What each MLB team has to be thankful for this Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving Day, it’s a good time to consider what the fanbases of each MLB team have to be thankful for.

It’s that wonderful time of year when MLB fans can dream about their teams signing Shohei Ohtani while enjoying a bountiful Thanksgiving feast.

This handy matrix assesses each team’s chance of signing Ohtani, from the Yankees and Dodgers on the “likely” end to the Rays and A’s on the “not bloody likely” end. One of those teams will be very thankful in about a month or so.

When it comes to Thanksgiving Day, the food is the thing. According to FiveThirtyEight.com, the ultimate Thanksgiving meal would consist of roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, butter rolls, and pumpkin pie.

They used a head-to-head matchup system to determine the winners in each category. The worst Thanksgiving meal would be tofurky, frog eye salad, Jell-O salad, Yorkshire pudding, and Snickers salad.

FiveThirtyEight.com also rejects the commonly held belief that people gain five to ten pounds over the holidays. According to the research, it’s more like one pound. People may feel like they’ve gained 10 pounds after stuffing their faces, but the research says they don’t. To that, I say, “Challenge accepted.”

Sadly, baseball fans won’t have any baseball to watch on Thanksgiving. The day belongs to football. By tradition, the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Tigers will each host a game on Turkey Day, with the Cowboys playing the Vikings in the morning and the Lions playing the Chargers in the afternoon.

If you’re lucky, the big meal will put you to sleep by the time the Redskins-Giants game comes on late in the day. That is not must-see TV.

The most important part of the day is the giving of thanks, which is quite unlike the airing of grievances that is a big part of Festivus. In the spirit of the season, here is one thing the fanbases of each MLB team have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.