AL East Preview
The MLB Hobby Preview rolls on with the AL East. There are superstars and tons of young talent. To me, it’s mainly a division with a lot of players walking the edge between hobby stardom and hobby irrelevancy. 2025 will be a critical season for these players.
Baltimore Orioles
The Orioles are stacked with hobby-relevant young players. Gunnar Henderson is at the top of the pecking order and had an MVP-caliber 2024. I’ve been surprised by the lack of buzz around him this off-season. He is clearly the Pepsi to Bobby Witt Jr.’s Coke in the hobby.
Henderson is already a top-10 guy in the hobby, and I think he finishes the year in the top 5. The Witt/Henderson comparisons are inevitable and hopefully will wind up like the Griffey/Thomas debates of the 1990s, with fans debating for years who is better.
Adley Rutschman is in a make-or-break year in terms of hobby value. He’s still the best catcher in the AL, but it is hard for catchers in the hobby. Rutschman has seen his hitting numbers decline each season, and any further drop will cause his hobby value to plummet. He’s still a top-50 hobby guy, but another season with WAR under 4 will see that change.
Coby Mayo, Heston Kjerstad, Colton Cowser, Jackson Holliday, and Jordan Westburg give the Orioles five good shots at developing hobby stars. I like Mayo the most, but I also like Cowser with the new, smaller dimensions for the Orioles field.
Holliday is the big wild card. He’s got #1 prospect in baseball pedigree but absolutely stunk in his time in the majors last year. There was little to draw hope from. There’s something to be said for betting on talent, but I want some reason to buy Holliday more than blind hope. I also always spell his name wrong, so I am a bit biased against him.
I think the clock has struck midnight for any hopes of Ryan Mountcastle being big in the card world. He’s got a good chance to wind up a Baltimore fan favorite. I do think he has a better year than predicted, though.
Boston Red Sox
Rafael Devers is their biggest hobby star. He’s also disgruntled over the Red Sox's plans to move him to first base or DH, with Bregman taking over third. There are rumors that he’s refusing to play or slow-walking an injury. He has yet to make a Spring Training appearance, and there are even trade rumors starting to flow.
I think it’s all a bunch of nothing, and Devers will have a great year. Winning heals all wounds, and I’m expecting lots of that from the Red Sox this year. Devers can benefit from the position switch, as his defense has been hindering him for quite a while. I think Devers hits well and has a 5 WAR season for the first time since 2019.
Is that enough to be hobby-relevant? I’m not sure. Devers is still valued as a potential MVP winner but hasn’t produced at that level since 2019. It might be time to rethink his ceiling. I think he’s a consistent 4-5 WAR guy. He’ll need some seasons of 6-7 production to ultimately reach the HOF. If he doesn’t have a big year this year, I expect collectors to start running for the exit.
Triston Casas looked good when he was healthy last year, and I think he can become a big name in the hobby this year. MLB executives agree and say that he has 40 homers with 120 RBI this season. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him become the face of the Red Sox in the hobby by the end of the year.
Ceddanne Rafaela is the AL version of Pete Crow-Armstrong. He’s a defensive genius who can become a star if he can be a slightly above-average hitter. As I said with PCA, the hobby value of Jim Edmonds, Andruw Jones, and Torii Hunter should warn collectors away from these guys.
I’m excited about Garrett Crochet. I’m expecting him to challenge Skubal for the AL strikeout crown as well as be a Cy Young contender. With Skenes blowing up in the hobby, it’s possible that some young pitchers who have the potential to outperform him end up seeing major spikes. Crochet fits the bill.
New York Yankees
The Yankees are surprisingly devoid of elite hobby talent once you get past Aaron Judge. They’ve got several players that are hobby-relevant and looking to make the leap to stardom.
Aaron Judge is the number two guy in the hobby behind Ohtani. I fully expect him to end the season in the same spot. He’s chasing all-time greatness at this point.
I had to rewrite Gerrit Cole’s section sadly. Cole looks to be out the whole season with Tommy John surgery, and the question to me now is, can he make the HOF? If he gets to 3000 strikeouts, he’s a no-brainer. That’s a long way off, and Cole doesn’t have a good enough stat sheet to get in if he doesn’t play at a productive level again.
With Luis Gil also out, the pressure for Max Fried to be the ace of the staff is high. Fried has elite stuff, but his production has been limited by the fact that he’s only thrown more than 150 innings four times in his career and has never hit 200 innings.
Fried is coming into what should be his prime. Like several players in this division, it’s a make-or-break year for Fried’s position in the hobby. I’m a fan from his time on the Braves, so I’m hoping he stays healthy and finally shows what he can do in a 200 inning season.
Giancarlo Stanton needs to get to 500 homers to have hobby value. If he gets there, he’s going to the HOF, and his cards will spike. If not, he’ll get slowly forgotten about. Working in his favor is the fact that he still is the hardest-hitting slugger in all of the MLB. The ball explodes off his bat with the highest exit velocity, which makes sense, given that he still swings the fastest bat in the majors.
He’s also injured to start the season, so given his age, I’m not too optimistic.
Paul Goldschmidt is on his way to the HOF. Does he have anything left in the tank? I’m not expecting All-Star level of play, but I do expect him to be productive. Barring an MVP season, his place in the hobby is solidified as a second-tier HOF player, and those players see their cards slowly decline upon retirement.
Tampa Bay Rays
Collectors spent the offseason chasing Langford, Merrill, Chourio, De La Cruz, and Skenes. My guess is many will wish they had gone after Caminero instead. He’s got MVP potential, and his slow start has his cards at reasonable prices.
I like Caminero a lot and picked up a few autos this offseason. They’ve been trending up, and I wish I had picked up a few more.
Curtis Mead is getting a lot of buzz this Spring Training while leading the preseason in hits. His problem will be finding consistent playing time. If he forces his way into a starting job, he could surprise some collectors. I’m not sold on him as a potential hobby star. I’ve seen worse players be tagged as sleepers before, though.
Toronto Blue Jays
Did Bo Bichette go into the witness protection program? His production vanished last year, and no one seems to be talking about it. I don’t get it at all. He went from being a guy who looked like he’d hit close to .300 for years to a guy who looked like he didn’t belong in the majors.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had a great 2024, and so, of course, his cards are worth about 75% of what they were last year, according to Card Ladder. Collectors do not trust him and have been flocking to the exits, trying to capitalize on his good year.
Many folks holding Guerrero Jr. cards took the good performance as a signal to sell, and the market is flush with available Guerrero Jr. cards and still bereft of demand. High supply and low demand is a recipe for hobby disasters. I’m not sure what it will take for his cards to start moving up if they didn’t last year.
Andres Gimenez can have value in the hobby if he can get his OPS+ to 100. If he’s a league-average hitter, his defense is good enough to make him a top 5 second baseman. For players 25 and under, he’s third in WAR behind only Tatis Jr. and Guerrero Jr., which is a bit shocking.
I’m not sure he can get his hitting up to snuff, though, and the fact that the Guardians unceremoniously ditched him suggests they didn’t think he could. The hobby generally treats defensive specialists poorly as well.
I like Daulton Varsho and Alejandro Kirk, but neither will ever be big in the hobby.
Max Scherzer is a first-ballot Hall of Fame player and is a member of what I think is the last generation of true aces (Greinke, Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander, with Cole and Sale being the previous two). My guess is his run in Toronto will be forgettable, and we’ll all be confused in ten years when we stumble across cards of Scherzer in a Blue Jays uniform.
Wrap Up
Next week, we will finish the baseball preview (even if it is after Opening Day) with a look at the NL East. I promise to keep my writing about the Braves under 1000 words. That won’t be hard this year, as I’m pessimistic about most Braves’ hobby potential this year.