MLB Opening Day 2024 results: Yankees win close one in Houston; Diamondbacks score 14 runs in one inning
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At long last, MLB Opening Day is here
After one of the most eventful MLB offseasons in recent memory, Opening Day is finally here. Twenty-six teams are in action today, after the Mets, Braves, Phillies and Brewers were rained out, their openers postponed until Friday.
Follow along here as The Athletic's staff covers the start of the season from ballparks across the country.
Schedule and results
(All times ET)
- Orioles 11, Angels 3
- Yankees 5, Astros 4
- Tigers 1, White Sox 0
- Twins 4, Royals 1
- Pirates 6, Marlins 5
- Padres 6, Giants 4
- Dodgers 7, Cardinals 1
- Blue Jays 8, Rays 2
- Reds 8, Nationals 2
- Cubs (Justin Steele) at Rangers (Nathan Eovaldi): In progress
- Guardians (Shane Bieber) at Athletics (Alex Wood): 10:07 p.m.
- Red Sox (Brayan Bello) at Mariners (Luis Castillo): 10:10 p.m.
- Rockies (Kyle Freeland) at Diamondbacks (Zac Gallen): 10:10 p.m.
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25 numbers that define baseball and set the stage for this season
I love numbers. You’ve probably noticed that. But have I ever explained why?
In baseball, every number tells a story. That’s why.
So this is the column where I let the numbers tell the story of the baseball season that’s about to unfold. You can thank me later — right after you finish this 2024 edition of The Numbers That Define Baseball.
The Magic Number: 64
WHAT IT MEANS: Would you believe there were 64 pitchers who threw a pitch at least 100 mph last season? I’m no math major, but that means that if your team doesn’t have multiple dudes who can light up triple digits, you’re not even trying — because the average team now has two of them. That. Is. Wild.
Fun fact: Two teams had five pitchers who hit 100 mph last year. Bet you can’t name them. They were (of course) the A’s (Mason Miller, Joe Boyle, Luis Medina, Lucas Erceg, Shintaro Fujinami) and the Angels (Carlos Estévez, Ben Joyce, Reynaldo Lopez, Jose Soriano and some guy named Ohtani).
Fun fact No. 2: Only three teams employed no pitchers who threw 100: the Mets, Red Sox and Rockies.
Fun fact No. 3: As recently as 2018, only 37 pitchers were clocked throwing 100-plus. I’m assuming that back in, say, 1958, there were none. But Statcast was on the fritz that season. So we’re just sticking to documentable facts around here.
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MLB in 2024: 25 numbers that define baseball and set the stage for this season
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Rays’ Brandon Lowe returns just when Tampa Bay needs him most
The Tampa Bay Rays open their season at 4:10 p.m. ET against the Toronto Blue Jays. Chad Jennings spoke with Brandon Lowe ahead of the game.
The hundredth home run came on a fifth-inning changeup that Tampa Bay Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe sent 421 feet to dead center field. It might have been iconic, should have been iconic, had it happened when it was supposed to.
By games played, no second baseman in history reached 100 career home runs faster than Lowe. He got there in his 477th game, faster than Chase Utley (580 games), Jeff Kent (697) or Robinson Canó (797), and outpacing Ryne Sandberg (984), Dustin Pedroia (1,045) and Jose Altuve (1,131). But Lowe hit No. 100 not in the early months of his fourth big-league season but late in his sixth, in August of last year. Barely a month before he fouled a ball off his kneecap to land, yet again, on the injured list.
Due to a bad back, bruised shin and a global pandemic, Lowe has only once had 400 at-bats in a season. Listed at 5-foot-10 and 185 pounds, Lowe has made the most of his limited frame, but he’s been easy to overlook — or even forget — when he’s disappeared for long stretches.
“He understands, pound for pound, how to maximize his body,” Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander said. “But that does push the body to its limits when it comes to (the torque) it creates.”
Now approaching his seventh major-league season, and with the Rays holding team options to keep him in 2025 and 2026, next offseason, Lowe, 29, has adjusted his notoriously meticulous pregame routine to strengthen and protect his back. He said he’s as healthy as he’s been in years, which is fortunate timing for the Rays, who will be without shortstop Wander Franco indefinitely and might depend on offensive production while five of their starting pitchers open the season on the IL.
What better time to bring back one of the game’s most powerful second basemen and try to keep him in the lineup for 150 or so games?
MLB award predictions for 2024
Happy Opening Day! It’s time for my annual award predictions for the American League and National League. Will Ronald Acuña Jr. win a second consecutive NL MVP Award? Will the AL Rookie of the Year Award go to a Ranger or an Oriole? Will the NL Comeback Player of the Year be Chris Sale or Frankie Montas, two of my top candidates, or someone else? Which managers and executives from each league will be honored as the best?
I’ve never been able to run the table on my award predictions — who does? — but they’re always a blast to do and even more fun to debate.
The most difficult predictions for me this time were AL MVP and NL Cy Young because those races are loaded with so many strong candidates.
As in previous years, I have included second – and third-place predictions for each award as well as a dark-horse pick. Let’s hear your winners in the comments section and then we can look back at the end of the season to see who got the most right.
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MLB award predictions for 2024: Mookie Betts, Juan Soto, Wyatt Langford among Bowden’s picks
Opening day sim: A Beat the Streak pick, a CJ Abrams home run and more
Austin Mock's model — fresh off a sim of the entire 2024 season — is up and running for Opening Day. As enthusiasts of home runs, MLB's Beat the Streak game, and strikeouts (who doesn't love strikeouts??) we asked Austin for three interesting outputs from the model for today's games. If you're looking to enhance your Opening Day experience with some legal wagering ... these should help as well!
(All odds via BetMGM as of 9 a.m. ET on 3/28)
K Prop of the Day
- Zac Gallen under 5.5 (+125)
- Model has him at 5.3 strikeouts
Beat the Streak pick
- Luis Arraez (74.9% chance of getting a hit)
"Dinger of the Day"
- CJ Abrams to hit a home run (+575)
- The model says the odds should be: +465
MLB American League East preview
The American League East may not be the juggernaut it once was, but it’s no cakewalk, either. All five teams fashion themselves as contenders, and even the projected last-place team, the Boston Red Sox, is expected to have at least a .500 record. The Baltimore Orioles are on the way up with top prospects debuting all over the diamond, the New York Yankees just acquired Juan Soto, and the Tampa Bay Rays continue to churn out arms. It wasn’t so long ago that the Toronto Blue Jays were a trendy World Series pick, as well. The AL East is unlike any other division in that there are simply no bad teams, no genuine weak spots, no place for contenders to fatten up.
The teams are ranked by their odds of winning the division.
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MLB American League East preview: preseason grades, odds and analysis
MLB National League East preview
The Atlanta Braves aren’t just the class of the National League East. They might be the class of the sport. And as an added bonus, to get there they didn’t even need to spend more than a billion dollars in an offseason like the Los Angeles Dodgers. Winning divisions is nothing new in Atlanta, and it’s easy to envision the Braves doing it again.
As for the rest of the NL East, the Philadelphia Phillies rank as the clear No. 2 in the division, though they return much of a club that has made deep postseason runs in each of the last two years. That leaves the New York Mets, Miami Marlins and Washington Nationals, three clubs projected to finish under .500.
Could one of them defy projections, just as the Marlins did a year ago?
The teams are ranked by their odds of winning the division.
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MLB National League East preview: preseason grades, odds and analysis
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MLB American League West preview
The American League West is the home of the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers, a team that will once again be formidable. They will have company. The Houston Astros remain a strong contender to win the division, just as they have been for the last decade, while the Seattle Mariners lurk within striking distance.
Who will emerge on top?
The teams are ranked by their odds of winning the division.
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MLB American League West preview: preseason grades, odds and analysis
MLB National League Central preview
The Milwaukee Brewers will attempt to repeat as National League Central champions despite trading away their ace and losing their manager to a division rival this offseason. The beneficiaries of Craig Counsell’s departure, the Chicago Cubs, also retained free-agent Cody Bellinger and added Japanese pitcher Shota Imanaga as they look to claim their first division title since the shortened 2020 MLB season.
They’ll also have to contend with an upstart Cincinnati Reds team, led by wunderkind shortstop Elly de la Cruz and the St. Louis Cardinals, who re-tooled their rotation by adding three starters in their mid-30s. The biggest of those signings, 2023 AL Cy Young runner-up Sonny Gray, will begin the season on the IL with a hamstring issue. There’s also the Pittsburgh Pirates, who look forward to getting full seasons from Oneil Cruz and 2021 first overall pick Henry Davis and await the eventual arrival of his 2023 counterpart, pitcher Paul Skenes.
The teams are ranked by their odds of winning the division.
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MLB National League Central preview: preseason grades, odds and analysis
MLB American League Central preview
The Minnesota Twins won 87 games last year. In any other division, the best that would have gotten them was second place. In the American League Central, however, it meant they won the division by nine games.
The Cleveland Guardians won 78 games last year and didn’t measurably improve, the Kansas City Royals are taking aim at .500, the Detroit Tigers are on the upswing but have significant holes, and the Chicago White Sox are in the process of tearing things down and rebuilding. The Twins may be able to coast to another division title just by treading water.
The teams are ranked by their odds of winning the division.
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MLB American League Central preview: preseason grades, odds and analysis
MLB National League West preview
The Arizona Diamondbacks are the reigning champions of the National League. But repeating the feat must first require surviving the gauntlet that is the National League West.
The division only got more treacherous with the San Francisco Giants adding the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell and the San Diego Padres trading for righthander Dylan Cease. Then there’s what the Los Angeles Dodgers did during an offseason without precedent, which netted them the free agent prize of a generation, Shohei Ohtani. Shocker: the Dodgers are overwhelming favorites to win the division.
To break down the division, we’ve leaned on our team of experts. In addition to analysis from our team of writers, we’ve also tapped our expertise from the fantasy realm. Austin Mock provided expected win totals and various postseason odds for each team. Jake Ciely added his projections for the top hitters and pitchers. Our resident ex-general manager, Jim Bowden, handed out preseason grades for every team’s lineup, rotation, bullpen, defense and organizational depth. Then he topped it off with an overall grade.
The teams are ranked by their odds of winning the division.
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MLB National League West preview: preseason grades, odds and analysis
10 bold predictions for the 2024 MLB season
Every year, something crazy happens in baseball — and last year was no different. A shortstop doubled his best seasonal power output in his seventh season. A 34-year-old pitcher picked up that hot new pitch and nearly rode it to a Cy Young Award. A team churned out an incredible six young players who all look like impact bats (to different degrees), and then lost half of them due to various causes in the offseason. And that wasn't even the team that pulled a similar trick in the American League and used it to finally make the postseason. Two wild cards that spent the season oscillating up and down finished strong and made the World Series. A team that had never won the World Series finally reached the mountaintop.
That's one of the beauties of ball. And though the unpredictable happens all the time, you can't stop us — especially in March — from trying to anticipate even the more unexpected outcomes. That's the realm of the bold prediction.
Last year wasn't a great year for these, but it fell in line with the general guidelines: Be so bold as to possibly get three out of 10 right. Last year, the Padres' rotation did end up having the best ERA in baseball, and the Orioles made the postseason, so this column got two right. If only Riley Greene had stayed healthy, or Corey Seager had gone up against different competition for the MVP, or we'd put our J.P. Crawford predictions in a different column, we might have put up a decent batting average.
Ah well, nevertheless. Unto the breach once more!
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Sarris: 10 bold predictions for the 2024 MLB season
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MLB Hope-O-Meter: Ranking fans’ optimism for all 30 teams
Are baseball’s most optimistic fans in 2024 devotees of the defending World Series champs (Texas Rangers)? Or the team that spent $1.2 billion this offseason (Los Angeles Dodgers)? Or the team that had a perfect optimism score last spring (Houston Astros)?
Nope, nope and nope.
Hope flows from Baltimore. The Orioles are the new No. 1 in the Hope-O-Meter, our annual survey of fan optimism. A record 22,000 readers participated in this year’s edition — thank you! — with written responses ranging in length from zero letters (Rangers fan Ryan: “💍”) to 5,446 (Guardians fan Dominic).
Yes or no: Are you optimistic about your team? The question can be answered in different ways. That’s by design. Maybe you’re hopeful for a World Series title, or maybe a rebuild getting on track. League-wide there was less optimism than in previous years; 64 percent chose “Yes,” down significantly from 75 percent in 2023 and even lower than the post-lockout 66 percent in 2022.
Keep in mind this survey opened just prior to the Giants signing Matt Chapman and Phillies extending Zack Wheeler, and well before the Dylan Cease trade, Gerrit Cole injury and Blake Snell signing, so those news items may not be reflected in fans’ voting. Below we’ve listed each team’s optimism score and precisely four reader responses, some of which were edited for clarity and length.
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MLB Hope-O-Meter results: Ranking fans’ optimism in 2024 for all 30 teams