SI:AM | Can Anyone Dethrone the Dodgers?

Good morning, I’m Tyler Lauletta, filling in for your usual host, Dan Gartland, who was sent down to Triple A ball for a tune-up start before Opening Day. Whatever the newsletter equivalent of the Cy Young is, Gartland has the potential to win it—though I haven’t read Tarik Skubal’s latest posts.

On to the newsletter.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏀 A Change in Chapel Hill

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⚾ MLB Predictions

🏈 NFL Mock Draft

There’s plenty to be excited about with baseball back on the menu …

That’s right folks, baseball is back. Tonight, the Yankees and Giants will face off—on Netflix for some reason—to open up the 2026 MLB season.

The sports calendar is one of constant change, but there’s something about Opening Day that sets it apart from the rest of the sporting world. The start of baseball season means springtime, means grilling hot dogs outside, and means that you know exactly what you will be putting on your televisions at roughly 7:05 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, save for a potential afternoon game on Thursday, depending on the week.

The baseball season is a marathon, and the start of that marathon is thrilling because all realities, however unlikely, remain possible. Sure, the Rockies and Nationals are probably going to be 15 games out of the divisional race at some point this summer, but for the briefest of moments in the last week of March, every race starts tied.

There’s a lot to be excited for, so we’re shifting into list mode to examine some of the storylines I’m most looking forward to following this year.

1. Can anybody hang with the Dodgers?

Los Angeles is celebrating its status as back-to-back champions and has an extremely strong chance to be the first team to three-peat since the Yankees at the turn of the millennium. An appearance in the postseason is all but certain given the expansion of the playoffs in recent years, and the Dodgers would likely be fine to play October baseball even if the field were still limited, as they’ve averaged over 101 wins the past five seasons.

If you were betting the Dodgers vs. the Field to win the World Series at this point, you would still probably take the field, but it’s a closer bet than any baseball fan would like to admit. So, who could hang with L.A.?

In the NL, the Mets and Phillies jump to mind, sporting lineups loaded with star power and adequate to formidable pitching staffs, respectively. In the AL, the Blue Jays took the Dodgers to the brink last year and very well could again, and the Mariners were just a swing away from taking Toronto’s spot in the Fall Classic, and have spent the offseason adding pieces to hopefully take them over the top.

Most fascinating is the AL East, where the Blue Jays are joined by the Yankees and Red Sox, both contenders to compete any given year. Will Toronto be hardened by a season of fierce intradivisional competition? Or simply gassed when the postseason comes around while playing such challenging opponents week in and week out?

2. Is there room for anyone else in the MVP race?

Speaking of dynastic runs like the Dodgers, is it possible for anyone else in the majors to touch the MVP thrones of Shohei Ohtani in the NL and Aaron Judge in the AL? Both have won their respective awards in two straight seasons, and the pair traded off the AL MVP from 2021–23 before that, until Ohtani left the Angels for the Dodgers.

It feels almost impossible to imagine anyone in the NL overtaking Ohtani—he’s the best bat in the league, and is back in the teams’ starting rotation on the mound this year as well. What type of season would a player need to compete with Ohtani’s average numbers? A 50/50 season? It’s only been done once before, and it was Ohtani who did it. Las Vegas has Ohtani as the odds-on favorite, with Juan Soto and Ronald Acuña Jr. the two players listed as the closest to potentially grabbing the trophy.

In the AL, Judge feels more catchable—he was almost caught last year thanks to Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh’s electric power year at the plate. Bobby Witt Jr.’s numbers have him in sniffing range of Judge, and another breakout year on top of last year’s breakout year for Boston’s Roman Anthony could see him make a run at the award as well.

3. What does NBC do with its new broadcast package?

Sunday Night Baseball is on NBC this year, marking just the latest in the network’s new push back into sports outside of the NFL and Olympics. The NBA has seen NBC, as well as fellow new broadcast partner Prime Video, take both production and postgame coverage to new places. It’s not clear what moves NBC will make to change how we watch baseball, but I hope it will be more compelling than the on-field midgame interviews we were getting on ESPN.

4. What happens with our two reigning Cy Young winners?

Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal are the two best pitchers in baseball. They’re also both still looking for team success that goes beyond individual accolades. For Skenes, the Pirates' rebuilding project remains in rebuilding mode. While a lot of that rebuilding can be done around him and his arm, he’s eligible for arbitration starting next year and a long-term deal should be on the table soon if both sides are to remain happy with their current arrangement. But knowing a deal needs to get done and getting it done are two very separate things.

Skubal’s case is even more intriguing. He’s playing on a one-year deal worth $32 million after a record-setting arbitration case, and if the Tigers aren’t competing at the trade deadline, he could be dealt to ensure he doesn’t leave Detroit for free in the offseason. Wherever he lands, a team immediately gets an ace that can anchor a postseason push if things fall the right way. Let’s just hope he doesn’t somehow also end up joining the Dodgers. The case becomes even more compelling if the Tigers find themselves right on the edge of playoff contention. Both trading Skubal away and letting it ride for the season are gambles in different directions; they just need to figure out which dice they want to roll.

5. What does our first game-changing challenge look like?

With the ABS challenge system set to be fully integrated, we are on the cusp of seeing our first game-changing challenge to a called ball or strike. We’ve seen reviews used to determine if a player was safe or out at home over the past few years, but this year, there’s going to be a game that briefly appears to be over, only for the batter in the box to challenge the call, win, and make it to first on a walk.

How good is this going to feel? Let’s remember when Team USA faced the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, and wound up winning on a strikeout that fell a foot below the zone. There was no ABS there, and thus, no recourse to challenge the call. I know that the downstream effects of instant replay have been complicated to say the least, but this is one that I am excited to see in place.

6. Will we see any results from the Colorado Rockies’ grand experiment?

It might seem hard to get excited about watching a baseball team that is expected to lose 100 games this year, but the Rockies will at least be worth keeping an eye on this year, not as a threat to win, but as a baseball experiment.

My favorite story of the offseason was this dispatch from Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein, in which she breaks down how the Rockies are trying to lean into the Coors effect. In a moment of brilliance that took the Colorado front office way too long to land on, the team has decided that maybe having such a unique ballpark could work to their advantage if they dedicate their team to working with the elements at Coors rather than battling against them. The first step to this approach? Finding pitchers that weren’t afraid of the numbers that Coors would put on their baseball reference pages.

Whether the Rockies’ embrace of analytics pays off in wins will have to be measured in years rather than months, but the immediate results should be plenty fascinating in the meantime.

7. How long until we see baseball again?

No one wants to worry about baseball’s absence on the day that baseball returns, but the impending lockout that is almost undoubtedly coming at the end of the year looms large over the MLB season.

The league wants a salary cap, players obviously don’t, and it’s unclear where the two sides will wind up budging to find common ground. The next CBA is going to be complicated; that much is for sure. It may be so complicated and the two sides so far apart that we are looking at an abridged or, most drastically, lost season of baseball in 2027—all the more reason to enjoy this year as much as we can.

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