Effectively Wild’s Preseason Predictions Update: Michael Baumann

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. We’ll begin today with a curated selection from the crystal ball of Michael Baumann!

1. At least one of the 2025 Cy Young winners will finish with 5.0 or lower FanGraphs WAR.

Looking at the latest ZiPS updates, the number of paths for this to prediction to claim victory is dwindling. AL favorite Tarik Skubal is currently projected by ZiPS to finish well above the watermark, at 6.2 fWAR, with his closest competition, Garrett Crochet, tracking for 5.2. However, we can’t forget about Max Fried, who leads the majors with a 1.29 ERA and ranks second in the AL with 2.4 bWAR. If Fried maintains his lead for the ERA title and finishes with more bWAR than Skubal and Crochet, he could garner enough support from the voters to win the award even if he doesn’t quite exceed 5.0 fWAR.

Two other possible AL Cy Young candidates to consider: Kris Bubic and Nathan Eovaldi. Bubic has seemingly come out of nowhere — well, the Royals bullpen to be more precise — and leads the AL with 2.8 bWAR, which is a full win above his fWAR. That could bode well for Baumann, as Bubic could follow the path laid out above for Fried to win the award without surpassing 5.0 fWAR. However, ZiPS does not expect Bubic to keep this up. He’s projected for just 1.4 fWAR the rest of the way, in part because ZiPS expects his workload to be reduced as the season goes along. Eovaldi, meanwhile, ranks just behind Skubal for the AL fWAR lead, with 2.1, but the Rangers righty likely won’t keep up his current pace, if for no other reason than health. The 35-year-old has made at least one trip to the injured list in each of the past three seasons, and his shortest stint in that span lasted 25 days.

In the senior circuit, the trio of Logan Webb, Zack Wheeler, and Paul Skenes are pulling away from the rest of the field, with Skenes representing the only NL Cy Young contender who is projected to finish below 5.0 fWAR. Perhaps the best hope for Baumann in the NL is for Skenes to continue to dominate the headlines without the other pitchers pulling too far away from him in WAR, which might be enough for him to win the award if he’s close to but not above that five-win threshold.

Jesús Luzardo is the one other NL pitcher worth mentioning here. This isn’t quite a breakout year because he was a solid starter with the Marlins in 2022-23, but he has never pitched as well as he is right now. He currently leads the majors with 2.2 fWAR to go along with a 1.95 ERA and a 2.23 FIP. The problem, though, is that ZiPS expects the 27-year-old lefty to regress to the mean fairly hard as the season goes on; he’s projected for a 3.98 ERA, a 3.58 FIP, and 1.6 WAR across 16 more starts. That would keep him below the threshold for Baumann to hit, but with such a comedown, Luzardo probably wouldn’t win the Cy Young.

Verdict: Not looking good

2. A major league player will date Sabrina Carpenter.

Despite science’s best efforts, no projection system has been found to calculate what lies in the hearts of individual pop stars, and whether that list includes professional athletes. Carpenter has remained mum on her romantic interests since her split with actor Barry Keoghan last winter, and other than being spotted wearing the occasional baseball jersey, she has not confessed to scrolling through the xFIP leaderboards searching for her ideal match.

However, that hasn’t stopped players from showing interest here. Please enjoy this shoutout from the Washington Nationals, playing wingman for outfielder James Wood:

sabrina carpenter have you heard of james wood pic.twitter.com/0aKD1VdN98

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) April 23, 2025

We’re rooting for you, James!

Verdict: Shrug Emoji

3. The Rockies’ representative in the All-Star game will be someone other than Michael Toglia, Nolan Jones, or Ezequiel Tover.

In each of the previous two iterations of the Preseason Predictions Game, a prediction was heavily impacted by events before Opening Day had even arrived. In 2023, Baumann predicted that a minor league collective bargaining agreement wouldn’t be agreed upon that year – and then it was announced less than a week later. Last year, Meg predicted that Jordan Montgomery would not be signed before the start of the season, which proved true even though his signing was announced before Opening Day, because he didn’t put pen to paper until after the season had begun.

And now 2025’s contest makes it 3-for-3 with the news that Nolan Jones was traded to the Guardians on March 22, making this prediction a whole lot more likely — but also devaluing it because voters were still able to submit ballots for another week. That leaves two candidates, neither of whom are compiling All-Star stats, but remember, Baumann made this pick assuming Colorado’s representative in the midseason exhibition would be more compulsory than anything else. And given the team’s historically bad start, it only follows that just about everyone on the roster is struggling. So, who’s going to get the nod?

I think it’s fair to say that neither of the remaining pair is the most likely option. Ezequiel Tovar has only played in 21 games, having missed a month due to injury. However, he’s been on fire since coming back from the IL, so if the rest of the roster continues to reside in a black hole and he somehow glides outside the event horizon for the next month or so, maybe he still has a shot. The same cannot be said for Michael Toglia. He’s batting .205/.272/.367 for a grand total of -0.9 fWAR – second worst out of all major league position players.

My guess is that unless Tovar goes nuclear for the next six weeks, the league goes the customary route and takes a reliever like Jake Bird, and Baumann earns some points.

Verdict: Likely

4. A Division I college team will hit more home runs than the average major league team.

The DI baseball calendar is at the beginning of its stretch of conference tournaments, NCAA Regionals, Super Regionals, and the College World Series. At the start of this week, the Georgia Bulldogs were the clubhouse leaders with 125 home runs. For a team to hit more homers than the average major league club, it’ll need to play deep into the postseason. Georgia, which is the 10th-ranked team in the nation, will have a strong seeding in the Regional bracket, but it’ll need some breaks to go its way to ensure a ticket to Omaha, which would mean a full slate of 15+ games added to its schedules. If the Bulldogs can keep up their current pace and play 15 more games, they would finish in the neighborhood of 167 total home runs for the year. That said, they probably won’t maintain their current pace considering the quality of pitching is only likely to go up from here, making dingers a more precious commodity. Let’s call 167 the ceiling for them.

Now that we know the variable, we need to know the metric they’re being measured against. As of time of writing, the average major league team has played 49 games and hit 54 home runs, which would project out to 178 over a full season.

We’re doing the equivalent of back-of-the-napkin math on both sides of this equation, but I think there’s enough data to suggest this might be a tall order.

Verdict: Unlikely

5. At least three Boston Red Sox players will earn Rookie of the Year votes.

Until researching for this update, I hadn’t appreciated just how steep a climb it is for this prediction to come true. Rookie of the Year ballots only include three spots, far fewer than the 10 names submitted for the MVP award. Over the past decade, each league has averaged just over seven players receiving at least one vote, but last year only four NL players earned a vote.

Baumann will need to hope for a very wide playing field and for Boston’s rookies to deliver — especially if they’re already getting playing time. According to Baseball America, nearly 97% of ROY winners made their debut before June 1. Keep in mind, that’s specifically winners – plenty of rookies have earned a random vote or two as kudos for their mid-summer debut. Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer are still awaiting their assumed 2025 call-ups, but I think it’s still fair to say that the players with the best chance of earning votes are already on the roster.

When examining those options, catcher Carlos Narváez is far and away the favorite to earn votes, with 1.4 fWAR – second in the AL among rookie position players. Kristian Campbell, 16th on the same list at 0.2 fWAR, has a lot more work to do, but the season is still young.

On the pitching side, Hunter Dobbins hasn’t exactly caught fire (six starts, 3.62 ERA, 32 1/3 IP), but nobody else in the AL is doing much more, save Shane Smith of the White Sox and Will Warren of the Yankees. In recent history, though, pitchers have had a harder time winning the award; only five of the last 20 winners have been pitchers, and that quintet includes Shohei Ohtani pulling double duty.

On the other hand, a ballot featuring three players from the same team is far more common than I expected. As recently as 2023, the Cincinnati Reds had three rookies — Matt McLain, Spencer Steer, and Elly De La Cruz — get votes. Since 2000, 12 teams have achieved the feat, including the 2006 Marlins, who had six. Based on the data, it’s tempting to give a more optimistic forecast, but we have to remember that the prediction isn’t that it happens, but that it happens to a specific franchise.

All told, it feels extremely early to lean in either direction, especially with pieces yet to be placed on the board — but I still think this is a long shot.

Verdict: Unlikely

6. Luis Robert Jr. will earn more fWAR after being traded midseason than before it.

Luis. Buddy. Pal. I know you’re a big fan of the pod, and you want with all your heart for Baumann to come out on top. We can all see it — you’ve done your best to make this as low of a bar to clear as possible, and so you have played at a sub-replacement level (-0.2 fWAR). It was a stroke of genius to hit below the Mendoza line (.178), really. I totally get it. But, uh… if you really do want to make this happen, it requires you to play well enough to ensure that at least someone wants to trade for you. So maybe pick it up a little bit. You know, just get hot for a week or two, prove the doubters wrong, demonstrate that BABIP was to blame, and then coast a bit more until the trade deadline. If the White Sox fail to get much of a haul for your services, that’s on them, right? Right. I’m glad we had this talk. (pause) Uh-huh. (pause) … love you too.

(hangs up phone)

… oh my god, he might just be cooked.

Verdict: I’ve Seen Weirder?