MLB milestones to watch in 2025: Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, more aim for history this season

The 2025 Major League Baseball season has arrived. This, of course, means that success or failure at the team level – the current standings and pennant races and all of that – takes primary focus. Unfurling at the same time are those very much related individual performances. Yes, the MVP and Cy Young derbies get most of that bandwidth, but let’s not forget about veteran performers – many of whom are winding down their careers – closing in on milestones. 

Each MLB season brings a new crop of aspiring history-makers, and the 2025 campaign is no exception. Let’s have a look at the most notable of these benchmarks that might be reached at some point during this season. In thrilling numerical order!

The peerless Ohtani won the 2023 American League MVP award as a member of the Angels, and then last season he earned National League MVP laurels on the strength of the first 50-50 season in MLB history. He remains at peak level with the bat, and this season will mark his return to the mound after not pitching in 2024 as he recovered from elbow surgery. So once again he’s going to put up big value as a hitter while running up the score with this work on the mound. If he does win his third straight MVP, then he’ll join Barry Bonds (2001-04) as the only players ever to win three or more consecutive MVP awards. 

Arraez is already the first batsman ever to win three straight batting titles with three different teams (the Marlins in 2022, the Twins in 2023, and the Padres last season). In 2025, he’ll be angling to become just the seventh hitter ever to win at least four consecutive batting crowns. The others to do it are Honus Wagner (1906-09), Ty Cobb (1907-15), Rogers Hornsby (1920-25), Rod Carew (1972-75), Wade Boggs (1985-88), and Tony Gwynn (1994-97). Arraez is a career .323 hitter who turns 28 in April, so you have to like his chances. 

300 home runs: Five players

(Kyle Schwarber, Phillies; Eugenio Suárez, Diamondbacks; Marcell Ozuna, Braves; Salvador Perez, Royals; Mookie Betts, Dodgers)

Well, here’s a crowded one. We might as well do this in table format for purposes of coherence. To the digits: 

Honestly, it wouldn’t be shocking if all these players reached 300 during the 2025 season, even though Betts will obviously need an uptick in his power output relative to last season. Perez can become just the eighth primary catcher to reach 300 career homers. At present, 162 sluggers overall have hit 300 or more home runs. 

400 home runs: Mike Trout, Angels 

Given better health, Trout would’ve been in this club a long time ago and would likely be chasing down 500 right now. Alas and alack, Trout has been unable to avoid injuries really since 2017. In 2024, he was limited to just 29 games, the fewest of his career across an entire season, because of a knee injury that eventually required season-ending surgery. He can still thump, so if he’s able to log a reasonable number of games then he’ll probably get the 22 homers he needs to get to 400. It all comes down to health, though, which has proved depressingly elusive for Trout for a long time. He’d become the 59th member of the 400 homer guild. 

1,000 RBI: Bryce Harper, Phillies; Mike Trout, Angels

The Phillies’ tenured masher needs a mere 24 ribbies to reach quadruple digits in the category. This is one of many in which all it takes is a touch of health and durability for it to happen. Even in the heavily abbreviated 2020 season, Harper tallied 33 RBI, so this one’s all but a lock. As for Trout, the health concerns are obviously more substantial, especially coming off that afore-chronicled 2024 campaign. He needs a modest 46 RBI to reach 1,000, but he’s failed to reach that figure in each of the last two seasons. At present, there are 305 members of the 1,000 RBI club. 

Machado is a tidy 100 hits away from this benchmark. Assuming a general state of health, he’ll get there probably in the second half of the season. Over the past three years, he’s averaged 157 hits per season. Machado is in line to become the 298th player to reach 2,000 hits for his career. As a bonus, Machado needs just nine runs scored to reach 1,000. 

2,000 managerial wins: Terry Francona, Reds

The decorated skipper is going into his first season with Cincy, and he needs just 50 wins to become the 13th manager ever to notch 2,000 or more wins from the dugout. It would take a disastrous season of almost impossible scale in Cincy for the Reds not to win at least 50 games, so Francona is all but a lock for this one. He was probably already on his way to the Hall of Fame one day for his managerial work, and this should cinch it. 

The Dodger legend and future Hall of Famer is sitting on 2,968 career strikeouts. Expert use of arithmetic reveals that he needs just 32 more to become the 20th pitcher ever to get 3,000 strikeouts. Health will be the key for the 37-year-old lefty. He’s coming off a 2024 season in which he worked just 30 innings (and struck out just 24 batters) and he’s going to open 2025 on the injured list as he recovers from surgeries on his left toe and knee. The expectation is that he’ll certainly manage enough volume to get those missing 32 Ks, but his tortured recent health history – he hasn’t managed a qualifying number of innings since 2019 – means this one bears closer monitoring than you might think.