Centerfield Sports

It is about that time of the year with only a week remaining before the beginning of the MLB regular season kicking off in Tokyo this year. Baseball at last and no better time than to throw out some Dark Horse Candidates to take the baseball world by storm. I want to highlight the four major awards and my picks for guys to potentially win these awards despite their long odds to do so.

In the past few seasons we have seen the dramatic rise in the usage of both off speed pitches and breaking balls as a whole. Look no further than the Boston Red Sox and the philosophy of pitching coach Andrew Bailey who stressed the deviation from four seam fastball usage. With the arrival of big time Japanese pitchers in Shota Imanaga and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the trend of 2024 (along with 2023) was the splitter.

With the beginning of the 2025 season just around the corner, plenty of the league's favorites are on milestone watch this season. While the