What Baseball Has Taught Us At The 2025 Memorial Day Marker

Throughout baseball history, teams have looked at Memorial Day not only as a time of remembrance and reflection for those in military service but also as an indicator of how the balance of the season could progress.

Most teams had played 50 games when the holiday weekend started – with the defending league champions sitting in first place in their respective divisions.

Although the 50-game marker is still four games short of the one-third mark, some things about the game never seem to change.

For example:

 In addition to the Yankees and Dodgers keeping tight grips on first place, their biggest stars (Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, respectively) have even more secure leads in their bids to retain their Most Valuable Player trophies, possibly by unanimous vote again
 With 14 pitchers occupying their Injured List at the same time, the Dodgers indicate Ohtani will resume his two-way status in the near future

 Judge won’t become the first .400 hitter since Ted Williams in 1941 but he’s hitting for a higher average without losing an ounce of his power after returning to right field, where he’s more comfortable, after a year in center

Soto Dollars Spent

After failing to retain Juan Soto, who jumped crosstown to the Mets with a 15-year, $765 million contract that was a record for dollars and length, the Yankees wisely invested projected Soto money into contracts for free agents Max Fried and Paul Goldschmidt plus trade acquisitions Cody Bellinger and Devin Williams
 Fried, whose eight-year, $218 million deal was a record haul for a left-hander, quickly and smoothly replaced erstwhile ace Gerrit Cole, suddenly sidelined by Tommy John elbow surgery, and became the front-runner for a Cy Young Award that would be his first
 Former multiple Cy Young Award winners Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, and Blake Snell spent most of the first two months on the sidelines with assorted injuries and combined for only a single win (by Snell)
 Charlie Morton, 41, also went winless into Memorial Day weekend, disappointing the Orioles after they gave him a one-year, $15 million contract to join their rotation
 Age doesn’t matter much for left-handers, as 45-year-old Rich Hill proved by landing a minor-league contract from the Kansas City Royals

His Brother’s Footsteps

 After brother Luisangel Acuña became a surprise contender for National League Rookie of the Year – an award he once won – Ronald Acuña, Jr. resurfaced May 23 after a year on the shelf with a torn ACL and homered on the first pitch he saw
 One year after the Chicago White Sox lost 121 games for a dubious futility mark, the Colorado Rockies entered Memorial Day weekend on pace for an even worse performance
 Bud Black, manager of the Rockies, was one of three managers, along with Pittsburgh’s Derek Shelton and Baltimore’s Brandon Hyde, fired before Memorial Day – even though none lost their jobs over the same stretch of last season
 Proving the steroids plague persists, two NL East contenders, the Braves and Phillies, lost key veterans (Jurickson Profar and Jose Alvarado, respectively) to half-season suspensions that also preclude participation in the playoffs
 The Arizona Diamondbacks lost a game in which one of their players, Eugenio Suarez, delivered the first four-homer performance since 2017

Booming Bat

 Kyle Tucker, acquired from Houston by the Chicago Cubs, has played so well that he’s likely to become the top free agent – and the most expensive one – this fall
 Two teams are playing home games in minor-league parks (the Athletics in Sacramento and Rays at George M. Steinbrenner Field) for the first time since 1961, when upgraded minor-league parks hosted the expansion Los Angeles Angels, transplanted Minnesota Twins, and the Kansas City Athletics
 Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred inflamed the controversy over Pete Rose’s lifetime suspension – and exclusion from the Baseball Hall of Fame – by ruling players on the ineligible list are automatically activated once they die
 Manfred’s mandate also means the eight players banned in 1920 by newly-named baseball czar Kenesaw Mountain Landis (including Shoeless Joe Jackson) are eligible for consideration by the Classic Era Committee when it meets to vote for the Class of 2028
 The Aug. 2 Bristol Speedway game between the Braves and Reds will not only be the first MLB game ever played in Tennessee but should draw the largest crowd for a single game since the facility holds 146,000 people.