Hey, it’s Opening Day. Look at that. Life isn’t as terrible as we all thought.

In devouring baseball articles and podcasts leading up to the opener, it’s clear that everyone loves the same teams. The Astros are too good to regress. The Yankees are too strong at the plate to get out. The Dodgers have too much money to fail. The Indians, Cubs, and Red Sox are all smart and loaded. The Nationals have Bryce Harper in a walk year. Even the Angels, who disappoint everyone annually, have the excitement of Shohei Ohtani.

Even normally conservative prediction algorithms are drooling over the top-heavy nature of the sport. According to Fangraphs’s playoff prediction odds chart, there are seven teams (all those mentioned above, minus the Angels) that are at least 84% likely to make the playoffs. Eighty-four percent!

So I’m not going to bore you with picks for playoff spots (fine…besides the obvious seven, give me the Rockies, Mariners, and Brewers for wild card spots). Let’s make some more interesting predictions, instead. (And, OK, maybe I’ll make a World Series pick too.)

The Mariners trade for Manny Machado.

This pick is based in very little fact, so bear with me. It’s really hard to determine what Machado’s value will be, and since the Orioles decided not to maximize it by trading him in the offseason (or even earlier) or give him a fat extension, I don’t think we can trust them to play it right heading into the deadline.

From a narrative perspective, it makes all the sense in the world to me that the Mariners go all-in (as much as they can with their roster). Three of their best players have a lot of wear and tear; if you think a Felix-Cano-Cruz-led Seattle squad is remotely competitive beyond this year, you are very confident in them beating the aging curve. Let’s dream a little that it’s June, all three of those guys are healthy and effective, and James Paxton hasn’t spontaneously combusted. The Angels are doing their usual mediocre thing, the Astros are winning the division on autopilot, and most of the AL is either really good or really bad, so the wild card is really only realistic for a handful of teams. The Mariners have an opportunity to make a big play and trade…well, it’s not clear exactly what, because their farm system is awful. But they swing something, and land the biggest chip that will be available, on their way to a playoff run (which ends in getting destroyed by the Yankees, who then sign Machado in the offseason, just to rub it in).

Mookie Betts wins the AL MVP.

Everyone is predicting the Red Sox’s hardware winner to be Chris Sale, which is perfectly reasonable. But I like Mookie as an MVP candidate because I think the Red Sox will be a “surprise,” in the way a $200ish million roster can surprise anyone. The Yankees have been pumped up all offseason, but there is plenty of downside risk in that roster: The relatively weak rotation, Giancarlo Stanton’s lack of experience playing in front of more than a few dozen people who are napping, the unpredictability of bullpen performance (not to mention some concerning signs of decline by Aroldis Chapman recently), the rookie manager who must contend with World Series expectations in the biggest media market, and so on. That team is not a lock — they’re likely to be very good, but there’s plenty of room for error.

And while there’s room for error in Boston, too, I think on a very basic level many of the team’s best players will be better this year than last, starting with Mookie, who was better than people remember, but not as good as two years ago. Andrew Benintendi, Rafael Devers, David Price, Jackie Bradley, and Xander Bogaerts can all reasonably be expected to contribute more in 2018 than they did in 2017, and JD Martinez should easily eclipse the production of Hanley Ramirez and whatever other nonsense the Red Sox tried to pass off as a slugging DH last year.

So you’ve got a team that is likely to be very good but in the shadow of New York. And if New York falters at all and Boston stays with them — especially if they manage to win the East — Mookie emerges as an MVP favorite.

Toronto will attempt the Yankees-style quick rebuild.

The Yankees gave big-market teams something of a blueprint for how to rebuild and get back to contention quickly, and I think we’ll see Toronto try to replicate that. They’ve got top-level prospects in Vlad Jr. and Bo Bichette not far away, and a team that was a serious contender not so long ago.

I’m not sure what the specifics will be, and I think it could be just about anything, but I think we will see major moves from the Blue Jays, and ones that might not make a lot of sense on first blush. Maybe that both trade Josh Donaldson and acquire a major salary (what about the long-rumored Joey Votto trade?) for prospects. Maybe they trade multiple big-league pieces and extend Josh Donaldson despite performing poorly. The point is, I think they will act fast and make significant moves, rather than be satisfied with Orioles-level mediocrity.

The Cubs remind everyone that they were the Astros before the Astros were the Astros.

It’s amazing to me how quickly people seem to have forgotten the core that Theo et al put together in Chicago. I know they’ve got some aging players, and they’ve got some disappointing signings, but with the bulk of that team young and improving, I just don’t see why we’ve all moved on from them so quickly. I think the Cubs were already loaded, and replacing a declining Jake Arrieta with a potentially declining but better Yu Darvish will only help. And even though he’s been disappointing for two years, I think Jason Heyward’s bat still has life in it.

World Series pick: Cubs over Indians in 6.