The 2025 regular season began in Tokyo and it ends tonight in Toronto.
But for baseball people, it never really ends.
While the Dodgers and Blue Jays play for a championship in front of a roaring crowd at Rogers Centre, the next generation of talent is already performing under the desert sun in the Arizona Fall League — a proving ground that produced 21 players on this year’s World Series rosters.
The game may rise in the East at least it settles in a fun location. So the MLB moves westward. Scottsdale, Mesa, Glendale, Peoria, and Surprise are where tomorrow’s champions are taking shape right now.
????️ 21 players in the 2025 World Series once played in the Arizona Fall League — including @mookiebetts, @FreddieFreeman, @43_GeorgeSpringer, @vladdyjr27, and @andresgimenez.
Baseball never stops — it just moves from Toronto to the desert. ????⚾
via @JonathanMayo / @MLBPipeline…— World Baseball Network (@WorldBaseball_) November 1, 2025
A League Built for the Future
Since its creation in 1992, the Arizona Fall League has served as Major League Baseball’s finishing school. Every October, six teams made up of top prospects from across all 30 MLB organizations gather in the desert to play competitive baseball after the regular season.
The list of alumni reads like a Hall of Fame ballot — Derek Jeter, Mike Piazza, Albert Pujols, Bryce Harper, and more recently, Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani. But the 2025 class carries that legacy forward.
This year’s AFL rosters include first-round picks, comeback stories, and international prospects representing 13 countries. From the Royals’ hard-hitting Blake Mitchell to the A’s shortstop Josh Kuroda-Grauer, the league remains baseball’s final classroom before the majors
Twenty-One Connections Between Toronto, Los Angeles, and the Desert
According to MLB Pipeline, 21 players active in the 2025 World Series once played in the Arizona Fall League. That’s 40 percent of the players taking the field in the sport’s biggest series — the same percentage that appeared in this year’s All-Star Game.
It’s a stunning reminder of what the league represents: the final step before the lights get bright.
Among those 21 names:
For the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Arizona Fall League has long been part of their player pipeline.
Mookie Betts once sharpened his game there in 2013 with Surprise. Will Smith, the Dodgers’ steady catcher, posted a .371 average for Glendale in 2017. Tyler Glasnow and Max Muncy also spent their early professional years in the desert. Even Justin Dean, whose defensive instincts helped save Game 6, appeared for Scottsdale in 2019 — a reminder that depth and experience can come from every corner of baseball’s developmental ladder.
On the Toronto Blue Jays side, the connection runs just as deep.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit .351 for Surprise in 2018, previewing the superstar swing that now fills Rogers Centre with noise. Andrés Giménez, then with Scottsdale, refined his game across two AFL stints before becoming one of baseball’s best defenders. Tommy Edman also learned the value of versatility during his time in Surprise, and Chris Bassitt, who takes the mound with quiet authority, once posted a 0.69 ERA in Glendale.
And then there’s Max Scherzer — the bridge between generations. The only Arizona Fall League Hall of Famer on a World Series roster this year, Scherzer pitched for Scottsdale and Phoenix back in 2007 and 2008, long before the lights of October followed him.