A new Major League Baseball season will arrive on Thursday, when the league celebrates Opening Day 2025. Technically, MLB’s regular season got underway last week, as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs played two games in Tokyo, Japan. While those games do count toward the regular season, the league understandably reserves the Opening Day pomp and circumstance for the first day of the calendar when most of the teams are in action — that, obviously enough, is Thursday.
Because those tuning in late to CBS Sports’ preview material won’t have the time to digest everything we’ve written about the season to come, we figured it would be helpful to offer one last preview in a more manageable format. With that in mind, below we’ve asked and attempted to answer 10 of the biggest questions that will shape the outcome of the 2025 MLB season.
Got it? Good. Let’s roll.
1. Can the Dodgers repeat?
More than two decades have passed since the last time MLB had a repeat champion — you might recall how the New York Yankees won three consecutive World Series from 1998-2000. These Dodgers, fresh off hoisting their second piece of hardware in five years (fittingly enough against the present-day Yankees), appear to have as good of a chance at ending the drought as any club in recent memory.
The Dodgers aren’t just defending World Series champions, they’re the conquerors of the offseason as well. The winter saw them add two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell and international sensation Roki Sasaki to their rotation, as well as veteran outfielder Michael Conforto to their lineup and both Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates to their bullpen. The Dodgers also retained several of their own stars, including lefty Clayton Kershaw, slugger Teoscar Hernández, and closer Blake Treinen.
Predictably, the Dodgers are again viewed as the favorites to win both the NL West and the pennant. To wit, SportsLine has Los Angeles down for 102 wins, the best record in the majors. Should the Dodgers fulfill that projection, it would represent their sixth time clearing the century mark since 2017.
Of course, the beauty and agony of the baseball playoffs is that nothing is guaranteed. Look no further than the Dodgers’ own checkered postseason history for evidence of that. It would be only wise to take the field over Los Angeles winning another World Series; at the same time, though, it is fair to conclude that no team has better individual championship odds entering the season than these Dodgers.
2. Can the Yankees recover from losing Soto and Cole?
Whereas the NL pennant winners look to be in good shape to repeat, their AL counterparts have significantly more questions to answer over the months that lie ahead.
Consider that the Yankees lost outfielder Juan Soto to free agency (more on him soon) and ace Gerrit Cole to Tommy John surgery. And that they’ll also enter the season without Giancarlo Stanton, Luis Gil, Clarke Schmidt, and DJ LeMahieu, among others. And that (at the risk of overusing this framing device) they’re relying heavily on the likes of Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt — two veterans who appear to be at a distance from their finest days as big-league players.
On the bright side, the Yankees did sign lefty Max Fried and obtain closer Devin Williams over the winter. Both appear to be more sure quantities to make an impact than their aforementioned peers. The Yankees will need them to, because few other top teams have a wider range of potential outcomes.
3. Can Soto guide new-look Mets to glory?
Speaking of Juan Soto, he skedaddled across town to the Mets after signing the richest contract in MLB history (15 years, $765 million). He’ll now serve as a cornerstone for a Mets club that already reached the NLCS last season.
Big dollars beget bigger expectations, but rest assured that Soto seems up for the challenge. Remember, he’s a 26-year-old who already appears on a Hall of Fame trajectory. Thus far in his career, he’s compiled a .285/.421/.532 slash line (160 OPS+) and 36.4 Wins Above Replacement. His most similar batters to this point in his career, according to statistical methodology at Baseball Reference, include names such as Bryce Harper, Frank Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Trout, Eddie Mathews, and Mickey Mantle. That’s good company to keep.
Besides, Soto wasn’t the only notable addition the Mets made. They also inked Frankie Montas and Clay Holmes (among others), traded for Jose Siri, and retained Pete Alonso and Sean Manaea. New York figures to spend the summer slugging it out with the Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves for NL East supremacy.
4. What will Skenes’ second year hold?
Pirates right-hander Paul Skenes quickly established himself as one of the most dominant and entertaining players in the league last season after debuting in May. Skenes subsequently started the All-Star Game, won the Rookie of the Year Award, and received both Cy Young and Most Valuable Player Award consideration.
If Skenes managed all that in less than a full season, just what, pray tell, can he do in 2025?
CBS Sports recently took a deep dive into what history says about Skenes’ chances of one-upping his rookie campaign. We also broke down what his two new pitches could mean for his arsenal.
5. How low is the floor for the White Sox?
The last time we saw the Chicago White Sox, they established a modern MLB single-season record by losing 121 games. Mind you, only one other team since 1900 had lost as many as 120 games, with that being the expansion 1962 New York Mets. What the White Sox did was incredible, albeit in a bad way.
The White Sox didn’t make many notable additions this offseason — their biggest move saw them trade ace Garrett Crochet to the Boston Red Sox for a prospect package — meaning it’s only fair to wonder if they’re again headed for the history book. Precedent suggests that won’t be the case, with the statistical principle of regression to the mean sparing the White Sox from another indignity.
For perspective, take a look at how the five worst teams in modern history fared the next year:
On average, the worst teams in MLB history lost around 19 fewer games in the next season. That would still put the White Sox around 102 losses — a terrible showing still, to be sure. Perhaps more notably, none of those teams came within even five games of their previous year. That means the White Sox should be able to avoid recording another one of the worst seasons in MLB history.
6. What division races look closest?
This author must admit to having trouble remembering a season where more division races seemed up in the air heading into Opening Day.
Indeed, SportsLine’s projections have just one division (the Dodgers-dominated NL West) being decided by more than a handful of games. Otherwise? Every division falls within the commonly accepted error bars for even the finest projection system (around five to seven games).
The three closest divisions, again according to SportsLine, appear to be the AL West (less than four games between the top two teams), the AL Central (less than three), and the NL Central (about one game). Bear in mind, that’s without accounting for races where three or more teams appear to have a real chance at taking home the crown — like in the AL and NL Easts.
In other words, good luck to anyone tasked with predicting how this season will play out.
7. Will minor-league ballparks witness October?
A weird wrinkle this season will see two MLB teams play their home games at minor-league stadiums.
The Athletics are stationed at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, California — home of the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, the Rivercats — as part of their multi-year layover before landing in Las Vegas, Nevada. Elsewhere, the Tampa Bay Rays will share Steinbrenner Field in Tampa with the Yankees’ Florida State League affiliate after Tropicana Field’s roof was damaged in a hurricane.
It’s unclear what MLB would do if either team were to reach the playoffs — namely, if the league relocate those teams to an actual big-league stadium for the duration of the postseason. As it stands, though, there’s at least a chance that the road to October will run through a minor-league stadium.
For whatever it’s worth, SportsLine has the Rays (at 80 wins) projected as the team with the significantly better odds of making it to the tournament.
8. Who are some prospects worth knowing?
One of the most fun parts of the MLB season is watching players recognize their dreams and make their big-league debuts. Changes made as part of the last Collective Bargaining Agreement have incentivized teams to carry their best youngsters heading into the season. That means you have all the more reason to familiarize yourself with CBS Sports’ top 50 prospects before the year kicks off. Our list was fronted by Red Sox outfielder Roman Anthony, Nationals outfielder Dylan Crews, and Red Sox utility player Kristian Campbell.
9. Which players will reach notable milestones?
Another one of the fun parts of any given MLB season is seeing players accomplish historical feats — be it of the statistical or biographical sort. Our Dayn Perry recently broke down some of the most notable milestones on tap for this season. Among them: Clayton Kershaw’s 3,000th strikeout and Mike Trout’s 400th home run. Shohei Ohtani also has a chance to do something special if he can win his third straight Most Valuable Player Award, joining MLB’s home-run king Barry Bonds in the process.
10. Who will be the No. 1 pick?
MLB’s amateur draft is a ways off — the first round will commence on Sunday, July 13 — but it’s never too early to wonder who the Washington Nationals might select with the third No. 1 pick in franchise history. (The Nationals previously chose superstar outfielder Bryce Harper and right-hander Stephen Strasburg with their top overall picks.) Remember, the Nationals won the No. 1 selection last December, prevailing in the league’s third ever draft lottery despite entering with a 10% chance at victory.
CBS Sports ranked the best prospects in this year’s class earlier this spring, putting Florida State left-hander Jamie Arnold atop the board.
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