Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. In the words of a great bird I once met, “Gobble, gobble.” Thanksgiving is not a holiday traditionally associated with baseball, but if you’re reading a baseball site on Thanksgiving Day, you know that in a just world, every holiday is one associated with baseball.
So today, on Turkey Day, we provide you with an old Thanksgiving staple, one we do every year around these parts: We give you something for which every team’s fanbase can be thankful. Even if the 2025 season didn’t go how you wanted it to, there are still silver linings and reasons to feel lucky.
OK, so obviously that was about as difficult a way to lose a World Series as humanly possible. (A couple of times over, really.) But let’s not miss the forest for the trees here: The Blue Jays just reached the World Series for the first time in 32 years, and they did so in inspiring, downright heroic fashion. A year ago, we were wondering if this window of contention was about to slam shut on Toronto. Now it looks like it’s just getting started.
The bottom fell out this year, but the Orioles aren’t still stacked with the young offensive talent that got everybody so excited about this team in the first place. We’ll see how they address the pitching, but the foundation of young hitters is the envy of most of the sport.
It will be wonderful to be back home again, won’t it? George M. Steinbrenner Field was a lovely temporary host for the Rays in 2025, but the Trop will be back open in 2026 … with a shiny new roof and a grateful fanbase. That can only be good news for the team.
The Red Sox are never supposed to miss the playoffs three consecutive seasons, so ending that skid is something to be grateful for right there. But the young talent base is starting to take over in Boston, they swung a deal for solid starter Sonny Gray and it sure looks like this is going to be a perennial contender again.
Yankees fans won’t be truly thankful until they win another World Series, so for now, they’ll have to make do with, well, having the best hitter in baseball and perhaps the best right-handed hitter of all time.
An excellent question from Cleveland.com this week: Is José Ramírez close to passing Bob Feller as the best Cleveland baseball player of all time? That we can even ask that question speaks to how lucky Guardians fans are to have him still, and forever.
Bobby Witt Jr. took a slight step back this year and was still one of the 10 best players in the sport, and the Royals get to build around him for the next decade. They’ll always be contenders with him around.
We’ll see how this offseason goes, but as for right now, they have Tarik Skubal, the best pitcher in the sport. He’s a back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner who, don’t forget, has led Detroit to the postseason for two straight years, heights the team hadn’t reached in a decade.
It’s a period of transition for the Twins, but it is undeniably cool that they will get to be part of the Field of Dreams Game next year. It will be a memory their fans will never forget.
Don’t look now, but the White Sox are slowly but surely improving. The young players are starting to show up, and it’s not that difficult to see contention on the horizon sooner rather than later.
Honestly, just getting to put Nick Kurtz in your lineup every day is enough to be thankful for, but the A’s have a lot more going on than just that. This team is loaded with bats, and almost all of them are 28 years old or younger. Get this team some pitching and look out.
Getting to watch Mike Trout, even this version of Mike Trout, is still a gift. But as we saw from the Grayson Rodriguez trade, one thing you can always count on from the Angels is that they will always be creative in trying to improve their fortunes.
It was mostly a lost season for Yordan Alvarez, but he should be back and healthy in 2026, which means Astros fans get to watch one of the best hitters in baseball every day, as usual, next year.
Once they get past how the AL Championship Series ended, the Mariners enter 2026 with two of the most thrilling players in baseball in Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez, they have a loaded pitching staff, they’re adding smartly around their core and they look primed for their best era in two decades.
Skip Schumaker was unquestionably the most sought-after manager on the market, and the Rangers got him. His new era should be an exciting one, and one that still has some real stars to lead the way. And Jacob deGrom is healthy again!
The Braves have endured some rotten luck over the past two years, which has obscured the fact that this is a roster that remains loaded with cost-controlled talent. With a new manager but a stable base, it’s got to be time for that luck to turn, yes?
As poorly as last season ended, Mets fans can be thankful that they have an ambitious front office and ownership group that is as desperate for their team to win as their fans are.
The Nationals haven’t quite been ready to launch the last couple of years, but there’s still some intriguing young talent here, and sooner or later, James Wood is going to put it all together. Maybe it’s this year.
The Phillies are one of the most interesting teams in baseball this offseason, with as much as urgency as anyone. But that urgency is because of just how set up they are to win: You don’t have expectations as high as the Phillies if you don’t have the players who can meet them.
The postseason success hasn’t quite been there, but let’s not get it twisted: This is the greatest era of Brewers baseball in their entire franchise’s history. Milwaukee has made the postseason 11 years ever; seven of those appearances have been in the last eight years.
After some false starts, the Cardinals are truly restructuring this year, with new president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom ready to make some real, big, lasting changes. If anyone needed proof of that, he provided it by agreeing to trade Gray to Boston on Tuesday.
We’ll see about the chances of Kyle Tucker returning, but the emergence of Pete Crow-Armstrong and some other young players have Cubs fans dreaming of the next great era of Cubs baseball. And, of course, they can always be thankful for Wrigley Field. Who isn’t?
They get to watch Paul Skenes take the mound in their uniform every fifth game. What a gift.
For the first time in a decade, they broke through to make the playoffs in a full season. They also have both the manager (Terry Francona) and the burgeoning superstar (Elly De La Cruz) to do it again.
The D-backs had three NL Silver Slugger Award winners this year: Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte and Geraldo Perdomo. And there’s little reason to think they won’t be even better in 2026.
If Dodgers fans can’t find things to be thankful about right now, I’m not sure what to tell them.
New manager Tony Vitello should bring innovation and excitement here, and don’t forget: Rafael Devers is now here all year, from the very beginning.
The Padres have one of the deepest and most loyal fanbases in all of baseball, and while they haven’t caught the Dodgers yet, they still are having one of their best eras ever.
The second half of the year was better than the first half, and that’s cause for some hope. As is the fact that the Rockies finally turned to someone outside the organization — new president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta – to try to guide them back to contention.
