Razzball Staff Picks For 2026

Baseball starts tonight, get psyched! Right now, though, it’s time to focus on what’s important: preseason predictions! Before we dive deep into countless hours rearranging lineups, FAAB bids, and making trade offers in order to win a couple hundred dollars in our friends and family league, which equates to roughly twenty-eight cents per hour, we here at Razzball want to take a moment and document some predictions for the upcoming season. These preseason predictions are a mix of real baseball (MVP, ROY, Cy Young, etc.) and fake baseball (who’s our infatuation; who will return the most value; who will flop). We do this every season, and we haven’t learned any lessons ever, so here it is again! Here is LAST YEAR‘s post if you’re interested. For every correct prediction, there are plenty who thought Cam Smith and Brandon Pfaadt were going to matter…or maybe that was just me.

Without further ado, here are the Razzball staff picks for the upcoming season, along with a few blurbs from the staff on why they made the choices they did. Be sure to let us know your picks down in the comments, put your name on it so we can praise you in October, or look back next year and point and laugh.

Psyche! One further ado, this season’s first Buy/Sell is now available on our Patreon. It will be posted early on the Patreon all year, so sign up for that. Anyway II, the picks:

AL ROY

Munetaka Murakami: “I’m pretty all-in on the big man from overseas.  Who doesn’t love a good donkey?  Japanese donkey? Roba?  Nickname incoming?  This guy will be begging for a nickname by midseason as he leads the AL in HRs…and strikeouts.”

–MattTruss

Kevin McGonigle: “The Professor is here! I don’t care that this might be a homer pick, but Tigers fans have every right to be excited about the #2 prospect in baseball.”

–Andy_p

CY YOUNG & MVP

“Yes, an across-the-board sweep of the four major awards going to the 2025 winners is chalky. But these four dudes – Ohtani, Judge, Skubal, Skenes – are all a different class of player from their extremely talented brethren. It’s hard to bet against any of them, as all appear to be penning Hall-of-Fame stories. All four also represent the best active players to spend those card-collecting dollars on to squirrel away for the future.”

–Mike Couillard

Infatuation

Yordan Alvarez: “This guy’s consistency has been incredible, and it’s bizarre to see him fall to pick 40 in most drafts. The Stros slugger struggled to stay healthy last season, but his worst year before that was a .277 AVG and .877 OPS. That’s a fantastic floor throughout a six-year span, and we could see Alvarez earn some MVP votes if he’s able to play a full season.”

–Joey Bart

Sleeper

Justin Crawford: “The more drafts I’ve done, the more I watch as Justin Crawford falls down the draft board, much to my delight.  Any team build that needs speed late, this is my guy.  He feels like everything we want out of Jakob Marsee, but 100+ picks later.  Sleepers are hard in this day and age, but Crawford feels like a legit one.  He could lead the league in steals.”

–MattTruss

Bust

Nick Kurtz: “This is based on his ADP and the value in return. I think he will have a great season, but I’m hesitant to spend a 2nd round pick on a potential Sophomore Slump.”

–Andy_p

Comeback Player

Cody Ponce: “17-1, 1.89 ERA, 180.2 IP, 128 H, 38 ER, 10 HR, 252 Ks!, 0.935 WHIP. That’s a 12.6 K/9 and a 2.0 BB/9. The transition back to the big leagues won’t yield the same results, but the big righty (6’6”, 255 lbs) unlocked another level in the KBO last year and chose the Blue Jays this offseason because liked the news about the clubhouse culture and the good vibes. As if that isn’t enough, Ponce wore 30 last season as a nod to a certain protocol droid (C3PO), and will wear #66 as both an homage to Order #66 from Star Wars as well as op as a nod to former Blue Jays starter Hyun-Jin Ryu’s #99. That’s an awful lot of checked boxes on the MarmosDad page of “Yes, please”.  Sign me up everywhere!”

–MarmosDad