The biggest success — and biggest failure — for all 30 MLB teams this season
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Bradford Doolittle
Despite a bumpier-than-expected path, the Los Angeles Dodgers might still repeat as World Series champions, becoming the first team to do so since the New York Yankees of the late 1990s. If that comes to pass, few would be surprised. At the same time, based on what we’ve seen since Opening Day, few would be surprised, also, if they fall.
Thus the Dodgers’ season can’t yet be labeled a success or a failure. If the Dodgers win another title, that’s an obvious success. Failure is a little harder to define, but consider that L.A. is one of five teams on pace to finish more than 10 games under their preseason baseline forecast. They’re also leading the tough National League West. Success or failure?
The answer is complicated. Baseball is the most quantifiable and projectable of the major sports, and forecasts are invaluable in setting our expectations for what might happen, and how to react to what actually comes to pass. Yet baseball is also paradoxically and wonderfully unpredictable.
Teams and pundits alike enter the season with a good idea of what each club’s strengths and weaknesses are, yet those observations tend to fly out the window when confronted by the reality of an actual season.
Using preseason expectations as our guide, we’re going to identify the biggest success — and failure — for all 30 teams. Plan and project all you want. In the end, the fates will have their way.
Jump to a team:
AL East: BAL | BOS | NYY | TB | TOR
AL Central: CHW | CLE | DET | KC | MIN
AL West: ATH | HOU | LAA | SEA | TEX
NL East: ATL | MIA | NYM | PHI | WSH
NL Central: CHC | CIN | MIL | PIT | STL
NL West: ARI | COL | LAD | SD | SF
Biggest success: Geraldo Perdomo
Most of the good news for Arizona this season has been on the position player side, led by a career year for Perdomo. After signing a four-year extension that doesn’t kick in until next year, the 25-year-old went out and put up the best season by a shortstop in franchise history. Already a defensive standout, Perdomo entered this season with 14 career home runs. This year, he has 19 and is on pace to drive in 100 runs. He also might get to 100 runs scored and 30 steals. It has been an MVP-level showing.
Biggest failure: The rotation
Arizona entered the season with an on-paper rotation that looked loaded — Corbin Burnes, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brandon Pfaadt. That quintet has gone 47-39 with a 4.37 ERA. Burnes went down for the season in June. Kelly was traded. And the other three all have ERA+ figures well below league average. The Arizona bullpen has been even worse, but the roster and the payroll were built on a foundation of elite starting pitching that has not held up.
Biggest success: Nick Kurtz
That Kurtz is good isn’t a surprise. That he’s this good this fast is stunning and exhilarating. After an aggressive promotion in late April, Kurtz didn’t hit his first homer until his 17th big league game. He then went deep 19 times over 49 games with a 1.078 OPS and that was only the lead-up to his 6-for-6, four-homer outburst on July 25 in which he tied the MLB record for 19 total bases in a game. In his age-22 season, Kurtz is on track to become the eighth rookie with an OPS over 1.000 (minimum 400 plate appearances) and of the eight, only Ted Williams and Albert Pujols had a younger baseball age. The A’s have found their cornerstone player.
Biggest failure: Luis Severino
The A’s made a rare splurge in last winter’s free agent market, inking Severino to a three-year, $67 million deal. Year 1 has been disappointing. Severino has gone 6-11 with a 4.82 ERA and an 87 ERA+ while posting the lowest strikeout rate (17.6%) of his career. His struggles in Sacramento have been epic: Severino is 1-9 with a 6.51 ERA over 14 starts at Sutter Health Park.
Biggest success: Hurston Waldrep
Successes have been few and far between for the Braves, but Waldrep’s trajectory seems to be one of them. The sample remains small, but Waldrep went 4-0 with a 1.33 ERA over his first seven starts in 2025 before being roughed up by Houston. He looks like a keeper, if the Braves can keep him healthy.
Biggest failure: The entire season?
The Braves are on pace to miss their forecast by 24 games, a plummet so severe that it’s hard to blame it on any one thing. Injuries have played a part, but other teams are headed to the postseason with plenty of those — the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Brewers among those with worse health metrics than the Braves. The collapse on the pitching side has been more acute than on offense, but no one is without culpability. Perhaps worst of all, the Braves have baseball’s second-worst organizational record. Things haven’t been any better in the minors.
Biggest success: Trevor Rogers
The Orioles have underperformed across the board, so it could be that we’re damning Rogers with faint praise here, but he has been a genuine revelation. Rogers began the season in the minors and wasn’t that great there, going 0-3 with a 5.51 ERA in eight starts. In the majors? The former Marlin is 8-2 with a 1.43 ERA over 16 starts with solid peripherals. Go figure. Going into what Baltimore hopes will be a bounce-back 2026 season, the Orioles’ rotation needs a lot more success stories like this.
Biggest failure: Adley Rutschman
You hate to pick on one player when the Orioles have disappointed in so many areas, but Rutschman is an avatar for a number of shortcomings. He has underperformed: Baltimore entered the season with the third-best WAR projection at the catcher position but instead rank 25th. He has been injured: According to an injury impact metric based on data from Baseball Prospectus, the Orioles rank 29th in baseball. After two straight disappointing seasons for Rutschman, and considering the arrival of elite prospect Samuel Basallo, the future of the Orioles at catcher looks a lot different than it did a couple of years ago.
Biggest success: Pitching acquisitions
You really can’t choose between Cy Young candidate Garrett Crochet or reliever of the year candidate Aroldis Chapman, neither of whom was with Boston at this time last year. Crochet has blossomed with the Red Sox, matching the dominance he showed per inning with Chicago with the workload of a true ace. Chapman, at 37, is on pace to record a career-best ERA (1.26) and his second-best bWAR (3.3, just shy of his 3.4 in 2012).
Biggest failure: In-season roster work
The Red Sox have received great production from their rookie class, headlined by Roman Anthony and Carlos Narvaez. But a team in position to challenge for the American League East title ranks 29th in my in-season acquisition index, a metric that looks at the quality and quantity of the production from players signed or traded for during the season. Boston has dealt with a lot of injuries (27th in injury impact) but has been too passive about compensating for them.
Biggest success: The offense
Things have slowed over the second half, but the Cubs’ attack has been one of baseball’s most productive and exciting over the course of the season. Chicago leads the majors in secondary average (patience and power), isolated power and team-level power-speed number. The production has come from up and down the lineup, giving the Cubs one of their deepest offenses in years.
Biggest failure: The bullpen
The Cubs’ rotation has picked up the pace over the second half, which has helped pick up the slack from the regressing hitters. But as October nears, the Cubs still lack clarity in the bullpen. With Daniel Palencia out, the relievers still lack a clear end-of-game hammer. Since the All-Star break, the Cubs’ relief ERA (4.40) is middle of the pack. For the most part, Craig Counsell has pieced things together, but the lack of impact acquisitions during the season, with the exception of Andrew Kittredge, might undermine the Cubs once the postseason arrives.
Biggest success: The rookies
According to my rookie contribution metric — basically adding up the consensus WAR figures for first-year players — the White Sox (11.61 rookie WAR) have four more wins than any other team. In Kyle Teel, Colson Montgomery, Chase Meidroth, Mike Vasil, Shane Smith, Edgar Quero and Wikelman Gonzalez, Chicago has graduated some bona fide building blocks to the majors. With a decent finish, the White Sox can avoid another 100-loss season. That might seem like a low bar for excitement, but when you’re coming off a 121-loss debacle, that’s a huge improvement.
Biggest failure: Luis Robert Jr.
The season began with reports of Roberts’ revamped approach at the plate, but 2025 proved to be another step back for one of the game’s most talented players. Robert did improve his strike zone indicators, but it didn’t pay off at the bottom line, as his OPS+ dropped two more points off his career-low of 86 in 2024. And it looks as if he’ll end the season where he has spent far too much time during his career: on the injured list. Whether you view Robert as a White Sox building block or the team’s last-best chance to generate impactful return in the trade market, none of this is good.
Biggest success: The rotation
The Reds’ pitching, in general, has kept the team on the fringe of the playoff chase all season, but the starters, in particular, have been rock solid. According to my AXE metric used in the Awards Watch series, six of the top nine Reds performers this season have been starting pitchers, led by Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo and Hunter Greene. Only three teams have compiled more quality starts.
Biggest failure: The flagging offense
Cincinnati’s hitters are on track to finish around their preseason forecast of 660 park-neutral runs scored. But at the midway point of the season, the Reds were on pace to finish at 693, and during the span of the regression, a trade deadline passed. Miguel Andujar has helped, when he has played, but it hasn’t been enough. The Reds rank 19th or worse at five of the nine positions by OPS, and that’s with the baked in boost of Great American Ballpark.
Biggest success: The stretch-run rotation
After years of forging a reputation as a starting pitcher factory, the Guardians’ actual performance in that area over the past couple of years hasn’t lived up to it. Until recently, that is. After ranking 18th with a 4.17 rotation ERA through Aug. 25, Cleveland is second with a 2.78 mark since. The Guardians have hung in the playoff race with a 14-5 record during that span, despite ranking 22nd with only 4.16 runs scored per game.
Biggest failure: The offense
Take your pick, really. Whatever the offensive metric, the Guardians stink in it. They’re 29th or worse in each of the slash columns, last in BABIP and 24th in isolated power. They rank 29th in OPS at catcher and shortstop, and 30th in center field and right field. There is only so much Jose Ramirez can do.
Biggest success: Attendance
The Rockies are in the pack, drawing 29,676 fans per game, down just 1,211 over last season. They are outdrawing the first-place Detroit Tigers. The world is a very strange place sometimes.
Biggest failure: Everything else
Assuming the Rockies don’t lose out — which could happen, of course — they won’t end up matching or surpassing the 2024 White Sox’s season record for losses. Still, this marks the Rockies’ third straight 100-loss season, fourth straight last-place finish and seventh straight season of finishing fourth or worse in the NL West. The Rockies are long overdue when it comes to asking hard questions about how they do things.
Biggest success: Tarik Skubal
The Tigers are closing in on their first division title in 11 years and second straight playoff berth. They are built largely on internally developed players and hold baseball’s best overall organizational record. In other words, lots more talent is on the way. Still, Skubal stands out on a team full of success stories by replicating or even bettering his Cy Young-winning 2024 campaign. He has become one of baseball’s biggest stars and the face of what Detroit has been building — and this edifice has a lot of faces.
Biggest failure: The rotation depth
Skubal’s is but one turn through the rotation, and the Tigers’ run prevention has lagged over the second half of the season. Since the break, Skubal has a 2.31 ERA with eight quality starts in 10 outings. The rest of the Detroit rotation has a 5.32 ERA with only 10 quality starts in 43 outings. If this bites the Tigers in the postseason, there will be questions about why Detroit didn’t take a bigger swing at the trade deadline.
Biggest success: Front office improvisation
The Astros are almost right at their preseason forecast, but their path to those 87-88 wins has been less than predictable. Because of that, much of the story of Houston’s season can be told in two of the measures we keep mentioning. First, the Astros rank last in the injury impact metric, meaning no team has been more affected by player absences (Yordan Alvarez especially). Second, the Astros rank first on the in-season acquisition leaderboard. Carlos Correa, Jesus Sanchez, Ramon Urias, Craig Kimbrel and others have helped keep Houston’s contention window ajar as we enter the home stretch.
Biggest failure: Christian Walker
The Astros’ offense is much less dynamic than it has been in a long time. No one player is to blame, and Alvarez’s long stay on the IL has to be kept in mind. But things wouldn’t be quite so severe if Walker had plugged what has become a longstanding hole for Houston at first base. It’s always dicey signing free agent hitters who are well into their 30s, and so it has been so far for Walker, whose OPS+ has slipped from a three-year average of 123 in Arizona to 95 in Houston. He has been better since the All-Star break, so we should hold off final judgment on the signing for now, but the bottom line is that, at the moment, Walker is barely over replacement level on the season.
Biggest success: The starting pitching
Last season, the Royals got 151 starts from their top five starters. This season, they’ve had 12 pitchers make at least two starts and depending on when, and if, Michael Wacha returns before the end of the season, none of them might qualify for an ERA title. The injuries have affected the rotation performance during the second half, but it hasn’t fallen off a cliff, and for the season, Kansas City has MLB’s sixth-best rotation ERA. Whether it’s converting relievers (Kris Bubic), developing midlevel prospects (Noah Cameron) or identifying trade targets (Ryan Bergert), the Royals have become adept at finding rotation answers that fit their system.
Biggest failure: The offense
Bobby Witt Jr. remains a superstar. Maikel Garcia has been one of baseball’s most improved players. Vinnie Pasquantino remains a high-level run producer. But other than a midseason surge, the Royals have just not been able to score consistently enough to hang in the playoff chase, despite their elite pitching-and-defense combo. They’ve tried to paper over their holes with trades during the season, but the baseline for the lineup is just too low to fix on the fly.
Biggest success: Zach Neto
With a second straight five-WAR season, Neto has become one of baseball’s top shortstops at age 24. He sat out time early in the season and his numbers for the most part are similar to 2024, save for a non-trivial uptick in slugging. As he has matured, Neto has hit the ball harder more often, while still shining in the field and on the bases.
Biggest failure: Mike Trout
During the four-year period from 2021 to 2024, Trout averaged just 66.5 games per season. But on a per-162-game basis, he had rates of 46.3 homers, 109 runs and a 160 OPS+. If he could only stay in the lineup. With a move to DH this season, Trout has indeed been more available, but his impact has ebbed. Trout’s OPS+ is 115 — solid, but not Trout-like — and his slugging percentage is a shocking .417. Maybe it’s just the adjustment to DHing, which isn’t always smooth. Trout, after all, is still only 34 years old.
Biggest success: Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Remember, we’re dealing with expectations here, so Shohei Ohtani doesn’t get credit in this context for doing the incredible things he already was doing. But it has been a banner season for Yamamoto, the most stable part of a deep Dodgers rotation that has again been riddled with injuries. Yamamoto has lived up to his pre-2024 hype but ramping up the volume, at least for a Dodgers pitcher. Already over the 162-inning minimum, Yamamoto is the first Dodgers pitcher to qualify for the ERA title since 2022.
Biggest failure: Health
Health has continued to be a general problem for the Dodgers, but it continues to be especially bad on the pitching side. L.A. is baseball’s deepest team but despite that, the injuries have come so frequently that the Dodgers have kept the transaction wire spinning all season. They’ve used 39 different pitchers, 16 of whom have started at least one game and 10 of whom have earned at least one save. How does manager Dave Roberts keep it all straight?
Biggest success: An emerging lineup
Between young players who have hit the ground running (Agustin Ramirez, Jakob Marsee) and young veterans improving as they enter their primes (Otto Lopez, Xavier Edwards and, especially, Kyle Stowers), the Marlins increasingly look like a team that can field an exciting lineup in 2026.
Biggest failure: The rotation
Injuries over the past couple of years have rocked a talented group of Marlins starters. Other than a midseason surge when the Marlins’ pitchers got hot as a group, Miami’s starters have been lit up for most of 2025, ranking 28th in rotation ERA with the second-lowest total of quality starts. Yet the talent of Sandy Alcantara, Eury Perez, Edward Cabrera, Max Meyer and an interesting wave of coming prospects remains tantalizing. Maybe next season it’ll all come back into focus.
Biggest success: Brice Turang
Turang’s ascension into an All-Star-caliber player is undeniable now that he has added power to an already full toolkit. He’s one of the game’s best second basemen, but more than that, he typifies Milwaukee’s transformation into MLB’s top regular-season club. He’s young, athletic, great on defense and gets on base. And he’s exciting, standing out as one of baseball’s most aesthetically pleasing players to watch.
Biggest failure: Reliever health?
Most everything has gone right for the Brewers, so it’s hard to term anything as a failure. Even the bullpen has been excellent over the course of the season. But a spate of late-season injuries has made things a wee bit more interesting as we edge toward the playoffs.
Biggest success: Joe Ryan
The Twins’ right-hander made the leap from solid midrotation starter to top-of-the-rotation ace this season. Ryan will finish with a career-high innings count and will likely match that volume with his best ERA+ (currently 126) and bWAR (4.5). Ryan’s season isn’t out of line with what he has done before on a per-inning basis, but he has done it more often. Now, as Ryan stands to earn a jump in pay per the arbitration system, we’ll see if the frugal Twins pay him or trade him.
Biggest failure: The midseason unloading
The Twins pulled the plug on their season at the trade deadline and the results since have not been pretty, on the field or off the field in terms of fan reaction. Since then, Minnesota has baseball’s second-worst record and has been drawing attendance figures lately indicative of a fan base that entered the season already annoyed by the Twins’ passive offseason. News that the franchise is no longer on the market hasn’t helped. The trajectory is bad.
Biggest success: Juan Soto
No, Soto hasn’t reinvented baseball during his first season as a Met, but he has been Juan Soto, and that has been a reminder of why he was so coveted. Soto is having a down season in the average category thanks to the vagaries of BABIP, but everything is vintage Soto. And it feels as if we forget this part: He still hasn’t turned 27. Soto has more seasons like this ahead of him, but he has some even better than this in his hip pocket. In any event, any concerns that Soto’s huge contract would be his ruination ought to be alleviated by now.
Biggest failure: The collapsing rotation
The Mets’ pitching free fall has been one of the most stunning stories of the season. Through the end of July, the Mets had baseball’s fifth-best rotation ERA (3.44). The starters ranked 27th in quality starts and 25th in innings, so they weren’t going deep, but they were effective while out there. Since then, New York’s starters have a 5.40 ERA (24th), further taxing a bullpen that has arguably been just as bad or worse. The avatar is Kodai Senga, who went from Cy Young candidate to minor leaguer in about six weeks. Maybe the rookie trio of Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat will save the day, but this is not how the Mets drew it up.
Biggest success: Bronx bombing
This isn’t a perfect Yankees team, but they’ve bashed their way back into the World Series picture in a very literal way. A stunning 59% of the Yankees’ runs this season have come via the home run. When Anthony Volpe hits his next homer, the Yankees will feature a regular lineup in which every slot is occupied by a player with at least 20 homers this season. That includes Ryan McMahon, who hit most of his dingers for Colorado, but it’s still going to be amazing to see.
Biggest failure: Devin Williams
Across the past three seasons before coming to New York, Williams gave up 26 earned runs over 148 games with a 1.66 ERA. In his first Yankees season, he has given up 33 earned runs in 61 games with a 5.30 ERA. With a strikeout rate down around 5% off his career figure and 10% from last year, Williams just hasn’t been the same pitcher, and as the season has progressed, the numbers just keep getting worse.
Biggest success: Kyle Schwarber
Already one of baseball’s most dangerous sluggers, at 32 Schwarber has never been better. He already has joined Ryan Howard as the only Phillies in the 50-homer club and leads the majors with 128 RBIs, 24 above his previous career best. He has done this with his best strikeout rate in six years and his typically high walk rate. Good timing, too: Schwarber will be a free agent this winter.
Biggest failure: Aaron Nola
Nola has always been a little up and down, but his downs have never been like his injury- and performance-plagued 2025 showing. Nola’s 6.44 ERA over 15 starts has him under replacement level, and while the Phillies’ overall rotation has been dynamite, Nola’s struggles are more pressing with Zack Wheeler gone for the season. Nola has shown flashes and remains in the rotation, but he’s running out of time before a playoff season that the Phillies will enter as one of the favored teams.
Biggest success: Paul Skenes
Yes, we expected Skenes to be this good, but who else are we going to put here? Skenes has been even better in Year 2, somehow bettering (so far) his sub-2.00 rookie ERA, dropping from 1.96 to 1.92 even while ramping up his innings total. The Pirates are 27-17 when Skenes starts so far in his career, which translates to a 99-win team over 162 games. In the non-Skenes games, they’ve won at a rate of 69 games per 162. He’s pretty good.
Biggest failure: An anemic offense
The Pirates’ lack of any kind of spending or success in developing hitters has left them with a tragic attack. The median run total for a team in a game is four. Let’s say any time a team scores more than four, it’s a win for the offense and a loss for the defense. Finishing at exactly four runs represents a push, or a tie. Using this framework, the Pirates’ pitchers have a record of 77-55-18, giving them the fifth-best winning percentage in the majors. The hitters are 44-88-18, ranking last. That’s your 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates.
Biggest success: Winning the deadline
The Padres haven’t launched since A.J. Preller’s frenetic activity at the trade deadline, but his work then was still crucial. Rather than finishing the roster as Preller probably hoped, the newcomers have helped cover for drop-offs and injuries from those already on hand. That has been especially true for the bullpen, where Jason Adam was injured and Jeremiah Estrada has hit some speed bumps. But acquisition Mason Miller has been even more electric than expected. Meanwhile, Freddy Fermin has solidified the catcher spot and Ramon Laureano, brought in to raise the floor of a struggling outfield slot, has been San Diego’s best percentage hitter since arriving.
Biggest failure: Xander Bogaerts
At 32, Bogaerts has posted his second straight subpar offensive season. His OPS+ (98) is up from last season’s 92 but remains well off the 130-ish level he reached in Boston. The change in ballparks has been more severe for Bogaerts than expected. His career slugging percentage at Fenway Park is .496 but is just .402 at Petco Park. This season, only three of Bogaerts’ 10 homers have come at home.
Biggest success: A revamped lineup
The Giants were subtractors at the trade deadline, particularly when it came to emptying out the back of the bullpen. Yet San Francisco remains on the cusp of a wild-card slot, and it’s not all because the Mets went into a spiral. The Giants have featured a top-10 offense since the end of July, featuring a stable everyday lineup that has coalesced into a nice unit. After a slow start, Willy Adames has come on strong, Rafael Devers had adapted to his post-Boston life, and Matt Chapman has been mashing. A new outfield mix featuring ex-Met Drew Gilbert and Jung Hoo Lee has become a gas to watch. The Giants are fun.
Biggest failure: Defensive range
You have to get specific, because the Giants’ overall defensive metrics are above average because of Patrick Bailey‘s off-the-charts work behind the plate. But out in the field, the Giants rank 27th in Statcast’s outs above average, a disappointing result for a club with flashy defenders up the middle and at third base with Chapman.
Biggest success: Cal Raleigh
This is perhaps the most obvious selection on the board. Raleigh is having one of the most shockingly historical seasons we’ve ever seen. To be sure, Raleigh had been plenty good before this season, one of the best all-around backstops in the game. But this? The best homer season ever by a catcher? The best by a switch-hitter — even Mickey Mantle? It’s unreal. Using the FanGraphs version of WAR, which is more laudatory of Raleigh’s framing skills, his 2025 total (8.0) ranks seventh all time among primary catchers, and he’s still going.
Biggest failure: The rotation
Again, let’s remember that we’re keeping preseason expectation at the forefront of our minds. Seattle’s rotation has been solid, very consistent. The M’s rank 17th in rotation ERA (4.08) and fifth in quality starts. But before the season, Seattle figured to have a top-five rotation at the very least. The group was supposed to be the strength of the roster. Bryan Woo has been great, but everyone else has been worse than projected, either because of injuries, performance drop-off or both. Yet the Mariners regained first place with two weeks to go. If the rotation had been what we thought it would be, they would have already clinched the AL West.
Biggest success: Matthew Liberatore
Well, we have to put something down. Frankly, even though the Cardinals have managed to stay around baseball’s middle, this has felt like a disheartening season. With just a little boost from the front office, the low bar of postseason contention in this year’s NL might have been cleared. St. Louis hasn’t received much in terms of breakout performances, though some of the younger players have shown progress. That pretty much describes Liberatore, the touted prospect St. Louis acquired way back on Jan. 9, 2020, from Tampa Bay for Randy Arozarena. Until 2025, Liberatore hadn’t been able to establish himself as a rotation regular, but he has made 27 starts and stayed within shouting distance of league average. His strikeout rates don’t scream “untapped upside!” but you never know.
Biggest failure: Season approach
Nothing about St. Louis baseball has made much sense for about a year. If the Cardinals had truly reset, that at least would have been a clear direction. As it stands, it’s still completely unclear why the Cardinals didn’t just try to build the best possible roster they could for the 2025 season. After this finally ends, the baton will pass to Chaim Bloom and perhaps he can paint a more coherent portrait. Let the Ray-ification of the Redbirds begin.
Biggest success: Junior Caminero
This has been a mildly disappointing season for Tampa Bay, but not so for its powerhouse, 21-year-old third baseman. Caminero’s 44 homers already rank second in Rays history, and he needs only two more to tie Carlos Pena’s 18-year-old franchise record. The only other age-21 player to reach 44 homers is Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews, who hit 47 in 1953. Caminero still has a shot at that mark.
Biggest failure: Close games
This has been a strange season for Tampa Bay, and not only because the Rays have had to call the Yankees’ spring training facility their home park. Tampa Bay has had a couple of stretches where it looked like one of baseball’s top teams but has been thwarted by close losses — which is the antithesis of what the last few good Rays teams have been like. This season, Tampa Bay is just 33-40 in games decided by one or two runs. Because of that, the Rays are on pace to fall 7.3 wins shy of the record predicted by their run differential, tied with Texas for the biggest shortfall in baseball.
Biggest success: Overcoming injuries
Over their past 20 games coming out of the weekend, the Rangers had won 15, the best last-20 mark in baseball. This has allowed Texas to close its sizable gap with Houston and eke closer to the Mariners. The postseason remains very much in play. During that 20-game stretch, Texas got five games from Corey Seager, zero from Marcus Semien, 10 from Adolis Garcia and zero from Evan Carter. Ace starter Nathan Eovaldi made his last appearance of the season the day before that 20-game window began. The more beat-up the Rangers are, the more they seem to thrive.
Biggest failure: Home offense
The Rangers have just a .676 OPS at Globe Life Field, while they’re at .724 on the road. Last season, they were 34 points better at home. The season before, when the Rangers won the World Series, they were 107 points better. It is a baffling thing. In his first Texas season, DH Joc Pederson has hit .155 with a .559 OPS at home. He hasn’t been great on the road, either, but his OPS is 103 points better while traveling. All of this is too bad for the hitters, but while bemoaning their fate at GLF, we should also note that the Rangers have been baseball’s best home team this season (by run differential) thanks to an absurdly-low 2.77 home ERA by the pitching staff.
Biggest success: Ernie Clement
No, really. The Blue Jays have the AL’s best record. Among all teams, they are 10th in OPS+ and 15th in ERA+, solid but not No. 1-seed solid. There are some facts that align with the standing — a 50-25 home record, and a 40-28 mark in games decided by one or two runs. Toronto leads all teams in FanGraphs’ DEF metric, suggesting the Jays have a strong claim as baseball’s best defensive team. For all that, it just feels as if there is something intangible going on with this club, and no one typifies that more than Clement, a jack-of-all trades infielder who contributes on both offense and defense. Clement is a very different kind of player than Ben Zobrist — and not as good — but there is something reminiscent of Clement on Toronto to Zobrist’s roles with championship teams in Kansas City and Chicago last decade.
Biggest failure: Jeff Hoffman
It’s hard to believe Toronto’s record in close games is as good as it is given Hoffman’s up-and-down season as the Blue Jays’ primary closer. Hoffman has 30 saves but he has blown seven games and somehow has a 9-7 win-loss record, which isn’t the kind of thing you expect to see from a 2025 closer. Heck, if he blows a couple of more saves that the Jays rescue him from, he could tie for Toronto’s team lead in wins. Seriously, though, Hoffman has been barely replacement level this season. He has been on a nice roll of late, until he gave up a ninth-inning homer to Houston’s Yainer Diaz that resulted in his seventh loss last Wednesday. If Toronto’s feel-good season is going to last deep into October, the Jays really need Hoffman to be part of the happy tidings.
Biggest success: James Wood
It hasn’t been a happy season for the Nats, who are likely to lose more games than the 91 they dropped in 2023 and 2024. That’s not how rebuilding is supposed to work. Wood has been the best player in a bad situation, adding some power to his solid rookie season percentages and improving his defensive metrics. He has struggled at home, though, and his first-half OPS — a star-like .915 — has dropped to .663 since the All-Star Game. Even the Nats’ good news is bad.
Biggest failure: The rebuild
It will continue, of course, because there is no other choice. But the post-championship reset embarked upon by the old regime of Mike Rizzo and Dave Martinez is officially kaput, and those two were put out of work on the same day in July. This offseason represents a fresh start for a franchise that very much needs one.
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Alyssa Roenigk
LITTLE FALLS, N.J. — Yogi would have loved this.
Hundreds of people, young, old and wearing matching commemorative T-shirts, just finished dancing the “YMCA” on the field at Yogi Berra Stadium at Montclair State University. Little League teams, former MLB players and local politicians laugh and clutch their gloves as volunteers hand out souvenir baseballs. Yankees organist Ed Alstrom plays “Charge!” from a stage in center field, and the crowd responds on cue.
“Yogi loved bringing people together,” says Yankees great Willie Randolph, who played for Berra from 1976 to 1988 and later coached the Yankees and managed the Mets. “He made everyone feel like they’re family. He would have been ecstatic. I think he’s looking down on this field and is so proud.”
They have all come here on a Sunday afternoon, from as far away as California and Florida, to celebrate a man who treated every interaction much like a game of catch. Berra cared as much about what he tossed into a conversation as how he received what was thrown his way. So, what better way to honor him than by playing the biggest game of catch? Ever.
The current record is 972 pairs, set eight years ago in Illinois. On its face, breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest game of catch sounds simple: Gather a couple thousand people, pair them up and ask them to toss baseballs back and forth for five minutes. Doing it, however, is anything but easy.
When Eve Schaenen, the executive director of the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center at Montclair State, approached Guinness with the idea, adjudicator Michael Empric, who is overseeing the day’s process, told her that many mass-attendance record attempts fail.
“That’s part of why we wanted to do this,” Schaenen says. “There are stakes. Yogi played a game where you could strike out. You could lose. That doesn’t mean you don’t try. He was told he couldn’t so many times and look at what remarkable things he did with his life.”
Berra was born 100 years ago and died before many of the kids gathered here were born. He made his MLB debut in 1946, retired as a player in 1965 and stopped coaching in 1989. Yet, everyone here on this day has a story about a time they were touched by his life. Berra connected deeply with people. It didn’t matter if he was talking to a teammate, a waiter, the president or his postman. With Berra, everyone got the same guy.
That this record attempt is taking place one day before the anniversary of his death (and his MLB debut) on Sept. 22 might have elicited him to create one of his popular Yogi-isms. “Well,” he might have said, “we’re a day early, but right on time.”
TO BASEBALL FANS, Yogi Berra is a legend. An MLB Hall of Famer. A man who played in 75 World Series games and won 10 rings — both records unlikely to be broken — and was one of the best “bad ball” hitters in history. The image of Berra leaping into the arms of Yankees pitcher Don Larsen after calling the only perfect game in World Series history in 1956 is indelible in the minds of baseball fans.
“All Yankees fans are Yogi fans,” says Paul Semendinger, a retired principal and adjunct professor at Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey. He is wearing a replica 1939 Lou Gehrig Yankees jersey. “But you can be a Yogi fan without being a Yankees fan.”
Case in point: Semendinger, 57, is here with his 26-year-old son, Ethan, and 87-year-old dad, Paul Sr., “the world’s biggest Ted Williams fan.” (Paul Sr. is wearing a Red Sox jersey.) “You could root for Yogi even if you’re not a fan of his team,” Paul Sr. says, “because he was a good person.”
Semendinger and his son run a Yankees blog and play on a softball team together. He and his dad still meet up a few times a year to play catch in the backyard. “For 87, he still throws a pretty good knuckleball,” Semendinger says.
When Josh Rawitch, the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, was 10, he sent Berra a baseball card from his home in Los Angeles and asked him to sign it. “It came back with his signature in this perfect penmanship,” Rawitch says. “I was a big fan of baseball history and although I was a Dodgers fan, he was Yogi Berra.” Over the years, Rawitch met Berra multiple times and became a fan of him as a man. “For someone with 10 rings, he never took himself too seriously,” he says. “He had such humility.”
Rawitch is here to display Berra’s Hall of Fame plaque, which a museum employee drove nearly 200 miles from Cooperstown, New York, to Little Falls on Saturday. It’s the first time the plaque has left the Hall since Berra was inducted in 1972.
“It’s rare that we do this,” Rawitch says. “But we knew we wanted to be a part of something so special.”
Anthony “Uncle Tony” Stinger turned 90 this year. He was in the right-field grandstands at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 22, 1946, when Berra made his MLB debut. “It was a Sunday, the second game of a doubleheader against Philadelphia,” Stinger says. “I took the 4 train from Harlem to the stadium, and the Yankees called Yogi up that day. He could hit anything, even a ball a foot off the ground. They didn’t know how to pitch to him.”
Stinger has lived in the Bronx for 53 years and came here with his nieces. Although he’s only spectating, he says he wouldn’t have missed this event for the world. “Yogi would be amazed,” he says, looking around the stadium.
TO MANY, BERRA was a war hero. The St. Louis native signed with the Yankees in 1943 but delayed his MLB career to enlist in the Navy on his 18th birthday and served as a gunner’s mate in World War II. He provided cover from a rocket boat for the troops who landed on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. He was wounded by enemy fire and earned a Purple Heart, although he famously never received the medal because he didn’t fill out the paperwork. He didn’t want his mother to worry.
Daniel Joseph Clair joined the Marines in 1966 and earned a Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam. He’s here to play catch with his wife, a lifelong Yankees fan. “I met Yogi outside the stadium once,” Clair says. “He took the time to talk to me before he got on the bus.”
To many of the players he coached, Berra was a lifetime friend and confidant.
“I’m getting goose bumps talking about him,” Randolph says, rubbing his arms. “Some of my best memories as a young manager are sitting in my office before games and talking baseball with Yogi. When I think about being the first African American manager in New York history, which I am very proud of, Yogi was very instrumental in that. He taught me so much. I miss him every day.”
Two months after his death, Berra was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for his military service as well as his civil rights and educational activism, although he would balk at being called an activist. He would say he was just treating people equally, as he would want to be treated.
Berra grew up on The Hill, a heavily Italian area of St. Louis, and later faced prejudice and ridicule for being Italian and not looking like a typical ballplayer. Throughout his life, whether by crossing racial lines or through his work with Athlete Ally on LGBTQ equality — an organization he joined in his 80s — he wasn’t trying to set an example, yet time and again, he did.
Berra befriended Jackie Robinson in 1946 when they played on opposing teams in the International League. The next year, Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier. Before games, Berra would walk across the field at Yankee Stadium to find Robinson and chat with his friend. “I don’t think he was doing it to make a statement, but 60,000 people saw him talking to Jackie,” Berra’s eldest granddaughter, Lindsay Berra, says. “This was 18 years before the Civil Rights Act. He was making a comment, whether he knew it or not.”
When Elston Howard became the Yankees’ first Black player in 1955, Berra began grooming him as his replacement behind the plate. During spring training in segregated Florida, Howard couldn’t ride on the same bus, eat in the same restaurants or stay in the same hotels as his white teammates. So, Berra often joined him at his.
TO PEOPLE WHO never watched baseball, Berra was a cultural phenomenon, a “Jeopardy!” answer, a man they quoted sometimes without knowing who they were quoting.
It ain’t over ’til it’s over.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
You can observe a lot by watching.
If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.
Berra was the personification of a cartoon bear, a Yoo-hoo pitchman and, as Wynton Marsalis once said while touring the museum, “the Thelonious Monk of baseball.” He was world famous and as recognizable as any figure in sports, yet he was also the guy his three sons would find downstairs in the mornings having coffee with the postman, garbage man and a few of Montclair’s finest.
Tommy Corizzi is too young to have seen Berra play or coach. In fact, he was born just one year before Berra died. He’s here with his “pop pop,” Tom Corizzi, who loved the idea of spending a Sunday afternoon connecting with his grandson and his favorite team. “Yogi was cool,” Tommy, 11, says. “I want to be in the world record book with him.”
Thirteen-year-old Jake Esarey Elmgart is here with his baseball team. He donated the $2,500 he raised for his bar mitzvah project to this event to help pay for kids with special needs to attend.
Just last week, a local woman handed Lindsay a letter she said she found in a drawer recently. The woman’s son, now in his 30s, wrote the letter to Berra in 2000 — 35 years after he retired — but never sent it. “You were in your car and while you were driving, you pointed at me and put your thumb up,” Justin LaMarca, then 8, wrote in pencil and in cursive. “I yelled to you and said you are my favorite player in the world.”
TO ME, BERRA was my best friend’s grandpa.
I met Lindsay in 2002 when I joined the staff at ESPN The Magazine in New York City, where she worked at the time. We became fast friends. Her family became mine in the way that happens when you live far from your own. Grammy Carmen was chic and sentimental. Grampa Yogi was funny and grumpy and warm and honest, and I think of them every Christmas when I hang the oversized red ceramic ornament they bought for me at New York’s 21 Club. Or at Halloween, because they always answered the door for trick-or-treaters in the same costumes: Grammy Carmen as an adorable witch and Grampa Yogi as Yogi Berra.
A half hour before the record attempt, I’m standing outside the museum with my dad, Fred. We came here in May 2012 to celebrate Berra’s 87th birthday. We toured the museum and watched the Yankees beat the Mariners from a party suite at Yankee Stadium. My dad remembers watching Grampa Yogi interact with fans and former players, singing him “Happy Birthday” and eating pieces of a pinstriped cake.
The previous night, my dad watched a few innings of a game with him in Berra’s living room. “Here’s your chance to ask him anything,” I told him.
My dad was 12 when Berra retired as a player. He grew up on a Belgian horse farm outside of Pittsburgh and never had the chance to see him play in person. He had few opportunities to watch him play on TV because the networks carried only local games back then, plus the Game of the Week on Saturdays. He does, however, remember watching the Pirates beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. “I was 7,” he says. “I’m not sure if I remember it as much as I remember the photo of Yogi standing in left field watching Bill Mazeroski’s homer go over the fence. That’s an iconic Pittsburgh picture.”
At the top of the ninth inning in that shocking game (if you’re a Yankees fan), Berra hit a grounder to tie the score 9-9. Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Mazeroski hit a walk-off homer to seal the series for the Pirates. “Yogi said the worst day of his life was watching the ball go over the fence at Forbes Field,” my dad says. (I did tell him to ask the man anything.) “Imagine all he’d experienced in his life, and he said that was his worst day.”
Grampa Yogi died three years after that visit. That weekend was one of many times I watched my best friend share her grandpa with the world. Lindsay had watched her grandmother do so graciously throughout her life, listening with care as people told her how much they loved her husband. But Lindsay didn’t understand how people who had met her grandfather for only a moment, if at all, could feel the same kind of love toward him that she did. After his death, as tributes poured in from around the world, she realized that though their love might not be the same as hers, it is just as real. And it is flowing through this stadium now.
I’M STANDING ON the field precisely 3 meters across from my dad, a baseball glove on my left hand. My dad tosses a baseball my way. I catch it and look around. Baseballs are flying everywhere. People are laughing and dancing and dropping balls. We’re all singing along to John Fogerty’s “Centerfield.”
There’s a mystical quality to the relationship that develops between the two people on either end of a game of catch, and it’s happening for all of us now. Maybe it’s how attuned we’ve become to each other, to subtle shifts in our partner’s body position and the message those movements communicate. I’m ready. Send it my way. Maybe it’s the meditative rhythm of the back-and-forth and how quickly the world narrows to the space between us. Or maybe it’s as simple as the eye contact and focus the act requires.
My dad doesn’t remember the first time we played catch together. I don’t, either. But being here on this day, tossing a baseball methodically with him, I’m transported to a Little League field in Cape Coral, Florida. I am 11, wearing an oversized blue Expos jersey and stirrup socks, and warming up with him before a playoff game. The last time we played catch, I was likely in high school and playing shortstop for the CCHS Seahawks.
Lindsay is playing catch with her boyfriend, Peter, surrounded by her family. She remembers the first time she played catch with her grandpa. “My earliest memories are playing wiffle ball in the front yard at holidays,” she says. “Uncle Dale had broken a window at a neighbor’s house, so we played with something safer.” The real baseballs came out when her grandfather was asked to throw out a first pitch. “He’d call each of the grandkids until someone was available to come up to the house and play catch with him,” Lindsay says. “He didn’t want to embarrass himself on the mound.”
When Berra’s boys were young, he was coaching and away from home during baseball season, so they never had the chance to play catch with their dad. Dale says that while Berra loved to toss the football or shoot baskets with him and his brothers, he believes his dad never wanted them to feel pressure to play baseball. “When I signed with the Mets in 1972, I warmed up with him during spring training,” Larry says. “That’s the only memory I have of playing catch with my dad. But I feel him today.”
Larry is playing catch with his son, Andrew. While Empric watches from the stage, volunteers walk the neatly spaced rows of participants looking for rule breakers: people who are on their phones, rolling the ball rather than throwing it or too young to meet the cutoff (age 7). When the five-minute clock runs out, everyone hoots and cheers and high-fives.
“If Dad were here, he’d probably ask, ‘Why would all these people do this? They don’t have to be here,'” Larry says. “He never understood the impact he had on people just by saying hello, by waving, by inviting them in for coffee. He always said, ‘I just played baseball.’ He never understood the aura he created.”
After several excruciating minutes, Empric walks to the podium to deliver the result. “I can now announce that today … in Little Falls … New Jersey … USA … you had a total of … 1,179 pairs,” he says, and hands Schaenen an oversized plaque, which she thrusts into the air. The crowd erupts. “It’s a new Guinness World Record,” Empric says. “Congratulations! You are officially amazing.”
For a while, no one moves. For nearly an hour, many people stay on the field and soak up the magic flowing between the baselines. Some continue to play catch, others chat with the people they stood next to during the attempt. This is what today was all about. Yogi was many things to many people, and today, he brought us all together.
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