Effectively Wild’s Preseason Predictions Game Update: Ben Clemens

Before Opening Day, the FanGraphs podcast, Effectively Wild, held its annual Preseason Predictions Game. Hosts Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley were joined by FanGraphs writers Michael Baumann and Ben Clemens, and each made 10 predictions about the upcoming baseball season. EW listeners voted on the likelihood of each prediction to determine its value, which will be kept secret until the final scores are revealed in November.

At times throughout the season, we’ll be tracking the various predictions here on the Community Blog to see how each competitor is faring. Having already covered Michael Baumann, who recently is feeling more optimistic about one of his picks, we’ll now review some highlights from fellow guest Ben Clemens.

1. Juan Soto will earn more fWAR than Aaron Judge.

I’m sorry, Ben, but we’re starting with bad news. Both variables in this equation have run in the exact opposite direction from where you’d hoped, and at breakneck speed. For Aaron Judge, his biggest priority was presumably not to repeat his freezing-cold start to 2024, the sole blotch on an otherwise superhuman year. He did that and more — Judge has been in MVP form from day one and is now credited with 5.9 fWAR, just as we reach the heart of June. ZiPS isn’t willing to take this pace at face value, so Judge isn’t projected to finish with more than 14 WAR; instead, the projection system is opting for a more reasonable (!) 10.8. (Yes, this is the range of numbers we’re dealing with, which serves to underline just how ridiculous this man is.)

Juan Soto has received a similar level of media attention to Judge, but for wholly different reasons. His Mets tenure got off to a rough start — if only by his standards — as he slashed .241/.368/.384 with three home runs and a 117 wRC+ through the end of April. And even though he’s performed much better since the calendar flipped to May — .252/.402/.510, 10 homers, 156 wRC+ — his current full-season 140 wRC+ would still represent a career low. Of course, for our purposes, there’s only one number that really matters here, but because pretty much all of Soto’s value comes from his offense, he currently stands at 1.9 fWAR. That four-win deficit feels insurmountable. Sure, there’s plenty of season remaining for a dramatic plot twist, but I don’t think anyone outside of Queens would make this prediction today.

Verdict: Very unlikely

2. Shohei Ohtani will throw the fastest pitch thrown by a starter in the 2025 regular season (excluding openers).

At long last, Shohei Ohtani made his Dodgers pitching debut on Monday night against the Padres. He is still rehabbing from the elbow surgery he had after the 2023 season, so the Dodgers are using him as an opener while he builds his pitch count back up to carry a starter’s workload. Ben wrote about Ohtani’s pitching appearance for FanGraphs on Tuesday, so you should read his piece for more about how it went, but as far as we’re concerned here, the three-time MVP still has a ways to go before he can make this preseason prediction come true. For starters — pun very much intended — because Ohtani is working as an opener and not a true starter in the short term, whatever the radar gun reads won’t count for our competition. In his one inning of work on Monday, he maxed out at 100.2 mph — not bad for someone coming back from elbow reconstruction surgery — but still below the current benchmark. On May 25, reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal struck out Gabriel Arias on a 102.6-mph heater.

Can Ohtani reach 102.7? Perhaps, but none of his recorded pitches have been tracked that high. His fastest known pitch registered 102 mph while playing for Japan in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. In MLB play, Baseball Savant lists 11 pitches of Ohtani’s that broke 101 mph, the fastest topping out at 101.4 during the 2022 season. It’s reasonable to expect that coming off a long injury layoff, Ohtani’s velocity will be down when he has to pace himself to be a regular starting pitcher again. Then again, if we as a society have learned anything, it’s that we doubt Ohtani at our own peril.

Verdict: He’s Shohei Ohtani?

3. At least three players who play at some point for the Colorado Rockies will finish the season with at least 500 plate appearances and negative fWAR.

It says a lot about the 2025 Rockies that even with Kris Bryant on the 60-day IL, the paths toward success for this prediction haven’t narrowed much. The Rockies have only four qualified hitters, but when a team is playing this badly, just about anything can happen to the starting lineup. Seven Rockies have recorded at least 160 PA as of the start of this week, with four of them carrying a negative fWAR: Michael Toglia (-1.2), Brenton Doyle (-0.4), Kyle Farmer (-0.3), and Mickey Moniak (-0.1). The other three are Jordan Beck at 0.9, Ryan McMahon at 1.3, and Hunter Goodman at 1.5.

Based on all of this, it seems the biggest obstacle for this prediction is going to be health. If a few more players suffer the same fate as Bryant, Colorado may not have enough guys reach that 500-PA threshold. Other than that? I think we really do get to find out just how deep the Rockies can dig this hole.

Verdict: Pain

4. Jacob deGrom will pitch more than 150 innings, but earn less than 4.0 fWAR.

What initially felt like a very fine needle to thread now comes off as prescient. Jacob deGrom has pitched 82 1/3 innings and accumulated 1.9 fWAR over his first 14 starts and 82 1/3 innings in 2025. For the rest of the season, the ZiPS DC projections expect him to double his WAR total across 75 innings and 15 starts. Add those together and he’d hit both of the required metrics, though without much margin for error on either (157 1/3 IP, 3.8 fWAR). My worry, however, is that deGrom’s performance has found another level after shaking the initial rust off, and the projections aren’t giving proper due to his current incarnation. Over his eight starts since May 1 (49 1/3 IP), deGrom has a 1.66 ERA and a 2.89 FIP; this, after he had a 2.73 ERA and a 3.77 FIP across his first six starts (33 IP). Should deGrom’s performance since the start of May hold, this prediction is probably going to fail because he will leave that 4.0 fWAR cutoff in his dust cloud.

Verdict: We shall be watching with great interest

5. Patrick Corbin will throw at least 100 innings for the Texas Rangers.

It’s only early June, and Patrick Corbin is already at 66 1/3 innings. All of the projection systems you can find at FanGraphs expect him to finish 2025 with well over 130. This might be the most confident I feel about a prediction across all four ballots — provided Corbin continues to take the ball every fifth day, which is the one thing he did reliably during his final five disastrous seasons with the Nationals.

Verdict: Very likely

6. Rafael Devers will play more innings at third base than Alex Bregman.

I was so proud of the paragraphs that you would have read here. The frank analysis, the complete certainty that I conveyed that this prediction was all but decided. I even tortured a tech support joke to suggest that Clemens was suffering from an acute case of PEBCAK– Problem Exists Between Cora And Keeping (Rafael Devers in the dugout).

(…please clap.)

But then the Red Sox did what nobody expected and traded Devers to the Giants. The prediction, as written, makes no mention of the specific teams for which Devers or Bregman have to be playing third base. Could that be the loophole that puts this is back in play? Not really, because the Giants already have Matt Chapman. Yes, Chapman is injured and expected to be out until in early July, but Bregman, who is also injured, has already logged over 440 innings at the hot corner this season. Beyond that, Devers may not be ready to return to third base any time soon, considering the Red Sox weren’t having him take reps there after moving him off the position. At least a few other newsworthy events would have to occur for this prediction to happen, yet it’s still more likely now than it was before the trade.

Verdict: A minuscule amount of hope

7. The Chicago White Sox will end at least one day with sole possession of the AL Central lead.

WE WERE THIS CLOSE. Between March 31 and April 2, the White Sox had multiple opportunities to bring this home, including games where every other team in their way had already taken the required loss, only for the South Siders to squander the moment in the nightcap. The entire AL Central finished that stretch locked in a five-way tie at 2-4, but our dreams were all but dead four short days later, when Chicago dropped three straight games. Entering play Tuesday, the Sox are 22 1/2 games behind the first-place Tigers, and it is only a matter of (very on-brand) pedantry preventing me from already adding this to the loss column.

Verdict: At least the Rockies exist?

8. The strikeout rate will fall below 22% league-wide.

Exciting news, sports fans — after starting on the higher side, the current strikeout rate is 22.0%!

If we want to be extra precise (and I think we do), if we go down a few more decimal places, the exact strikeout rate entering play on June 16 is 21.972%, thus fulfilling the prediction. It’s still way too early to say whether this prediction will come true, but it will be a fun stat to track through the season. My guess is the final percentage will be right on the razor’s edge of this prediction.

Verdict: *Suspense Chord*