MLB Enters Crucial Second Half With Big Questions Looming

ATLANTA — As the 2025 MLB All-Star Game at Truist Park is now history, with the National League winning in unprecedented fashion, the focus in baseball now turns to the second half of the season, and there is no shortage of major storylines and pressing issues. Among them:

• What’s next for Cal Raleigh? The Mariners catcher is baseball’s man of the moment, dominating the sport like few before him and winning the MLB Home Run Derby on Monday. Several records are quite reachable for him, including the single-season home run mark for a switch-hitter, the most by a catcher, and the Mariners’ single-season record. More importantly, the Mariners are also looking for just their second playoff berth since 2001.
• How much will attendance and viewership grow? Entering the All-Star break, the league was essentially flat in attendance after a prior gain of 2% earlier in the season. The league, however, remains on track to post its best year-end total since 2017, and perhaps earlier. Each of the league’s national-rights holders, meanwhile, is posting even stronger seasons, and MLB streaming is setting numerous records on local and national levels. ESPN, particularly, is in the midst of a renaissance with Sunday Night Baseball viewership, up 11% and also at its best level in eight years, despite the network’s intent to leave the package after the season. 
• What happens with MLB’s national media rights? The league is still looking to resell the national rights being abandoned by ESPN. A prior hope of completing new deals by the All-Star Game, however, has passed. The pacts will be a bridge to 2028, when a much larger reconstruction of MLB’s media rights is planned. 
• Can there be any improvement in MLB’s worsening labor situation? With 17 months to go before the expiration of the current labor pact, the situation already looks grim, and the prospect of the first missed games due to labor since 1995 is growing. The MLB Players Association is accusing the league of pursuing a salary cap long hated by the union, and it says it would disrupt the sport’s current run of growth. The league, conversely, is heightening its call for systemic change to baseball’s economics. 
• Will the Dodgers repeat as World Series champions? Early on, Los Angeles looked like a juggernaut in its title defense, winning its first 8 games and 21 of the first 31. The Dodgers, however, are just 5–7 this month, and despite a $406 million luxury-tax payroll that is a league record, have been much more beatable over the last two months as injuries have mounted. Amid heightened competition across the National League, a return to the Fall Classic is far from assured. Aiding the Dodgers, however, is Shohei Ohtani’s continued return to pitching.  
• Will there be baseball joy in New York? The Yankees are trying to win their first World Series in 16 years, and the Mets are seeking their first title in 39 years. Both teams are spending aggressively, posting the No. 2 and No. 3 luxury-tax payrolls in the league, and both are drawing well at the gate, helping to make the Big Apple one of the sport’s epicenters. Each club, however, has battled midseason swoons and is looking up at rivals leading their divisions. 
• Does anybody beat The Miz? Brewers rookie phenom Jacob Misiorowski, who gained an All-Star nod after just five starts, continues to electrify the sport, even as his appearance in Atlanta drew rebukes in some corners. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, however, came to his defense.

“Do I understand five starts is short? Yeah, I do. And do I want to make that the norm? No, I don’t,” Manfred said. “But I think it was the right decision given where we were.”