Jim Bowden’s Dodgers predictions for 2024 season better not jinx LA

Are early- or pre-season predictions usually wildly wrong and kind of unnecessary? Yes, but that doesn't stop sports outlets from running wild with them. Baseball can be an incredibly unpredictable sport, filled with so many variables and moving parts that sometimes it's hard to even decisively predict a win on any given day, much less outcomes at the end of a 162-game season. Injuries happen, top prospects don't work out, and so on.

Jim Bowden of The Athletic takes an annual shot in the dark as to many outcomes of the long season. This year, he published awards predictions for 2024 (subscription required), and a couple of Dodgers made it onto the list. Hope is always a good thing, yes, but the superstitious among us will have to keep our fingers crossed and hope that it won't send any bad vibes out into the universe.

He listed Mookie Betts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto as his NL MVP and Rookie of the Year picks, which — given both players' starts to the year — might not be too far off. But again, the regular season is long and winding.

Jim Bowden of The Athletic singles out Mookie Betts, Yoshinobu Yamamoto as Dodgers who could get award taps

If, by some miracle, Betts can keep up what he accomplished during the Dodgers' first 10 games, he'll at least finish second in NL MVP voting, but he'll always have competition from Ronald Acuña Jr. and even Freddie Freeman. Yamamoto leveled out considerably in his second major league start after getting blown up in the first one, but he has a mountain to climb and serious competitors in Evan Carter and Jackson Chourio, just to name a few.

Besides, Bowden's predictions last year for four major awards (MVP, Cy Young, Manager and Rookie of the Year) were 2-8, with the only correct guesses being Shohei Ohtani and Acuña as MVPs. His Rookie of the Year picks were particularly far off, as he went with Anthony Volpe and Jordan Walker, who eventually lost out to Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll -- "lost out" being kind.

Again, hope is a good thing, and the Dodgers are awesome, but maybe we should keep our expectations tempered. The season is long and anything can (and will) happen.