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Bandwagoning The Bandwagon

Our best of 2025

Zach Crizer

28 Dec 2025 — 8 min read

Hey everyone, hope you have enjoyed a nice holiday break. I’ve got one more new edition coming before the end of the year, but first, a little look back.

It’s the most reflective time of the year, and it only felt right to remember the best moments of this newsletter.

We are really proud of this project, and we thought you might enjoy hitting some of the highlights as you look back on 2025 and toward the new year. Hannah sent over her favorite pieces from the year so go along with mine, so we’ve got a full list of our best work here, for your late December perusing.

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The Best of The Bandwagon, 2025

The discourse surrounding the next CBA negotiation ramped up over the course of the past year and will only heighten further in the next 12 months. Rather than react to every bit of posturing, I took advantage of having our own less formal space to give an unsourced opinion on how I thought it play out back in May. Namely, that the league’s priority will not be a salary cap, and that we will not miss games in 2027. You’ve seen similar analysis at other outlets since. —HK

Successfully, and lucratively, navigating the RSN collapse would be the most important thing Manfred could do before he retires. I think his focus will be on how to best set up MLB to accomplish that feat. An ugly labor battle that results in a fractured season would seem to compromise how healthy the sport appears to potential bidders. And beyond that, at a certain point of missing games — a certain percentage of the season — those deals that are set to expire in 2028 would trigger a clause that extends them, postponing Manfred’s ability to do a legacy-defining deal.

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Keeping up with the cycle of advances in pitching is getting harder, because the speed of the cycle is the advancement. We’ll see what next spring brings, but I think this piece I wrote in April captures a distinctly 2020s baseball thing. —ZC

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What I hoped The Bandwagon would be: Zach had long been saying I should ask someone about the acting involved in outfield dekes. So I did! And we wrote about it together. —HK

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The Bandwagon was the first place to report on the contentious meeting between Rob Manfred and the Philadelphia Phillies. I have little interest in a lot of sports news breaking. But it’s nice to know we could still get scoops in our wheelhouse. —HK

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I found myself re-upping this one frequently throughout the season, as the success of pitchers going against the grain by using high, vertical arm angles kept showing up. This is about Hunter Brown, but it could just as easily be about Trey Yesavage. —ZC

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We don’t have to do this. Even if AI worked perfectly (and it doesn’t!) efficacy is not a mandate. As with steroids, we can simply decide the societal damage done by widespread implementation of a particular tool is not worth any one person benefiting from it. And, in fact, that benefit is unfair as it incentivizes an arm’s race of increased usage. That would be bad, so we explicitly curtail the use.

Artificial Intelligence is increasingly relevant and I fear I won’t have anything new to say after writing the intro to this issue. —HK

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Unfortunately, I have seen the future, and it’s every pitcher who throws an occasional runaway slider being accused of pitch fixing by wannabe YouTube sleuths.

In the aftermath of MLB suspending Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase and starter Luis L. Ortiz as part of a gambling investigation, I wrote about how the scandal would alter fans’ experience of the sport, whether they cast the suspicious eye or not.

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MLB limited the stakes of some single-pitch bets this winter as a measure to make this particular type of (alleged) betting less likely, but I think the point holds up. —ZC

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I still can’t believe that ESPN published a column about how outrageous it is that the museum part of the Hall of Fame refuses to acknowledge the existence of Pete Rose when … that’s completely untrue. I only regret not going harder in my critique. But I did include screen grabs of unacknowledged alterations to the article and ample of evidence of the Hall honoring Rose’s accomplishments. —HK

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Dave Martinez’s curiously self-defeating insistence that it’s never the coaches’ fault (or, by extension, responsibility) didn’t seem like a standout moment in the season at the time. But I have found myself thinking about the paradox of defense so many times since. Managers are not a big part of smart baseball analysis, but they must be doing something. Right? —HK

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I hope other baseball writers continue to report on the phenomenon of baserunners pretending that the pitcher is tipping as a way of psyching him out. It’s one of those things that makes sense is happening and I’m glad we got a pitcher to say as much to us. —HK

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We still struggle to comprehend the magnitude of Aaron Judge’s accomplishments. —ZC

In the study of topographical peaks, there are two ways of measuring and understanding a mountain. Elevation tells you how far the pinnacle reaches above sea level, something pretty equivalent to how we use WAR in baseball. It’s cumulative, all-encompassing and uninterested in circumstance. Prominence tells you something closer to the awe factor. That’s the measure of how far a peak rises above its surroundings. How singular is that peak?

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Remember that four-homer game that Nick Kurtz used to announce his immediate status as one of the league’s most dangerous hitters? Yeah, I think it’s worth remembering. —ZC

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“All sports reporting these days feels like sports business reporting.”

Is another thing I wrote when the thought first occurred to me in response to the ALCS, but that has continued to knock around my brain ever since. I like this Bandwagon, but I feel like it could have been even more emphatic. —HK