Bless You Boys staff predicts the 2021 MLB season

Well it’s been quite a year, folks. We don’t know about you, but 2020 and early 2021 have sorely tested our ability to predict what’s going to happen next, and we’ve been humbled in the process. Usually, we just have our bad baseball predictions to humble us.

2020 wasn’t our worst year in terms of our baseball predictions, however. Sure there were plenty of misses as always—some goof even picked the Cincinnati Reds to win the NL pennant—but six of eleven staff members surveyed picked the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the World Series. By historical standards that may be our best work.

The Dodgers are certainly going to be in the thick of things in 2021 as well, with Mookie Betts and an absolutely stacked pitching staff. However, the San Diego Padres had a huge offseason, adding Blake Snell, Yu Darvish, and Ha-Seong Kim, among others. That should make the NL West a Godzilla v. King Kong level matchup between, potentially, the two best teams in baseball. In the NL East, the Atlanta Braves reign supreme, but the New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, and Washington Nationals are all threats. Meanwhile, the NL Central seems pretty much up for grabs if anyone wants it. No, not you Pittsburgh.

The American League seems more wide open. Sure, the New York Yankees are still a major power, while the Boston Red Sox remain under construction. However, it’s the Tampa Bay Rays and their player development juggernaut that may continue to run the AL East for now, while the Toronto Blue Jays remain a rising threat. The Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins seem bound to go toe-to-toe for the AL Central again this year, while a somewhat faded Houston Astros team looks to hold off the charge of the Oakland A’s and maybe, just maybe, this will be the year that Mike Trout and the Angels finally become a legit problem for them all.

Anecdotally, the best gambling success based on our picks has been achieved by simply doing the opposite of anything you see below. You’ll also note the staff’s obsession with guessing how many games might be postponed and never made up. Predicting baseball is hard, and that’s part of why it remains such a compelling game.

Okay, it’s your turn now!

Tigers record:
Division rank:
Team MVP:
Rookie of the Year:
Breakout player:

AL East:
AL Central:
AL West:
NL East:
NL Central:
NL West:

AL Pennant:
NL Pennant:
World Series winner: