One MLB team will stand alone at the end of the season, holding aloft the Commissioner’s Trophy and drenched in champagne. The other team will retreat to its locker room, downtrodden about coming so close, yet so far. Here are my best futures bets on DraftKings Sportsbook for the 2025 MLB season.
Champion
Best Bet: Chicago Cubs (+1700)
Unsurprisingly, the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers are the favorites, and it makes sense. Their roster is ridiculous, with former MVP’s hitting in each of the first three spots of the order and three former Cy Young Award (or Eiji Sawamura Award, Nippon Professional Baseball’s equivalent) winners in their rotation. Shohei Ohtani, indisputably the best player alive and arguably the greatest player in baseball history, hasn’t even pitched yet, and the last time he did, he had a 2.33 ERA, led the American League in strikeouts per nine innings, and finished fourth in Cy Young voting. That’s not to mention Clayton Kershaw, who’s maybe the best left-handed pitcher ever and is still decent when he does take the mound. But at +265, Los Angeles’ odds are a little too short for me to jump at, given how fickle baseball can be in October.
Instead, I’ll go with a team that the Dodgers beat twice in the Tokyo Series to open the season and then topped once more back in Los Angeles before dropping each of the last four games of the season series. The 2016 World Series champions have scored 10 or more runs on seven separate occasions through the first 26 games of their season; no other team has done it more than thrice. Chicago has scored 26 more runs than the second-place New York Yankees — who play in one of the league’s most hitter-friendly parks — and it also leads the league in hits, walks, stolen bases, and OPS, and for good measure, the Cubs have also grounded into the league’s fewest double plays.
To be fair, Chicago’s pitching staff hasn’t been great, something that might come back to bite the team come October. The Cubs have the ninth-worst WHIP, 12th-worst ERA, and they’ve also allowed the third-most homers. Ace Shota Imanaga, who finished fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting and fifth in NL Cy Young voting last season, has been both incredibly good and incredibly lucky, with a 2.38 ERA buoyed by a minuscule .187 opponent batting average on balls in play. The rotation behind him — Matthew Boyd, Ben Brown, and Jameson Taillon — hasn’t been great, and Justin Steele underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery, but Brown’s and Taillon’s underlying numbers are better than the raw box score would indicate. Several bullpen assets — Ryan Brasier, Eli Morgan, and Tyson Miller — have missed much of the season with various short-term injuries, so the bullpen should improve moving forward.
Despite the pitching woes, the Cubs are 16-10 and comfortably lead a mediocre NL Central. They also have the lowest remaining strength of schedule in all of the major leagues. Given their division’s weakness, they could easily secure a first-round bye and avoid the NL West juggernauts until the NLCS. In a seven-game series, anything can happen.
League Winners
National League Best Bet: Chicago Cubs (+1200)
See above.
American League Best Bet: New York Yankees (+330)
Although I didn’t go with Los Angeles to reach its second straight World Series, I am going to back the Bronx Bombers to do so. While their division is not easy, it’s certainly not the gauntlet that the NL West is, and so the Yankees should face less tribulation prior to the League Championship Series than the Dodgers will. New York currently leads the AL East by 1.5 games over the suddenly-resurgent Boston Red Sox, but its underlying numbers — an AL-best plus-31 run differential, an offense that ranks second in hits, first in home runs, and first in OPS — are significantly better than any of its division rivals’.
Simply put, the Bronx Bombers have the American League’s best hitter, and while Aaron Judge can’t single-handedly carry the Yankees back to the World Series, he’s certainly not a bad asset to have. This season, Judge leads all of the major leagues with an eye-popping .415/.513/.734 slash line, 39 hits, and 2.1 wins above replacement. He also leads the American League in runs, RBI’s, rOBA, and total bases. Of course, he’s not going to hit over .400 for the season — nobody has done that since Ted Williams in 1941 — but after posting a career-best .322 mark last season, it’s not unreasonable to think he can top it in 2025. Oh, and he plays in the league’s second-most homer-friendly park, per Statcast.
Plus, while it starts with Judge, it doesn’t end with him. 2022 NL MVP Paul Goldschmidt signed with the Yankees in the offseason and, at the age of 37, is turning back the clock with a .383/.433/.489 slash line. While his bat speed has decreased and he’s struggled to find barrels early on in the season, he still hits it in almost even proportions to all areas of the field, so defenses can’t game-plan around him. Jazz Chisholm Jr. has struggled mightily in recent weeks and strikes out too much, but the 27-year-old Bahamian has an excellent combination of power and speed. 2019 NL MVP Cody Bellinger can’t possibly continue to hit as bad as he has, and top prospect Jasson Domínguez has shown some flashes in his rookie season. Giancarlo Stanton and DJ LeMahieu, former stars in the twilight of their careers, should both be back soon.
New York’s starters have posted the fifth-highest ERA, mostly because they’ve walked the sixth-most batters. But one positive sign is that the Yankees have allowed the fourth-fewest hits and a relatively low average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage, so their staff simply needs to work on its control. Reigning AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil, who’s set to return to the rotation at some point in June, won’t aid the control issue, but he’ll definitely help the rotation overall. New York also ranks third in defensive efficiency and sixth in fielding runs above average. Plus, bullpens are critical in the playoffs, and the Yankees’ relievers have been excellent, allowing the sixth-lowest ERA, recording the third-most saves, conceding the fewest hits, and striking out the third-most batters. Although they are still too prone to walks, the eventual returns of Clayton Beeter and Jonathan Loáisiga should help, as both pitchers posted elite walk ratios in limited innings in 2024.
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