it with the Royce Lewis injury. There’s also the notion I have that the AL Central will be a four-team race and the winner won’t even get to 90 victories. That means if I believe a team is going to finish fourth — it’s where I have the Twins — surely they won’t get to 85 wins.
Rangers over 85.5 wins
The Rangers offense in 2023 was one of the best in baseball and even if it was due a correction, so much stuff just completely fell apart in 2024. They are better than that. They’ve made some offensive additions like Joc Pederson and Jake Burger, but also should expect more production from youngsters Wyatt Langford and Evan Carter in addition to veterans like Marcus Semien, who had his worst full offensive season since 2018. The pitching staff gets Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle back from Tommy John surgeries while Cody Bradford is a nice up-and-comer.
I’ve got the Rangers winning the AL West, and even if that comes with fewer than 90 wins, they’ll top 85.5.
Mets under 90.5 wins
The National League is stronger, overall, than the American League. The NL East has three teams good enough to win the World Series and I expect the Nationals to be a bit stronger than last year. As such, whoever finishes in third place of the three NL East titans is unlikely to top 90 wins by virtue of playing too many other great teams. I’ve got the Mets third by virtue of not liking their rotation enough, especially with its injury issues right now. I won’t be surprised if they put everything together down the stretch and win the World Series, but I think they’re more likely a mid-80s win team than a 91-win team for the full 162.
Red Sox over 86.5 wins
The Red Sox were 81-81 last year and have lots of reasons to believe they’ll be better this season. They have signed Alex Bregman and will (hopefully) get a full year from Trevor Story. Tristan Casas missed a huge chunk of last season, too. The rotation adds Garrett Crochet, Walker Buehler — who was atrocious last regular season but looked like his old self in the playoffs — and gets Lucas Giolito back from injury.
This might be aggressive, but I’m actually taking the Red Sox to win the AL East. Even if I’m wrong there, 88 wins and a wild-card spot is very reasonable. I love this over.
Yankees under 89.5 wins
Gerrit Cole is done for the season already. Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt are hurt right now. I know it’s foolish to ever expect a full season from Giancarlo Stanton, but they might not get anything at all from him. There are some good pieces here, such as Max Fried, Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm Jr., but I had a friend of mine say this is an “82-win team stapled to Aaron Judge,” and, well, I have no argument with that. And if Judge goes down? That offense sure isn’t scaring anyone.
I’ve got the Yankees as an AL wild-card team, but I think they fall short of the total here.
White Sox over 53.5 wins
The White Sox enter the season as my worst team in baseball and they might well lose the most games this season. I just don’t think people are properly appreciating how ridiculously bad — in addition to unlucky — an MLB team has to be to lose as many games as they did last year. Sure, getting to 53 wins would be a 12-game improvement, but there were plenty of metrics that said they weren’t actually as bad as their record said they were last year. And things just snowballed.
If the White Sox go 53-109, we’d be a loser here.
Do you know how many teams in MLB history have lost at least 109 games in a season? Thirty-two. If we pared down the search to just the Wild Card Era (1995-present), only 10 teams have done it. Do you know how many of those 32 teams did it back-to-back? The Philadelphia A’s in 1915-16 and the expansion Mets from 1962-65 (a whopping four years in a row!), but that’s it. Go back to last year, when the A’s were coming off a 112-loss season. Everyone just knew they were the worst team again, right? And yet, they won 69 games in 2024.
Remember when the Astros were the laughingstock of baseball just over a decade ago? Yeah, they were going 56-106 and 55-107 before 51-111. The point is, even the most wretched teams in MLB history sometimes still topped 53.5 wins.
Did you know the White Sox were 1-12 against both the Royals and Twins while going 3-10 against the Tigers. That means they were 5-34 against three of the four teams they play the most. That’s a full season pace of 21-141. They absolutely will not have such horrific luck against their AL Central foes again.
I could keep going, but there’s no need.
I’m not saying the White Sox work up into the high-60s, but FanGraphs has them at 63 while PECOTA has them with 62.6 on average. Those are both comfortably above the threshold here and I agree with those projections. The White Sox are terrible and will still hit their over.
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