MLB predictions 2019: 27 very specific things that will happen this season

Jason Foster

MLB predictions 2019: 27 very specific things that will happen this season image

When making predictions for a baseball season, it's all just a best guess. Because nobody really knows. We can look at stat projections and previous seasons and make informed assumptions, but it's all a crapshoot. Maybe not like throwing darts at the board while blindfolded, but more like throwing the darts toward a specific quadrant with your eyes open and taking your best aim. You might hit the spot, you might not.

And while I took part in Sporting News' official 2019 predictions and made some sort of obvious guesses, I'm taking a different approach here. I'm going to tell you exactly how everything will play out. Everything you're about to read is definitely going to happen. Write it down, then review in awe in October. Or, mock me on Twitter when I inevitably get something wrong. Either is fine.

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Ready? Here are 27 very specific predictions for the 2019 season. Why 27? Why not?

1. Mike Trout will hit .319 with 36 homers, 96 RBIs and a .452 on-base percentage. He'll be worth 9.8 WAR but will not win the AL MVP award. That's because ...

2. Aaron Judge will have another 50-homer season — exactly 50 — along with a .430 OBP and a 1.090 OPS. He'll be worth nearly 11 WAR for the world champion Yankees. (I'll get to that.)

3. Ronald Acuña Jr. will hit .288 with 34 homers and 106 RBIs. He will win the NL MVP award, with 7.6 WAR.

4. Bryce Harper will have a 6 WAR first season in Philly, leading the league with 38 homers. He'll finish a close second in MVP balloting.

5. Manny Machado will have a strong first season in San Diego, hitting 31 homers and driving in 93 runs, for a total of 5.1 WAR.

6. Clayton Kershaw will again finish the season with just nine wins, thanks to multiple stints on the injured list.

7. Jose Altuve will win the AL batting title with a .344 average.

8. Freddie Freeman will win the NL batting title with a .328 average.

9. The longest winning streak of the season will belong to the Cardinals, who will reel off 11 straight in July.

10. The longest losing streak of the season will belong to the Marlins, who will drop nine straight in May.

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11. The Orioles will have two eight-game losing streaks.

12. Jose Altuve will have the longest hitting streak of the season, at 26 games.

13. Mookie Betts will fall just shy of another legit 10 WAR season, finishing at 9.7, which is, you know, still pretty good.

14. Oakland's Khris Davis will hit exactly .247, which isn't so much a prediction as just reminding you what Khris Davis does.

15. The Nationals' Juan Soto will hit 32 homers, with 21 of them coming before the All-Star break. Speaking of the Nationals ...

16. Max Scherzer will throw a perfect game, in which he strikes out 14 Marlins, but will lose another no-hit bid in the ninth inning against the Reds. 

17. Bartolo Colon will sign a free-agent contract with the Mets and join the team in May. He will win six games and hit zero home runs.

18. The Phillies will win 91 games and win the NL East, but won't make it out of the first round of the playoffs.

19. The Cardinals will win the NL Central by three games over the Cubs.

20. The Dodgers will claim the NL West (again) by 10 games over the Rockies. But their pennant-winning streak will end when the Cardinals beat them in six games in the NLCS.

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21. The Yankees will win 97 games to take the AL East by two games over the Red Sox.

22. The Indians will win the weakest division in baseball with 86 victories. They also won't make it past the first round.

23. The AL West-winning Astros will be the only 100-win team in the majors, but will lose to the wild-card Red Sox in the ALDS.

24. The wild-card Red Sox will lose to the Yankees in the ALCS in four games.

25. The Rays will be the other wild-card team, but will be shut out by the Red Sox in the one-game playoff.

26. The Yankees will win the World Series in five games over the Cardinals. Aaron Judge will be named series MVP, thanks mostly to his four home runs.

27. Paul Goldschmidt will have slightly better numbers than Judge in the World Series, highlighted by a .480 on-base percentage and seven RBIs.

So there.

Jason Foster

Jason Foster Photo

Jason Foster joined The Sporting News in 2015 after stops at various news outlets where he held a variety of reporting and editing roles and covered just about every topic imaginable. He is a member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and a 1998 graduate of Appalachian State University.