With a bit of time for reflection, I’m taking a look back at the 2025 Major League season, and I’ll give you fair warning—I’m going to beat a dead horse or two along the way.

The Los Angeles Dodgers became the first team to win consecutive World Series titles since the New York Yankees won three in a row from 1998-2000. The Toronto Blue Jays were trying to win their first title since they won two in a row back in 1992-93, which kind of makes me wonder why Cito Gaston doesn’t get more credit for being the really good manager that he was. I wonder why that is? The Dodgers are also the first National League team to win back-to-back titles since the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds of George Foster, Joe Morgan, and Tony Perez.

Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners became the seventh player to hit 60 or more home runs in a season. The Mariners fell a win short of winning the American League Championship Series, so Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, both with the Yankees, are still the only players to play in the World Series in the season in which they also reached the 60-homer plateau.

I have no quibbles with the major awards from the season. Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the Yankees were obvious choices for the Most Valuable Player awards as were Paul Skenes of Pittsburgh Pirates and Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers for the Cy Young awards. Nick Kurtz of the Athletics, with his 36 homers–four of which he hit in one game–was the obvious and unanimous choice for American League Rookie of the Year. The voters also made the correct choice with Drake Baldwin of the Atlanta Braves as the National League Rookie of the Year. Baldwin is the 10th Brave to win the award and their second catcher to take home the honor. Earl Williams won the award back in 1971.

I was glad to see Matt Olson of the Braves finally win his third Gold Glove. He won two in the AL during his days with the Athletics. I first noticed Olson’s prowess with the first baseman’s mitt when he was playing at the Triple-A level with the Nashville Sounds. I knew then that if Olson made it to the big leagues, he was sure to win multiple Gold Gloves. Since his ML debut in 2016, I believe Olson has been the best-fielding first baseman in baseball. For my money, he’s the best first baseman to come along since J.T. Snow retired.

Now, I’ll dredge up a popular rant of mine. While Trea Turner of the Philadelphia Phillies officially won the NL batting title with a .304 average, he hit a Carl Yastrzemski-like .301 against NL teams. Perhaps Jacob Wilson of the Athletics should be the NL batting champion since he hit. 329 against NL pitching and had the minimum 3.1 plate appearances per game during interleague play. In the AL, Judge hit .348 against AL pitching, so interleague play wasn’t an issue.

Along those same lines, Eugenio Suárez was the true NL home run champion. He hit more homers (38) against NL pitching than any other player; Kyle Schwarber hit 20 of his 56 home runs against the AL. Again, that wasn’t an issue in the AL as Raleigh led all batters with 37 home runs against AL pitching.

Maybe I’m the only fan who’s bothered by the corruption of statistics that interleague play breeds, but I have a solution: Eliminate interleague play and go back to the days when being in separate leagues meant something more than geography.

The good news is, now that it’s December, Spring Training isn’t that far away.

(I updated this post on December 3, 2025 to correct the information regarding the last team to win consecutive World Series titles. Thanks to Steve Myers of Brewers Baseball and Things for the catch.)