10 Reasons Why the 2025 MLB Season Was An All-Timer
The 2025 MLB season only just ended on Saturday, yet it isn't premature to proclaim it's one we're going to be talking about for a long time.
In fact, let's get into 10 reasons why we should.
These are things that make this season feel particularly special, and they range from individual accomplishments to league-wide trends and storylines. Even if they don't prove to have lasting power, that they happened even once is remarkable.
For instance, did you know that a guy hit 60 home runs this year... as a catcher... and a switch-hitting catcher, no less? That is ridiculous, and yet he might not even get an MVP award for the trouble.
And as for the World Series we all just witnessed...well, what is there to say other than it was an all-timer that had not one, but two all-time games? Perhaps not much can be said, but we'll try to find the words anyway.
Intrigued? Better read on, then.
Competitive Balance Continues to Trend Up
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What Happened?
In 2022, the league's 30-team field contained four 100-game winners and four 100-game losers. This was the second time in the last three full seasons that it had happened, so it looked like MLB had strayed into a competitive balance crisis.
This year, though, not one team made it to 100 wins and only two dropped below 100 losses. More than half the league (i.e., 17 teams) finished at least at the .500 mark, and one more (the 82-80 Arizona Diamondbacks) just missed.
It sounds good because it is good. The standard deviation between winning percentages this year was the lowest since 2017. That's the nerdy way of saying the competition was more balanced, which should be the goal.
What Does It Mean?
The pessimistic outlook here is that what we actually had in 2025 was more mediocrity, which isn't totally untrue. But if the choice is between that and a stark contrast between haves and have-nots in the win column, MLB should want the former.
It's a sign that the expanded 12-team playoff field is working as intended, which is a good thing since there's no putting that genie back in the bottle. It's also a sign that for all the hand-wringing over the very real payroll disparity in MLB today, teams still can't simply buy their way into total dominance.
In other words: Don't take MLB's word for it that the league needs a salary cap.
Maybe the Most Epic Trade Deadline Ever
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What Happened?
What happened? There were 50 trades made in the last 31 hours before the July 31 trade deadline.
That is nearly two per hour, which is remarkable given MLB executives presumably did sleep at some point during those 31 hours. And some of those trades were truly seismic, with Carlos Correa going back to the Houston Astros representing the biggest shocker of them all.
Mostly what we saw were contenders of all stripes outfitting their bullpens for the stretch run. The San Diego Padres scored the biggest win of them all in trading for Mason Miller, ultimately resulting in perhaps the most perfect pitch ever thrown.
What Does It Mean?
This looks like still more evidence that the expanded playoff field is working. Basically two-thirds of the league had at least a 10 percent chance of making the postseason on July 30, so it makes sense that so many teams would want in on getting better.
At least two teams stand out as examples of what can happen after using the deadline to improve. The Seattle Mariners probably don't make it to the ALCS without Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez. Similarly, the Toronto Blue Jays probably don't make it to the World Series without Shane Bieber.
With so many prospects changing hands, this deadline also has implications for future seasons. To wit, the A's already have an offense with powerhouse potential, and the Miller trade landed them MLB Pipeline's No. 3 prospect in shortstop Leo De Vries.
One of the Most Shocking Trades of All Time
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What Happened?
Of course, the biggest trade of 2025 happened well before the deadline, and we're still looking around for the socks that it knocked off.
Yes, the Boston Red Sox really did trade Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants in the middle of June. And no, nobody saw it coming. There had been discord between Devers and the Red Sox, sure, but this is still only the second time a player has been traded while serving a $300 million contract—and the first in the middle of a season.
The Red Sox ended up making the playoffs anyway, yet the lack of Devers' pop was evident in their loss to the New York Yankees in the Wild Card Series. The Giants somehow missed the playoffs, but at least they got 20 homers and a 130 OPS out of Devers.
What Does It Mean?
The book on this trade is far from closed, and it's even hard to predict with any certainty whether the Red Sox or the Giants will get to claim victory on it.
For their part, the Giants have a top-tier slugger in his prime through the 2033 season. For theirs, the Red Sox have already used their savings to extend Roman Anthony, and could make further splashes this winter.
If that's how both teams might win this deal, there's also how either team could lose it. The Giants have put a power-first hitter in the least power-friendly park in MLB, while the Red Sox got little (if any, depending on your opinion of Kyle Harrison) in terms of impact talent back in the deal.
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Paul Skenes Continues His Assault on History
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What Happened?
Since earned run average became official in 1912, only eight pitchers have made 20 starts and posted a sub-2.00 ERA at least once in their first two seasons.
Only Paul Skenes has done so twice, and the 23-year-old now stands to become the youngest Cy Young Award winner since Clayton Kershaw won his first in his own age-23 season in 2011. Not bad for a guy who dialed it back in 2025, throwing only 13 fastballs of at least 100 mph after throwing exactly 100 in 2024.
Though Tarik Skubal would beg to differ, Skenes may well be the best pitcher in baseball right now. And if he somehow manages to stay on this track, he could ultimately be regarded as one of the greatest pitchers who ever lived.
What Does It Mean?
In the short term, Skenes' ascent as the top ace in the National League seems destined to lead to an early end for his time with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
No organization is as cheap as they are, after all, so it was shocking but not surprising when trade speculation started to ramp up back in July. It's not likely to go away, and it's therefore likely just a matter of time before we get a trade that will put even the Rafael Devers deal to shame in terms of sheer bigness.
More broadly, Skenes' quick ascent can only be seen as a good thing for starting pitching as an institution. It's still not what it once was, but he's the surest sign yet that ace pitchers aren't ready to go extinct.
The Golden Age for the 30-30 Season Is Right Now
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What Happened?
After MLB introduced bigger bases as part of its new rules in 2023, there was unsurprisingly an explosion in stolen bases and, with it, 30-30 seasons. Four players went off for a 30-30 season that year, the most since 2011.
As for this year, well, seven players did so. Seven. It's an all-time record, obviously.
There are some usual suspects among that group, including Francisco Lindor, José Ramírez and Julio Rodríguez. But then you have Juan Soto, who stole more bases this year (38) than he had in his last four seasons combined. And he did it despite still boasting well-below-average speed at just 25.8 feet per second.
What Does It Mean?
Granted, there's a fair argument to make that the shine of the 30-30 season has been dulled by all this. After all, if even Soto can steal bases at will with these new bases, then surely anyone can.
Well, Mr. Strawman, here's our counterpoint: That's the beauty of it.
Along with injury prevention, introducing more action into games is a big reason why the bigger bases exist. That they are working accordingly is good news, and Soto's season—and to a similar extent, Josh Naylor's 20-homer, 30-steal effort—suggests we may have only witnessed the scratching of the surface.
It Was a Historic Year for Slugging Greatness
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What Happened?
The overall home run rate is still down from its peak of 1.39 per game back in 2019. There were 1.16 homers per game in 2025, a rate pretty much in line with a new normal that took hold when MLB introduced new balls in 2021.
And yet, 2025 was also a banner year for home run-hitting greatness. Four players—Cal Raleigh, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber—struck at least 50 balls over the fence, tying an all-time record from 1998 and 2001.
What's more, Schwarber, Nick Kurtz and Eugenio Suárez each had a four-homer game this year. There had only been 16 of those before this year, and never more than two in a single season.
What Does It Mean?
Even as long balls were proliferating in the late 2010s, 50-homer seasons remained elusive. There were only five during the entire decade, including just one in that historically homer-happy 2019 season.
What was going on instead was a sort of democratization of dingers. The overall surge was driven not by a select few chasing history, but by more and more (and more) guys challenging the 20- and 30-homer marks.
This was still the case in 2025, but the fact that a handful of sluggers were still able to rise above the fray could tell us that chasing home run history is about to come back in style. And perhaps nobody is a better indicator than a certain Seattle Mariner.
A Switch-Hitting Catcher Clobbered 60 Homers
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What Happened?
Cal Raleigh hit 60 home runs this year. You might have heard about it, and it's an absurd feat for reasons that go beyond the fact that he's only the seventh player to hit 60 in a season.
He's a switch-hitting catcher for the Mariners, meaning he broke the following records:
Raleigh did all this despite playing half his games at T-Mobile Park, which is typically a graveyard for hitters. So even if it's not the greatest home run-hitting season ever, it might be the least likely and, therefore, the most impressive.
What Does It Mean?
Cleary, it means having a "Big Dumper" is a new market inefficiency, and perhaps the most important development in baseball since Billy Beane discovered on-base percentage in the early 2000s.
More seriously, there are things worth studying in how Raleigh nearly doubled his previous career high of 34 homers. He notably set a pitch tracking-era record with 85 pulled fly balls, thus demonstrating untold efficiency and taking the easy route to home run power.
To this end, it helps that Raleigh is a switch-hitter. But as much as the Mariners probably don't want other teams to know about it, the tee drill that he learned from Edgar Martinez also seems to unlocked something.
That 60-Homer Guy Might Not Even Win MVP
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What Happened?
Even as extraordinary as Cal Raleigh was for the Mariners this year, it won't be a surprise if Aaron Judge is announced as the American League MVP on November 13.
Judge did, after all, slam 53 homers of his own while leading all of MLB in AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, WAR and... well, the list goes on and on, really. And it was all for a good cause, as the Yankees won 94 games and made the playoffs for the eighth time since Judge's rookie year in 2017.
This would be his third MVP in the last four seasons, following his wins for a 62-homer campaign in 2022 and a 58-homer effort just last year. If so, he'll become just the 13th player to win as many as three MVPs.
What Does It Mean?
Whereas there's a shred of hope Raleigh's greatness can be copied, Judge's is a different story. Other players can't just be 6'7", 282-pound giants who also happen to be gifted with athleticism and sharp eyesight.
Rather, the more pressing question is how much greatness Judge has left in him after 2025. He's had an all-time run in his 30s thus far, but he's around that age (34 on April 26) when breakdowns happen suddenly with no warning.
Either way, what he has done is not to be taken for granted. Only he and Babe Ruth have had as many as three seasons with a 200 OPS and 50 homers, and his overall 179 OPS is the best ever for a right-handed hitter.
Shohei Ohtani Went Full Shohei Ohtani
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What Happened?
Shohei Ohtani is about to win his fourth MVP, which will mark a historic feat: only he and seven-time winner Barry Bonds will be able to claim as many as four MVPs.
After becoming the founding member of the 50-homer, 50-steal club in 2024, Ohtani founded a new 50-50 club this year: He is the first player in history to homer 50 times as a hitter and strike out 50 batters as a pitcher. Whether this is his greatest achievement is debatable, but there should be no debate that this year saw him play the two best games of his career.
His three-homer, 10 strikeout effort in Game 4 of the NLCS might be the best game anyone has ever played, and then he went 4-for-4 with two homers and got on base nine times in Game 3 of the World Series.
What Does It Mean?
As with Aaron Judge, there's a lingering suspicion Ohtani can't keep this up forever. He's already had two major elbow surgeries and turned 31 on July 4.
Even so, pretty much the only thing keeping Ohtani from being worthy of the Hall of Fame at this point is that he doesn't yet have 10 major league seasons under his belt. He's one of the great hitters and pitchers of his era, and it's that simple.
In fact, his eventual Hall of Fame plaque should begin with seven simple words: "The greatest baseball player who ever lived."
We Witnessed One of the Best World Series Ever
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What Happened?
For the first time since 2019, the World Series went the full seven games. And it was more like eight games and change, as the Dodgers and Blue Jays needed 11 extra innings to determine which team was better.
The Dodgers won the battle, of course, delivering the final blow in a Game 7 that was somehow even more dramatic than the 18-inning instant classic in Game 3. And even beyond those two marathons, the 2025 World Series featured:
Nobody in Toronto should think less of this Blue Jays team for losing a series like this. Just as Red Sox fans have Bucky "Bleeping" Dent, what Blue Jays fans should instead take away from this series is that it was Miguel "Bleeping" Rojas who did them in with his one-out, game-tying homer in the ninth inning in Game 7.
What Does It Mean?
The Dodgers are the first team since the 1998-2000 Yankees to win back-to-back World Series titles. Since it's impossible to separate that from the roughly $1 billion they have spent on these teams, the narrative that they are "ruining" baseball figures to stick around for a while.
For the meantime, though, can't we all just appreciate what they and the Blue Jays just treated us to?
Given how competitive it was and how much history was made, this World Series is arguably the best since the Diamondbacks shocked the Yankees in 2001.
It'll do for a sign that, for all of baseball's problems and imperfections, the World Series is still a place where forever memories are made.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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