The 2025 regular season is in the books. Here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world in the final day before the playoffs:
1. Teams gear up for the postseason:
The 2025 playoff field is now set. The Reds squeaked into the NL’s final Wild Card spot over the Mets, while the Guardians’ late surge pushed Detroit out of the AL Central division title and the Astros out of the playoffs entirely. The Brewers, Phillies, Blue Jays, and Mariners get to enjoy a few days off to prepare for the start of the Division Series, but the rest of the playoff field now needs to focus on the Wild Card Series, which begins tomorrow. The Tigers, Padres, Red Sox, and Reds will need to travel to Cleveland, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles respectively. All eight teams will be weighing who exactly will make the final cut of their Wild Card roster.
2. Which teams will see leadership changes?
The end of a season brings with it the winds of change around baseball for many of the league’s losing teams. The Nationals have already settled on Red Sox executive Paul Toboni as their new president of baseball operations, and that’s likely just the first of several notable changes. Interim managers in Washington, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Colorado could have the “interim” tag removed from their titles or be shown the door, and there’s additional managerial uncertainty in places like Anaheim, San Francisco, and Atlanta. Meanwhile, Houston GM Dana Brown told reporters yesterday that a “full assessment” of the Astros organization will be taken after the team’s playoff miss this year, and other teams facing disappointing ends to their season will undergo similar evaluation periods.
3. End-of-season press conferences:
Traditionally, most organizations will have the head of baseball operations hold a press conference or otherwise make comments to the media following the conclusion of their team’s season. These media sessions typically include the president/GM reflecting on that year’s campaign, indicating where the organization might be headed in the future, and discussing in broad strokes their short-term plans for the coming offseason. These comments often offer valuable insight into the organization, particular in the cases of executives who don’t talk to the media very often or newly-appointed leadership figures. Most of the 18 clubs that missed the postseason will hold a press conference or offer some sort of comments in the coming days.
That was the best Mets collapse in years. Well done boys.
If it weren’t for the recent playoffs format changes, the Tigers collapse would be an all-time one to remember for years or decades to come.
But the Tigers still live to play October baseball.
The Mets are already booking their early October rounds of golf.
But they wouldn’t be in years past
@dewey
What about the Braves and Red Sox in 11 that was a pretty epic collapse.
While that’s true, in years past, the Mets would’ve also missed by a bunch more. The Mets had the best record at one point in July and had a good cushion. They missed both now and in the past format, where the tigers still made it.
I wish Nick had posted the days and times of the WC PO.
Tuesday
Det/Clev – 1:08pm EST
SD/Chi – 3:08pm EST
Bos/NYY – 6:08pm EST
Cin/LAD – 9:08pm EST
First pitch for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Game times on Thursday subject to change should some series end early.
Astros have to move on from Joe Espada. From looking at the dugout the last month you could tell he lost the players trust. Really wish I knew what a Correa was saying to him at the end of game seemed like he was pissed.
87 wins with that team? Nobody else available could do better.
Right…when you lose the dugout you gotta go. Along with the hitting coaches, medical staff and Jeff Bagwell
Congratulations to the Reds. Those kids did it on their own and deserve all the credit for it. Tito pushed the right buttons with them as well. I think LA will have their work cut out for them, despite three times the payroll.
Go Reds!
No fans
You hit the nail on the head. TITO is rhe difference this year.
The Reds may have backed into the playoffs, but now anything can happen. Better than backing up the moving van to your leases apartment which is happening in the Fluchinf area.
Good luck to those Reds!
What will Minasian talk about? His failure in drafts? His inability to build pitching staffs? How great to be the leading the team to the last place in the division and an ability to select a dud in top ten though the team’s first round pick will be 12th or 13th? And what a great owner Arte Moreno is?
How proud he is to lead MLB in team strikeouts. How the team posted the 2nd most strikeouts in MLB history. How there are no bats on the farm to help solve the problem.
And every trade with the Braves was a FAILURE!
How about the revival and resurgence of Mike Trout back to health and back to being arguably the best player in MLB. According to exit velocity, clutch rate, zips-h, BABIP, and a slew of other metrics.
The Braves would be stupid to can Snitker.
Stupid like a fox. Snitker needs to go.
He won’t be fired but his contract is up and retirement (at least as manager) is a strong possibility.
As an astros fan, im glad the mets and to a lesser extent the tigers have captured most of the attention regarding collapsing in the last month.
We never forget about Trashtros. Don’t you worry about it!
Rays need some new blood along with this new ownership group. Move on from Cash, Mottola, and Snyder, spend some $$$ on decent free agents, lock up youngsters like Caminero, and market the team.
I still hate the ranking system to reward zip codes instead of wins.
Toronto & New York should have byes to the second round and then the WC matches should be Seattle vs. Detroit & Boston vs. Cleveland.
In the NL, it seemed to work out properly just by chance, though.
As far as the Rays are concerned, Cash and Snyder are staying (IMO) and they should. They should move on from Josh Lowe, Walls and Fairbanks.
Pirates need to clean house. If you want another last place finish bring back Cherington and Kelly. Kelly better than Shelton but that is not saying much since he was the worse. Cherington/Shelton to start the year was a disaster waiting to happen.
Kelly did a nice job with that roster full of AAA loser bats.
How long will it take for Juan Soto to become a real team leader instead of the immature look at me showoff he’s proven to be so far. Grow up Soto. You’re not being overpaid to hit solo home runs. Lead or get out of the way. I’m guessing Pete Alonso couldn’t get away from the Mets fast enough.
As usual, message-boarder rantings of Mike Trout’s “decline” were grossly dishonest, exaggerated, premature, panicked, and detached from reality. He banged his 400th HR 450 feet and he banged another HR yesterday, 4 HR this weekend alone and still arguably the best player in MLB when exit velocity, zips-x, expected outcomes, clutch rates, BABIP, etc are taken into account.
Fish Man still great. Fish Man still the the best player in baseball.
Trout is not even the best player on his team.