Back in March, when the Seattle Mariners looked like a team on the rise and the Chicago White Sox appeared to be going nowhere, ESPN issued one bold prediction for each of the 30 major league clubs as part of its season preview. With the 2026 season now in the books, those forecasts have been revisited and graded, and the results range from remarkably prescient to pleasantly wrong.

The White Sox call earned the highest mark. The prediction said Chicago would improve by 19 wins behind reliever Grant Taylor; instead, the club improved by 24 wins and reached the playoffs. Taylor went 7-3 with 10 saves and a 2.25 ERA over 84 innings in high-leverage roles, leading a bullpen turnaround from 30th to 15th in win probability added. That earned an A+, as did the forecast that Kevin McGonigle would win American League Rookie of the Year. He posted an .806 OPS and 7.1 WAR per Baseball-Reference, the eighth-highest total for a rookie position player since 1900, while hitting 18 home runs and splitting time between shortstop and third base.

Two more A+ grades went to Pete Alonso, who became the first player to lead both leagues in RBIs after hitting 43 home runs and driving in 113 runs, and to Cincinnati's Chase Burns, who lived up to the hype by going 15-3 with a 2.86 ERA, 154 innings and 10.8 strikeouts per nine. Cleveland lefty Parker Messick received an A after going 12-9 with a 2.56 ERA, 193 strikeouts and 6.3 WAR, making the All-Star team and pitching 186 innings. Colorado catcher Hunter Goodman also earned an A, hitting 41 home runs while catching 99 of his 138 games for a Rockies offense that jumped from 597 runs to 752, the second-biggest increase in the majors.

The Houston Astros prediction drew an A-minus with an asterisk. Houston did win the AL West as forecast, and Yordan Alvarez reached 40 home runs for the first time, finishing with 42 while winning the batting title at .316. But the Astros took the division at 81-81 and were outscored by 32 runs, making the correct call feel a little awkward.

Several predictions landed at B+ after falling just short. Athletics closer Mason Miller carried a 0.81 ERA as late as Aug. 24 before fading to a 1.67 mark with 129 strikeouts, the most by a reliever since Josh Hader in 2019, rather than posting a historic sub-1.00 ERA. Milwaukee's Jackson Chourio hit .291 with 25 home runs and 4.9 WAR, close to his projected breakout, but an injured list stint that lasted until May 4 cost him an All-Star nod. A Philadelphia forecast that Jesus Luzardo would outpitch Cristopher Sanchez nearly hit: Luzardo went 14-5 with a 2.86 ERA before shoulder inflammation in early September, while Sanchez finished 18-7 with a 2.91 ERA and 8.1 WAR. Tampa Bay's Junior Caminero earned a B, homering 42 times at age 22 to join Eddie Mathews as the only players with two 40-homer seasons through that age, six shy of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s record.

The misses were instructive. Boston's rotation was picked to lead the AL in ERA for the first time in 24 years, but the Red Sox ranked fourth at 3.92 after Garrett Crochet made only six starts with a 6.30 ERA. Kansas City's Bobby Witt Jr. was projected for a 9.5 WAR, 92 extra-base-hit MVP season; he was merely great, with 6.7 WAR and 52 extra-base hits while missing 19 games. Arizona's Geraldo Perdomo slipped from a 20-homer, 100-RBI season to a .262 average with nine homers, though his 5.1 WAR still confirmed him as one of the game's top shortstops. Texas veterans Nathan Eovaldi and Jacob deGrom were supposed to post sub-3.00 ERAs over 170 innings each; both finished at 4.20, with Eovaldi logging 145 innings and deGrom 162.

The defending champion Dodgers were picked to win 110 games after back-to-back titles and instead won 100, as Kyle Tucker flopped, Freddie Freeman hit one home run after the All-Star break, Mookie Betts scuffled until September, Will Smith played 73 games and Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell combined for only 36 starts.

Spinning forward to 2027, the exercise projects Burns as a potential top-five starter, another offseason of Goodman trade rumors despite three remaining years of team control, deGrom entering the final season of his five-year deal at $37 million, and the Dodgers once again looking like a near lock for 100 wins.