Useful Notes / Current People to Know in MLB

As the biggest professional baseball league in the world, Major League Baseball has quite the list of active people associated with it, from players to managers to announcers. Here's a list of the big names to know in MLB right now.

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Infielders

• Miguel Cabrera, formerly of the Detroit Tigers is currently a first baseman, though he has also played third base and in the outfield at other points in his career. A week before the 2014 season began, he signed a 10-year, $292 million contract extension with the Tigers, at the time the largest contract in baseball history. He originally came up with the Florida (now Miami) Marlins halfway through the 2003 season, and put up decent numbers for a then-20-year-old rookie and contributed a bit to the Marlins' World Series win that year. He spent the next few years in relative obscurity despite several all-star appearances, as the Marlins were fairly mediocre and he was outshined by several other players, like Albert Pujols. Then, during the 2007 offseason, he and the Marlins' ace pitcher Dontrelle Willis were traded to the Tigers for a package of very good prospects. People's opinions of the trade were somewhat mixed at the time, and as Willis was never even remotely good after this point and the Marlins finished 10 games better than the Tigers in 2008, it made the trade look initially bad on Detroit's part. However, none of the prospects the Tigers gave up ever had any success with the Marlins (though one or two of them had some degree of success with other teams), while Cabrera would reach far greater heights than he had with the Marlins. Spending the next several years as the Tigers' first baseman, he made a few more all-star appearances and led the majors in batting average in 2011, and helped lead the Tigers to the playoffs that year. He moved to third base in 2012 to make room at first for Prince Fielder, who the Tigers had signed to a massive contract during the offseason. In that season, he hit .330 with 44 home runs and 139 RBI's, and became the first winner of the hitting Triple Crown (leading his league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in/RBIs) since 1967, a feat that many had once thought was no longer possible in the modern game, due to batters becoming more specialized more in either hitting for average or power at the cost of the other. As a result, he won his first MVP handily, although many think that Mike Trout should have won it—Cabrera was certainly a better hitter than Trout that year, but Trout was a much better defender and a much faster baserunner. Incredibly, he did even better the following season in most of his statistics and looked like he might become the first back-to-back triple crown winner, but injuries at the end of the season limited his power greatly, and though he finished with a .348 batting average, 44 home runs, and 137 RBI's, he still fell well short of the triple crown, thanks to Chris Davis hitting 53 homers. He did still win his third consecutive batting title and second consecutive MVP award. He went on to win yet another batting title in 2015, despite suffering both lingering pain from an offseason ankle surgery and a midseason calf strain that put him on the disabled list for the first time in his career. He rebounded a bit in 2016, but then had an uncharacteristically bad year in 2017, ending a streak of 7 consecutive all-star appearances and failing to get any MVP votes for the first time in his career. He started off 2018 looking like he was going to bounce back a bit, but injuries ended up costing him most of the season. Only time will tell if he can bounce back to his earlier levels of play. As of the end of the 2021 season, during which Cabrera became the newest member of the 500-homer club, he was the leading average hitter among active players, though only slightly ahead of José Altuve (.308 to .307). Cabrera, who became the newest member of the 3000-hit club in April 2022, retired at the end of the 2023 season with a place in Cooperstown all but assured.
• Robinson Canó, a second baseman who is currently a free agent, made his name with the Big Apple's other team, the Yankees, before signing a 10-year, $240 million contract with the Seattle Mariners in the 2013-14 offseason. Following the beginning of Alex Rodriguez's decline from his age and injuries in 2009-10, Cano became generally regarded as the Yankees' best player, and possibly the best second baseman in the game, thanks to his great defensive skills and power numbers that would be impressive even if he wasn't a middle infielder. At the 2011 Home Run Derby, he won and broke the record for most home runs hit in the Final Round with several outs to spare. He was being pitched to by his dad, a once minor league pitcher who never quite made it to the big leagues. Canó was named the AL Captain of the next two derbies, but didn't have nearly as much success, and was booed relentlessly by Kansas City Royals fans at the 2012 Derby (in Kansas City) for not picking any Royals to go to the derby when he originally said he would. He had a rough first half of 2015 thanks in part to acid reflux, but managed to recover his mojo in the second half despite a sports hernia, and seems to have mostly bounced back in the years since. He tested positive in 2018 for a medicine banned because of its known use as a masking agent for PEDs, was held in violation of the anti-PED policy because the officials determined that was likely what he was using it for, and dropped his appeal, accepting an 80-game suspension. He was dealt to the Mets during the 2018–19 offseason along with closer Edwin Díaz, a trade which became much disliked by Mets fans the following season, as both Canó and Diaz had bad years in 2019. He rebounded somewhat in 2020, but was suspended for the entire 2021 season following another failed PED test. His return in 2022 was poor enough that he got cut by the Mets less than a month into the season, which was followed by stints with the Padres and Braves that went about as well and lasted about as long as his time with the Mets did.
• Joey Votto is the Cincinnati Reds' first baseman. The Canadian was on almost everyone's short list of the best hitters in baseball from his 2010 MVP season to 2018 or so, although he also somehow manages to be a bit more obscure and underrated than one would expect. He ends up in debates about sabermetrics a lot, thanks to his high walk totals that have given him a career .412 on-base percentage; he had the highest OBP of any active player until age-related decline took Mike Trout past him in 2022. Because of his great plate discipline and frequent walks, some, including his former manager Dusty Baker, have criticized him for not being aggressive enough and not driving in enough runs for a middle-of-the-order hitter, even though he usually puts up decent RBI totals and has hit 100 RBIs twice. In addition, as sabermetricians will point out, he probably contributes more runs by getting on base as often as possible at the cost of a few home runs rather than swinging for the fences on pitches well outside the strike zone like some seem to want him to, and his RBIs are largely dependent on the hitters before him getting on anyway. Sadly, his formerly prodigious hitting has declined a bit in recent years as he's gotten older. After a temporary benching midway through 2020's 60-game sprint, he decided to change his approach. After previously focusing on plate discipline at the sacrifice of power, he began to focus on power while sacrificing plate discipline, leading to more offensive production. Votto was named NL Player of the Month for July 2021 after setting the league on fire, setting a franchise record by hitting home runs in 7 straight games from July 24-30^note and nearly tied the Major League record of 8 (Ken Griffey Jr., Don Mattingly, Dale Long) were it not for the slightly taller outfield fence at New York's Citi Field. A hit that would likely have been a homr run at Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park bounced off the top of the wall for a long single at Citi., including two back-to-back two homer games for 9 total dingers in the stretch for 11 overall in the month.
• Kris Bryant of the Colorado Rockies was primarily a third baseman earlier in his career, though he now mostly plays left field. He has been getting attention for his amazing power since being picked 2nd in the draft by the Chicago Cubs in 2013 and has drawn many accolades for it: Over 4 consecutive years, he won the Golden Spikes Award (given annually to the top college baseball player in the United States), then the Minor League Player of the Year Award (more or less what it sounds like), then the NL Rookie of the Year, then the NL MVP (no other player ever even won all 4 of those awards at all, much less in consecutive years). Along with several other star players, Bryant was instrumental in ending the Cubs' 108-year World Series drought in 2016. Though most of his stats are impressive, he also has a reputation for being terribly un-clutch, with his hitting stats generally being worse in higher-stakes situations than they are in lower-stakes situations. With Bryant set to become a free agent at the end of the 2021 season, the Cubs, preparing to start a rebuild, dealt him to the Giants mere hours before the trade deadline, getting two prospects in a deal that most sports media believed heavily favored the Giants. Prior to the 2022 season, he signed a 7 year deal with the Colorado Rockies. His first season with the Rockies hasn't gone very well, as he's spent most of the year injured.
• José Altuve plays second base for the Houston Astros. At 5 feet, 6 inches tall^*1.68 meters, in metric, Altuve is the shortest currently active player in baseball, and some doubted whether someone his size could succeed at the big league level. He had some initial struggles, but since 2014 has become one of the best players in the game, twice leading the AL in batting average, to go along with lots of stolen bases and packing a pretty good amount of power for a second baseman. His development into a superstar has helped the Astros become a perennial playoff contender after years of being a laughingstock. Along with several other homegrown stars, Altuve led the Astros to their first World Series victory in 2017, thanks in part to his 7 home runs in the 2017 postseason (including 3 in one game in the ALDS), and he won his first MVP Award shortly after. His short stature has been fodder for quite a few memes over the years, and led to some baseball fans using his height as a unit of measurement called an "Altuve" (for example, Randy Johnson, at 6' 10" tall, could have his height expressed as 1.24 Altuves). However, Altuve's reputation took a significant hit over the 2019-20 offseason, when reporters exposed the Astros' elaborate sign-stealing methods in the 2017 championship campaign. As one of the faces of that team, Altuve naturally became a Hate Sink for rival fanbases, and although analyses of the Astros' sign stealing methods tend to find he didn't use stolen signs as much as many of his teammates did, he remains a target for intense boos in many opposing stadiums. He had somewhat of a down year in 2020, though he did still contribute to leading the Astros to the ALCS, and rebounded to his typical self in 2021 and 2022.
• Manny Machado is a third baseman for the San Diego Padres, who also played shortstop before the emergence of Fernando Tatís Jr. (see below). Drafted #3 overall by the Baltimore Orioles in 2010, he progressed quickly through the minors, making his MLB debut in August 2012. In his first full season with the O's, he set a new MLB record for most multi-hit games before turning 21 (a record previously held by Ty Cobb), made the All-Star Game, and led the AL in doubles. On top of that, he won the AL's Gold Glove at third and the AL's Platinum Glove as the best fielder at any position—even drawing comparisons to Brooks Robinson (the third baseman for the great Orioles teams of the 1960's and 70's, who is commonly considered the best defensive third baseman in history) in the field. Machado went on to help elevate the O's out of their Audience-Alienating Era and into a period of success where they made the playoffs 3 times in 5 years, in which Machado made three more All-Star Games and established himself as a player good for 30-plus homers a season with a decent average, while retaining his top-notch fielding skills. With Machado becoming a free agent at the end of the 2018 season and the Orioles in the middle of a terrible season, the O's dealt him to the Dodgers in midseason for a slew of prospects, where he helped them to a World Series appearance. At the end of the 2018 season, he and Bryce Harper (below in the "Outfielders" folder) were seen as having the potential to sign long-term deals for at least $300 million... but wound up being the unwilling faces of a free agency market that had apparently dried up on them. In the end, Machado got his $300 million deal over 10 years with the Padres, signing shortly after the start of spring training in 2019. After four good years, including a couple of All-Star selections and a second-place finish in MVP voting in 2022, the Padres replaced that contract with a new 11-year, $350 million deal after the 2022 season.
• Nolan Arenado is a third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. Drafted in the second round by the Colorado Rockies in 2009, he had tremendous hitting credentials out of high school, but was viewed as somewhat lacking in the field. He vastly improved in that area in the minors, and made his first MLB appearance early in the 2013 season. Arenado went on to become the first NL rookie to win a Gold Glove at third base, and didn't stop there—he's since become the only infielder ever to win Gold Gloves in each of his first seven seasons, with said streak now at 10 after the 2022 season—tying all-but-certain Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki for the most consecutive Gold Gloves to start an MLB career. His hitting didn't suffer, either; he led all MLB players in homers and RBI in the 2015–19 period. Arenado signed an 8-year, $260 million deal with the Rockies in the 2018–19 offseason, including an option to become a free agent after the 2021 season. At the time, it was the richest contract on a per-season basis for a position player in MLB history, but the record didn't last long, being obliterated by Mike Trout's deal later in the same offseason. However, by the end of the 2019 season, he got frustrated with the Rockies front office and what he saw as a failure to improve the team, and after a down year in (COVID-affected) 2020 thanks to shoulder issues, he was traded to the Cardinals. Pretty much everyone in the national media concluded that the Redbirds fleeced the Rockies, getting one of the best current infielders while not giving up any top prospects and getting the Rockies to pay over $50 million of his remaining contract.
• Fernando Tatís Jr., a Dominican shortstop for the San Diego Padres, was arguably the new face of baseball before the 2022 season (Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Juan Soto, and Shohei Ohtani may have something to say about that). The son of Fernando Tatís Sr., an MLB journeyman third baseman from 1997 to 2010, the younger Fernando was signed by the White Sox as a 16-year-old in 2015, but traded to the Padres before ever playing a professional game. He started in the minors the following year, soon cementing himself as one of baseball's top prospects. Unlike many other teams that chose to manipulate young players' service time to keep them from free agency, the Padres didn't wait to put him on their regular roster, promoting him to The Show for Opening Day in 2019. Before Tatis' season was cut short by an August back injury, he slashed .317/.379/.590 with 22 homers. His 2020 slash line wasn't quite as awesome, but still very good; in the COVID-19-abbreviated season, he led MLB in exit velocity^*average speed at which fair balls that he hit left the bat, percentage of hard-hit balls, and percentage of plate appearances in which he made contact with the barrel of the bat. He finished the 2020 season with 143 games played, a bit less than a full season, with a slash line of .301/.374/.582, 39 homers, 27 steals, and a Baseball-Reference WAR of 7.0, the last of these a record for any player within his first 150 games. Before turning 22. The Padres didn't wait to lock him up, signing him to a 14-year, $340 million deal in the 2020–21 offseason—the richest contract ever given to a player not yet eligible for salary arbitration. While the Padres were a disappointment in the 2021 season, Tatís wasn't, leading the NL in homers. During the 2021–22 offseason, he broke his left wrist in a motorcycle accident in the Dominican, costing him most of that season. As he was preparing to come back, he drew an 80-game PED suspension; he didn't bother to appeal it, admitting that he'd failed to read the ingredients list on a ringworm medication that happened to include a banned substance.
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr., first baseman and part-time DH for the Toronto Blue Jays, is another son of a former Dominican MLB player—in his case, Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero. Born in Montreal while his father was playing for the Expos, though mostly raised in the Dominican, he was signed by the Jays as a 16-year-old third baseman in 2015. Also like Tatís, he became one of baseball's top prospects, tearing up the minor leagues as a hitter. He also debuted in 2019, but not until late April; while the Jays said he had suffered an injury during spring training, conspiracy theorists latched onto the fact that if the Jays waited until two weeks into the season to promote him, they'd have an extra year of team control (through 2025 instead of 2024). Guerrero put up solid but not spectacular numbers in 2019 and the COVID-shortened 2020 season, and was moved to first base with occasional DH duty. After losing more than 40 pounds (18 kg) during the 2020–21 offseason, he fully lived up to his minor-league promise, hitting over .300, tying for the MLB home run title, leading MLB outright in runs scored and total bases, and leading the AL in on-base, slugging, and raw and adjusted OPS. The only thing that kept him from being AL MVP was Shohei Ohtani's historic season as both hitter AND pitcher.
• Freddie Freeman is a first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers who made his name with the Atlanta Braves. Born in Southern California to Canadian parents (making him a citizen of both countries), he was signed by the Braves out of high school and first made it to The Show as a September 2010 call-up. Freeman emerged as a star in 2013, when he made his first All-Star appearance, and after a couple of injury-plagued seasons in the middle of the decade established himself as a perennial All-Star. This was capped off with NL MVP honors in the COVID-shortened 2020 season and a World Series ring in 2021, after which he signed with the Dodgers as a free agent. Perhaps most notably, he's the only player to have been named to the All-MLB Team in each of the first five years of its existence (first team in 2020 and 2023, second team in 2019, 2021, and 2022).
• Matt Olson is a first baseman for the Atlanta Braves who started his MLB career with the Oakland Athletics. A ferocious power hitter, Olson made his A's debut in 2016, although it wasn't until 2017 when he began to make an impact. That year, he finished with an OPS of 1.003 through 59 games, and he even endeed up 4th in AL Rookie of the Year voting. Olson continued to put in great performances each year with the A's. In 2019, he was a major factor in the A's making the postseason. In 2021, he made his first All-Star team and finished 8th in AL MVP voting. However, Olson's career took an interesting turn when in 2022, he was traded to his hometown of Atlanta to replace Freeman. He immediately signed an 8-year, $168 million contract, and while he mashed in 2022, his 2023 season was something truly special. Olson's 54 home runs and 139 RB Is led the majors, while his .604 slugging percentage led the NL. In any other year he would've won MVP, but similarly impressive seasons from the Dodgers' Freeman and Mookie Betts, as well as his own teammate, Ronald Acuña, left him in a hilariously-misleading 4th place.

Outfielders

• Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels is considered by many to be the best player in baseball. Trout made his major league debut late in the 2011 season, at the age of 19, and initially struggled, despite showing some impressive skills. He was not with the big league team team at the beginning of the 2012, receiving a call up to the majors about a month into the season. Trout proceeded to set the league on fire with his hitting, baserunning, and fielding abilities, finishing near the top in several offensive categories. Trout's fantastic season sparked a discussion at the end of the season. While Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera won the triple crown (finishing first in batting average, home runs, and RBIs, a feat that hadn't been accomplished in almost half a century), an argument using statistical analysis was made that Trout actually had the more valuable season, since his hitting numbers were close to Cabrera's, and Trout had clearly outperformed Cabrera in fielding and baserunning. Cabrera wound up winning the MVP, with Trout taking a close second. However Trout was a unanimous selection for AL Rookie of the Year (his time in the big leagues in 2011 was too short to make him ineligible for the award). He placed either first or second in the AL MVP voting for the next four years, finishing second to Cabrera again in 2013 and second to the Toronto Blue Jays' Josh Donaldson in 2015, and won the MVP in 2014 and 2016. Though he missed out on the top 3 in MVP voting in 2017, that was only because he missed six weeks due to a thumb injury that required surgery; his stats for that season (adjusted for missed time) were comparable to his past numbers. Amazingly, as good as Trout has been so far in his career, he might be getting even better, with his offensive and defensive statistics in 2018 exceeding anything he's done so far- he's hitting for more power than he has in the past, and he's noticeably improved his throwing arm, long considered one of the few minor weaknesses in his game. Nonetheless, despite leading MLB in on-base percentage and OPS that year, he was a distant second to Mookie Betts of the Red Sox (who had a pretty awesome season as well) in MVP voting. All this caused the rest of MLB to drool at the prospect of a 28-year-old Trout entering unrestricted free agency in 2020. The Angels poured cold water on all of that shortly before the start of the 2019 season, ripping up the final two years of his previous deal and replacing it with a 12-year, $430 million contract—setting a new record for the richest per-season deal in MLB history, and at the time a new record for the richest total deal in any sport.^note The previous record for richest sports contract had been held by Mexican boxer Canelo Álvarez, who signed a deal with subscription streaming service DAZN (pronounced "da zone") in 2018 that will net him a bit over $360 million. Trout followed up his new contract with his third MVP win in 2019. However, he missed most of the 2021 season and a significant part of the 2022 season to injury. His having missed games every season since 2017 has led to him developing a reputation for being somewhat injury-plagued and let to some questions as to whether he's still truly the best player if he's struggling to play consistently, though most would still say that he's the clear best when fully healthy. His OBP of .415 going into the 2023 season is the best of any active player.
• Bryce Harper, now with the Philadelphia Phillies, made his debut in 2012 for the Washington Nationals, on the same day that Mike Trout was called up for the first time that year. While he had an impressive beginning to his career, he did tail off later in the year. Overall, however, he still had a good year - perhaps the best year ever for a 19-year-old - earning an All-Star selection and easily winning the 2012 NL Rookie of the Year. He has occasionally been compared to fellow young phenom outfielder Mike Trout - coming into 2012, Harper and Trout were widely considered the best prospects in the game and hailed for their incredible talents and potential. Like Trout, Harper possesses the tools to excel at all aspects of the game and has had success at a very young age. However, those comparisons didn't quite seem to hold up for their first few years in the league, when Trout put up otherworldly numbers while Harper wasn't able to get quite the same level out of his talent. He also suffered a few injury-related setbacks. That changed in 2015, when Harper had a historically great offensive season despite still only being 22 years old, winning the NL MVP and looking every bit as good as Trout - maybe even better. However, his performance ended up taking a massive step backwards in 2016, with him "only" being a somewhat above-average player that season. The 2017 season saw him return to his 2015 form before his season prematurely ended with an August knee injury. Then in 2018, he got off to a horrific start, but returned to superstar form after winning the 2018 All-Star Home Run Derby. Has an interesting and polarizing reputation amongst fans and other players, particularly in 2016 after an interview where he made his intention use his career to shift the culture of baseball to allow for more personality and freedom of expression without the antiquated unwritten rules of the game getting in the way, though in his "walk year"^note the final year before he became an unrestricted free agent of 2018 he toned down those sentiments. Depending on your view of Harper, this painted him as somewhere in between a punk who dishonors the game and a well-needed breath of fresh air looking to shake up a sport that had gone stale. After his MVP season, views on him as a player range from Hype Backlash^*"This guy's not nearly as good as everyone keeps saying he is." to Worthy Opponent^*"I don't like him/his team, but you gotta tip your cap to the guy." and, to some managers, even The Dreaded^*When he's on his hotter streaks, some teams just avoid pitching to him altogether. Along with Manny Machado (in "Infielders" above), Harper had an unexpectedly prolonged free agency period, finally signing with the Phils, his previous team's hated rival, for $330 million over 13 years during 2019 spring training. He had arguably his best season in 2021, leading MLB in slugging and OPS (both raw and adjusted), and finishing in the MLB top 10 for many key hitting stats, claiming his second NL MVP award.
• Andrew McCutchen is an outfielder for the Brewers who was considered one of the best players in the National League in the early 2010's, with the tools to excel at virtually every aspect of the game, though in recent years his skills have declined somewhat (in particular, he's lost quite a bit of speed). Previously, he had quickly become the face of the Pittsburgh Pirates after his major league debut in 2009, and in 2013 he both won the NL MVP and led the Pirates to their first playoff berth and first winning season since 1992, ending what had been the longest streak of consecutive losing seasons in the history of MLB - or any other professional North American league. He was also well-known for his long dreadlocks, until he had them all cut off for a charity auction before the 2015 season. This and many other charitable acts, as well as having another great season in 2015, resulted in him winning the Roberto Clemente Award, one of the most prestigious awards in professional baseball (Clemente being a legendary Pittsburgh Pirate himself just makes the award even more special). He had an uncharacteristically bad year in 2016, which along with some pitching injuries led to the Pirates missing the playoffs after winning a wild card spot the previous 3 years. His struggles continued at the start of 2017, but a few months into the season, he finally turned it around and started hitting like he had in previous years (though his fielding and base-stealing abilities have sadly not returned, and his hitting has generally been more good than great). Despite this, the once-again struggling Pirates traded him to the San Francisco Giants before the start of the 2018 season, but within months of his stay with the Giants, was traded later in the season to the Yankees. He signed with the Phils as a free agent after that season. He got off to a solid start in 2019, but then he suffered a season-ending ACL injury in June while running the bases. In March 2022, McCutchen signed a one year deal with the Milwaukee Brewers.
• Giancarlo Stanton, formerly Mike Stanton, ^note His full name is Giancarlo Cruz Michael Stanton- he went by "Mike" until 2012 is an outfielder for the New York Yankees. Known mainly for his incredible power, hitting lots of home runs and hitting most of them very, very far- During his time with the Miami Marlins, he led the NL in Home Runs in 2014 despite playing in one of the largest ballparks in the MLB half the time, and from his debut in 2010 to his trade to the Yankees after the 2017 season, he hit more homers than any other player in the NL despite both the unfavorable conditions of his ballpark and frequent injuries costing him playing time. ^note Stanton hit 267 homers over that span; the next highest mark in the NL over that span was 227 by Jay Bruce, in almost 200 more games played than Stanton (for what it's worth, Bruce also hit 7 more in the AL when he spent the last two months of 2017 with the Indians) In the 2014-2015 offseason, he signed a 13-year, $325 million contract with the Marlins, both the longest and the most expensive contract in baseball history (though not the highest by average salary per year), which came as a surprise to some, given the usual penny-pinching tendencies of former Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria and Stanton's previous public disagreements with the franchise (on account of Loria's penny-pinching, they rarely ever spent money trying to field a decent team and occasionally went through fire sales, most notably a series of trades in 2012 that saw the Marlins trade virtually every player they had making any amount of money). However, Stanton's contract is heavily backloaded—the Marlins were on the hook for "only" $30 million in the first three years of the deal, and after those three cheap years were up, the Marlins' new ownership group, looking to cut payroll, traded him to the Yankees for a very light return just so that the Yankees would pay his salary. Stanton is due $77 million for the next three years, after which he has an option to opt out. He put on an amazing show in the 2016 Home Run Derby with 61 home runs across 3 rounds, shattering the old record for most home runs in the derby. And then in 2017, he became the first of two players to join the 50-homer club that season, falling just short of entering the 60-homer club (59), and ultimately winning the NL MVP award for his efforts. He had somewhat of a slow start in 2018, and that along with some persistent strikeout problems and a reputation for being unclutch led to criticism and the occasional booing from Yankees fans. His 2018 was overall a perfectly fine year by his typical standards, but his 2019 season was spent mostly on the injured list thanks to various injuries.
• Aaron Judge, currently the joint tallest position player in baseball at 6'7" (2.01 m, or 1.20 Altuves),^note Judge was the tallest by himself until Oneil Cruz, a shortstop (!!), debuted with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2022. plays right field for the Yankees. He made his MLB debut as a late-season call-up in 2016, but didn't do too great at first, striking out in close to half his plate appearances that year, and he missed the last three weeks of the season with an injury, which meant that for award purposes, his rookie season would not come until 2017. Judge burst onto the national scene in that season, putting up MVP-level numbers for the first half of the season and breaking Joe DiMaggio's team record for homers in a rookie season before the All-Star break. He was chosen as an All-Star starter, and also won the Home Run Derby on the night before the game. He fell into a slump for about a month after the break, but eventually adjusted well enough to become the first rookie ever to hit 50 homers in a season, also being named unanimously as AL Rookie of the Year. He was also mentioned as a possible MVP candidate for much of the year, ultimately finishing in second place, behind José Altuve. Since Altuve is the shortest player in baseball, with a playing style almost the exact opposite of Judge's (speed and contact hitting, as opposed to Judge's hard-swinging, high-power approach), they naturally elicited lots of comparisons with each other. Best known for prodigious power; besides hitting 52 dingers as a rookie (breaking Mark McGwire's old rookie record, though Judge's record fell two seasons later to the New York Mets' Pete Alonso), he twice set records for exit velocity of a batted ball. He also became the first player in over 60 years to collect 100 walks as a rookie, but also struck out more than 200 times (placing him in the top 10 in MLB history for single-season strikeouts by a batter). One of the most prominent examples of a "Three True Outcomes" (walks, strikeouts, home runs) hitter, he ultimately set the rookie record in all three categories. He has something of a reputation as being an all-or-nothing player, subject to incredible hot streaks and horrific slumps—in addition to his positive records, he also set records for most consecutive games with a strikeout and most strikeouts in one postseason, even though the Yankees only played 13 games and didn't reach the World Series (though that record ended up being broken just two weeks later by the Dodgers' Cody Bellinger). Judge lost a good chunk of the 2018 season when a pitch hit and broke his right wrist, then lost a good chunk of the 2019 season to what was initially called an oblique strain. In spring training in 2020, it came out that the Yankees medical staff had misdiagnosed Judge, who actually had been suffering from a stress fracture in a rib that caused him to miss the first month-plus of that season. He came back healthy in 2021 except for a bout with COVID, and after turning down a 7-year deal of over $210 million from the Yankees before the start of his walk year in 2022 proceeded to have a season for the ages, contending for a Triple Crown and becoming the first player since the steroid era to hit 60 homers in a season. Judge ended with 62 homers, breaking Roger Maris' AL record of 61, and ran away with AL MVP honors. He then signed a 9-year, $360 million deal, at the time the richest in MLB history by per-season average, to stay in The Bronx. Yankee fans consider him the heir apparent to Derek Jeter due to their similar work ethics and professional personalities. This was further cemented in the 2022–23 offseason when the Yankees named Judge their new captain, a post that had been vacant since Jeter's retirement.
• Mookie Betts plays right field for the Dodgers, and is at least in the conversation for the title of "best player in baseball", although as of 2021 Trout is still the consensus leader for that accolade. He started out as a second baseman, first being called up by the Red Sox in the middle of the 2014 season—though he also played center field in that season, and moved to right near the end of the 2015 season. Despite being much closer in size to Altuve than to Judge (5'9"), he has above-average power at the plate; he's also one of the relatively few members of the so-called "30–30 club" (30 homers and 30 steals in a season), reaching the milestone in 2018. He won Gold Gloves in each of the last three seasons (2016–2018), finished runner-up to Trout in 2016 AL MVP balloting, and in 2018 led the majors in batting average, slugging, and runs scored on the way to MVP honors. Betts was dealt to the Dodgers along with starting pitcher David Price (see below) in the 2019–20 offseason.
• Juan Soto plays right field for the Padres, and has seriously been compared to Ted Williams for his hitting potential. A Dominican who was a teammate of Fernando Tatís Jr. (in the "Infielders" folder) in the Dominican Prospect League for teenage Latin American players, he was signed by the Nationals in October 2015, proceeding to demolish minor-league pitching before an injury crisis led the Nats to call up the then-19-year-old Soto in late May 2018. As a rookie, he had an OPS of .923 in 494 plate appearances. Putting that number into historic perspective: Only 11 players in the last 100 years had that much playing time in their age-19 seasons, including four Hall of Famers—and none matched Soto's OPS. The next season, in which the Nats won the World Series, he hit 34 regular-season homers—more than either Trout, Mickey Mantle, or Williams achieved at age 20. And then in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, he missed the first two weeks after what he believed was a false positive for the virus... and proceeded to slash .351/.490/.695 (with his batting average leading the NL), giving him an OPS almost 100 points higher than any other 21-year-old in baseball history. In 2021, he led MLB in on-base and was close to the lead in almost every other key hitting stat. During the 2022 season, he turned down a 15-year, $440 million deal with the Nats, who traded him to the Padres for a treasure trove of prospects just before the trade deadline, where he joined his former Dominican teammate Tatís. While he's received occasional criticism for his antics in the batter's box, most notably a shuffle in the box between select pitches, at the same time he's quick to (silently) congratulate a pitcher who got the better of him in an at-bat. Soto has also been lauded for his humility (the shuffle notwithstanding) and a work ethic that borders on the obsessive.
• Ronald Acuña Jr. is a Venezuelan outfielder who has spent his entire MLB career to date with the Atlanta Braves and has emerged as another of the new faces of baseball. Debuting in the minors in 2015, he made it to The Show in 2018 and hit .293 with 26 homers, becoming only the seventh player to hit 25 MLB homers before turning 21 and earning Rookie of the Year honors in the process. He's gone on to make every All-Star Game played during his career (COVID-19 scuttled the 2020 edition), and reached a new level in 2023, when he became the first player ever with 40 homers and 70 stolen bases in the same season.^note No other player with 40 homers in a season had even stolen 50 in the same season before then. Acuña was the unanimous NL MVP that season.
• Nick Castellanos is a right fielder and part-time third baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, playing for them since 2022. Castellanos is a fairly decent player in his own right, not someone particularly noteworthy for his home runs or defensive prowess, but why he's become a name to know is because he has possibly the most unfortunate timing in baseball, as he has become the Interrupting Meme of the game due to a running string of moments in which he will be at bat, the broadcasters will be discussing something unfortunate, and he will make a big offensive play in some capacity in the middle of it. It first came to prominence when he was a member of the Cincinnati Reds and Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman said a derogatory slur into a hot mic when referring to Kansas City, then later apologized it live, with Castellanos homering as he apologized. He would later hit home runs during a broadcaster discussing Tatis Jr.'s injury and during George Gorman's obituary during a Royals broadcast, and get his first hit as a Phillie during a discussion about Pete Walker's DUI. It later continued with home runs on the day of Dwayne Haskins' death, the anniversary of 9/11, the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (he hit two home runs that day for added irony), and when fans researched his career, they discovered that he hit his first home run as a professional baseball player in the minor leaues on the night that Osama Bin Laden was killed, which only added to the absurdity, and there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame.

Catchers

• Salvador Pérez has played his entire career to date with the Kansas City Royals. The Venezuelan was signed by the Royals when he was 16, rising through the minors before making his major-league debut late in the 2011 season. He suffered a knee injury that cost him about half of the 2012 season, but emerged the next year as an All-Star, earning the first of his five Gold Gloves to date. In that season, he was also the catcher for Mariano Rivera's last All-Star appearance. Pérez went on to earn World Series MVP honors in 2015, and improved as a hitter. He lost the 2019 season to Tommy John surgery, but bounced back in the first part of the 2020s, most notably breaking Johnny Bench's single-season record for most homers by a primary catcher, with 48 in 2021. That tied him with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for the MLB lead, and Pérez also led the AL in RBI.

Pitchers

• Justin Verlander, who played his entire MLB career with the Detroit Tigers before being dealt to the Houston Astros at the 2017 deadline, was one of the best starting pitchers in the game in the late 2000s and early '10s. Though his poor performance in 2014 and early 2015 cast doubt on whether he could keep it up, he was able to quickly reestablish his status as an ace; by 2016 he once again led the American League in strikeouts. Playing for the Tigers, he pretty much walked away with the 2011 American League Cy Young by winning the Pitching Triple Crown: most wins (24), strikeouts (250) and lowest ERA (2.40). He was instrumental in the Tigers running away with the American League Central division title. He won the American League MVP award that season as well, which is seldom awarded to a pitcher because of strong feelings that it should go to an everyday player, and not one who plays every four or five days. He came within a hair of winning a second straight Cy Young in 2012, finishing second to Tampa Bay's David Price in the closest Cy Young vote since 1969. In 2016, he again came within a hair of winning a second Cy Young, finishing a close (and controversial) second to Rick Porcello of the Red Sox. He again had a slow start in 2017, then improved over the course of the season, ultimately pitching tremendously well for the Astros over the final month and in the playoffs, helping them win their first World Series. He's been absolutely fantastic since joining the Astros, looking a lot more like the early-2010's Verlander who was one of the game's best pitchers than the mid-2010's Verlander who was struggling and often injured. Emphasizing that point, he finally picked up his second Cy Young Award in 2019. In 2020, delayed and cut short by COVID-19, he only pitched in the season opener before developing arm trouble; he then had Tommy John surgery that kept him on the sidelines until 2022, but he's been back to his old dominant self since returning, claiming his third Cy Young Award in 2022. He signed as a free agent with the Mets and spent several months with the team before being traded back to Houston. Off the field, he's most notable as the husband of supermodel Kate Upton. He has also thrown three no-hitters, two coming against the Toronto Blue Jays in their home stadium, the Rogers Centre.
• Yu Darvish, a starting pitcher with the San Diego Padres, is known for being the Michael Jordan of Japan. Yu started out as a top level prospect, with MLB teams scouting him in Junior High. However, he wanted to go with a Japanese baseball league instead. In Japan, Yu posted extraordinary numbers, with a 1.99 average ERA. At 25, he wanted to go to America, and the Texas Rangers won his services with a huge bid. He is known in MLB as having seven pitch types (in comparison, normal MLB pitchers have 3-5 pitch types). On April 2, 2013, he nearly threw a perfect game against the Astros, but it was broken up by the Astros' Marwin Gonzalez with 2 outs in the 9th inning. The question of his durability, however, is now somewhat up in the air, as he underwent Tommy John surgery just before the start of the 2015 season, didn't return until late May 2016, and was quickly put on the DL again from mid-June to mid-July 2016. He was traded from the Rangers to the Dodgers in July 2017 for the latter team's postseason run. The results of that trade were mixed—he had some good starts, some bad starts, and was absolutely destroyed by the Astros in both of his starts in the World Series. Initially, it was reported that Darvish was inadvertently tipping his pitches—in other words, his pitching patterns were such that the Astros were able to figure out what he was going to throw. While there may have been some truth to that, a more sinister explanation came out two years later, when it was revealed that the Astros had been using cameras in centerfield to steal the opposing catchers' signs throughout the entirety of the 2017 season, including the postseason (while it's an accepted, fair part of the game for baserunners to try to relay the catcher's signs to the batter, it's not allowed to use technology like cameras to assist in sign-stealing). In addition to the Astros' pitch-tipping recognition and technological sign-stealing, several pitchers in that World Series, including Darvish himself, complained about the balls being slicker than normal, making it harder to throw off-speed pitches. His struggles at first continued after joining the Cubs in 2018, as he was injured for most of that season (and not good when he was healthy), but he was much better in 2019 and became a serious Cy Young candidate in 2020 (though the Reds' Trevor Bauer ended up with that honor). He was dealt to the Padres after the 2020 season in what was widely viewed as a payroll move, with the Cubbies' main haul from the deal being four prospects, three then in their teens.
• Stephen Strasburg, a starting pitcher for the Washington Nationals, made his debut in 2010. He was on his way to an impressive rookie year when damage to his elbow forced him to undergo surgical repair. He briefly returned at the end of 2011, then returned in full force in 2012 and was impressive again. However due to concerns about overtaxing his surgically repaired elbow so soon after the surgery, his season was ended early by management. This was controversial among the press and the fans, especially after the Nationals were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round. However, time will tell if this will have been something that helped him in the long run; he had two solid seasons after that (despite a brief stint on the DL in 2013), but his career hit something of a nadir in the first half of 2015. Former Tigers star Max Scherzer was brought into D.C. on a long, lucrative contract, causing many to question whether the signing signaled a lack of faith in Strasburg to be the staff ace going forward.^note The Nats' front office might have explained that they were already anticipating the loss of another of their young pitchers, Jordan Zimmermann, who was known to want to play closer to his home state of Wisconsin. They turned out to be right; Zimmermann received a massive contract in 2016 - ironically with the same Detroit Tigers team that had lost Scherzer to the Nationals the year before. Strasburg initially didn't do much to assuage those questions, with him spending large chunks of the season on the DL and woefully ineffective when he did pitch. This caused many to seriously begin questioning whether Strasburg would ever be able to reach and maintain the elite level expected of him when he was first drafted. However, he returned from his second 2015 DL stint having taken a noticeable level in badass. In May of 2016 (his contract year), he somewhat shockingly signed a 7-year contract to stay in Washington. Strasburg had his best season to date in 2017, with a career-best ERA, and he ended up with a third-place Cy Young Award finish, behind Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer. He went on to become World Series MVP in 2019 with the Nats. He exercized an opt-out in his contract after the World Series, then resigned with the Nationals, with a larger 7-year deal than his previous deal, which hasn't turned out very well for the Nationals so far- Strasburg almost immediately started having issues with his shoulder, and has started only 8 games in the 3 years since signing the new contract.
• Max Scherzer, a starting pitcher now with the Texas Rangers who made his name with the Washington Nationals, joined the Nats in 2015 after having spent the earlier parts of his career with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Detroit Tigers. After some ups and downs in his earlier years, he started to put it all together with the Tigers in 2012 when he was 2nd in the league in strikeouts behind his teammate Justin Verlander, who pretty much overshadowed Scherzer during Verlander's dominant run in the early 2010's. The next year, he improved further and made himself one of the best starters in the game, starting the season 13-0, ultimately leading the AL in wins, and being near the top in several other categories, which led to him winning the 2013 AL Cy Young Award for his efforts. Two years later, he joined the Nationals, and seemingly elevated his game to a new level, though some will note that his improved statistics may be partially because of slightly weaker competition thanks to the NL's lack of a DH. He threw two no-hitters in 2015, one of which was almost a perfect game except for a controversial hit batter with 2 outs in the 9th inning^note Some argue that the hit batter, Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder José Tabata, appeared to lean into the pitch a little. This is technically against the rules, but said rule is almost never enforced.. In 2016, he struck out 20 batters in one game, tying the record for strikeouts in a single 9-inning game—the feat was also previously achieved by Roger Clemens (twice), Kerry Wood, and arguably Randy Johnson^note Johnson once struck out 20 batters in 9 innings, but the game went into extra innings after that. At season's end, he was awarded his second Cy Young Award, becoming just the sixth pitcher to win the award in both leagues. He won a third Cy Young Award in 2017, making him just the 10th pitcher ever to win 3 Cy Youngs. During a 2021 season in which Scherzer was doing much better than the Nats, he was part of a trade-deadline deal with the Dodgers, who were in a playoff dogfight with the Giants and Padres and needed pitching help.^*At the time of the deal, three starters were out—Clayton Kershaw (see below) was on the injured list (though expected to return soon), Dustin May was out for the season after Tommy John surgery, and Trevor Bauer was suspended during an investigation into sexual abuse allegations. Scherzer became a free agent at the end of the 2021 season, and signed a 3-year, $130 million deal with the Mets shortly before the owners locked the players out. The new contract is the richest in MLB history by annual average ($43.3 million), surpassing Gerrit Cole's 9-year, $324 million deal with the Yankees signed in 2019. Scherzer's power-pitching style and good control leads to him regularly being among the league leaders in both getting strikeouts and not allowing walks, but he also tends to allow a disproportionate amount of home runs on the rare occasions where the batters facing him make contact. He's also well known for his heterochromia—his right eye is blue, and his left eye is brown.
• David Price, currently of the Los Angeles Dodgers, was another one of the best starting pitchers in the game during his heyday. He started his career with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008, pitching a few games for them late in the season and in the playoffs. He showed great promise in the 2008 ACLS, where he won the deciding game from the bullpen and helped the Rays reach their first World Series by defeating the Boston Red Sox, but they ended up losing the series to the Philadelphia Phillies. He became a full-time starter in 2009. Over the next four years, David Price cemented himself as the Rays' best pitcher, quickly taking over that title from "Big Game" James Shields, the best starter on the Rays staff in 2007-09. In 2010, he was in the running for a Cy Young Award with CC Sabathia and Félix Hernández. As mentioned above, Hernández ended up winning despite a poor win-loss record caused by the Mariners' historically awful hitters, which the voters didn't blame him for. Price had a solid but not quite Cy Young-caliber year in 2011, and also surrendered Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit. In 2012, David Price had his most dominant year. He won 20 games - becoming the first pitcher in franchise history to do so—and had the lowest ERA of the American League with 2.54. He finally won the Cy Young Award at the end of the year, beating Justin Verlander by one vote. He continued to be dominant over the next few years, and the small-revenue Rays started to have difficulty affording his contract, leading to frequent trade rumors surrounding him. He ultimately was traded to the Tigers in 2014, giving the Tigers a starting rotation with 3 Cy Young winners (Price, Justin Verlander, and Max Scherzer; Scherzer has since left for the Nationals, while Price, despite still being good, was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays just before the 2015 deadline). After the 2015 season, the Red Sox signed him to a seven-year, $217 million contract, the largest for a pitcher in MLB history. His time in Boston has gone a bit less well than hoped, though, with Price struggling to live up to expectations, getting into occasional spats with the Boston media, and having some elbow problems. Despite the setbacks, David Price ultimately proved to be worth the money for Boston Red Sox in 2018. He made up for his mediocre postseason performances over the years by winning 3 straight postseason starts with good pitching, ending with him being the winning pitcher in Game 5 of the World Series by out pitching Clayton Kershaw to seal the championship. During the 2019–20 offseason, he was part of a major trade, with Price and Mookie Betts (in the "Outfielders" folder above) going to the Dodgers in exchange for three players, with the Bosox also paying the Dodgers to take on part of his and Betts' salaries. Price decided to opt out of the shortened 2020 season, then returned in 2021 and has pitched mainly as a reliever for the Dodgers since then.
• Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers was considered by many to be the best pitcher in the game for most of the 2010's. And the statistics appear to back up this claim: He leads all active starting pitchers with a career ERA of 2.49, has more career strikeouts than innings pitched (more than 2700 Ks in less than 2600 innings), more than four times as many career strikeouts as career walks, and he won the pitching triple crown and Cy Young Award in 2011. To be fair, he does pitch a lot of games in the pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium, but even accounting for that, no other active starter comes close to his numbers. His curveball, dubbed "Public Enemy No. 1" by Vin Scully, is so good that it became a minor story when he allowed a home run off it in May 2014, since he hadn't allowed a home run off it in almost 5 years. And he's still pretty young and seems to be getting even better; He followed his Cy Young season by leading the National League in ERA again in 2012 and 2013, winning a second Cy Young in 2013 thanks largely to an amazing 1.83 ERA. He did even better than that in 2014, leading the NL in ERA for the fourth year in a row and winning the Cy Young and the MVP—even though he was injured for the first month of the season! Signed a 7-year, $215 million deal in January 2014, making him the highest-paid player in the game on a per-season basis. He threw one of the best-pitched games in baseball history against the Rockies on June 18, 2014, striking out 15 batters in a no-hitter that would have been a perfect game if not for an error by Dodgers shortstop Hanley Ramírez. In 2015, he became the first pitcher with 300 strikeouts in a season since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling both reached the mark in 2002, although his 4-year streak of leading the entire MLB in ERA was broken, as he finished third to Zack Greinke and Jake Arrieta. He seemed like he was getting even better for the first few months of 2016, for a while looking like he'd break the single season record for Strikeouts per Walk, but then he missed two months with a back injury. He had some injury issues again in 2017 and was also caught up in the home run spike that afflicted pitchers all over the MLB that year, and set (by quite a bit) a career high in home runs allowed despite pitching fewer innings than he typically does; despite that, he still had an overall good season and still managed to finish second place in the Cy Young Award balloting. His injury problems have continued into 2018 and led to him missing time on the injured list every year since then, though he's generally still been a very good pitcher when healthy. He finally got his long awaited World Series ring in 2020 with the Dodgers. In 2022, controversy ensued when Kershaw was removed by manager Dave Roberts after pitching 7 perfect innings vs the Twins. Later in the year, Kershaw again pitched 7 perfect innings vs the Angels. This time he stayed in the game, though he allowed a leadoff hit to Luis Rengifo in the 8th.
• Aroldis Chapman, currently of the Kansas City Royals, is best known for his time as the Cincinnati Reds' closer. He currently holds the world record for the fastest fastball, having reached velocities as high as 106 MPH, and often throws over 100 (in fact, MLB's website had to add a special filter to their fastest pitches leaderboard due to the fact that almost all of the top 50+ have been thrown by Chapman). His high fastball velocity has made him one of the best in the game at striking people out, retiring nearly half the batters he faces that way, an insanely high number even for a relief pitcher. In early 2016, MLB gave him a 30-day suspension for a domestic violence incident that occurred in October 2015 during which he, among other things, shot a wall with a handgun 8 times in anger. That didn't prevent the Yankees from acquiring him from the struggling Reds during the 2015-2016 offseason. With free agency looming, the Yankees dealt him to the Cubs during the 2016 season, where he helped them break their "curse"; after the end of the season, he signed a big deal to return to the Yankees. While on that contract, Chapman would notch three more All-Star nods to go with his previous four, as well as AL Reliever of the Year honors in 2019, and in 2021, he recorded both his 300th save and 1,000th strikeout. However, after an injury-prone 2022 where he lost his closer spot and didn't make the playoff roster, Chapman left New York again, this time for KC.
• Johnny Cueto, currently a starting pitcher in the Texas Rangers organization as of April 2024, was the ace for the Cincinnati Reds in the early 2010s. While other ace pitchers got more press, Cueto quietly emerged as one of the most dominant pitchers for the National League. In 2012 he won 19 games and had an ERA of 2.78. Got off to a good start in 2013 before going on the DL because of a back injury. But came back strong in 2014 by winning 20 games with an ERA of 2.25, the first pitcher in franchise history to do so since 1988. These would normally be Cy Young-worthy numbers, but Cueto, unfortunately, is also a victim of Always Second Best. Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in the game from 2011-2014 is also a National League pitcher and produced better numbers in 2012 and 2014, leaving Cueto to finish second in wins and the ERA title in both years. Fortunately, his great year in 2014 was recognized by his baseball peers and he won a GIBBY award for best bounce back player after an injury. Cueto is known for his pitching delivery, in which he does an almost 180 degree turn of his upper body so batters have a hard time reading him. This pitching motion, however, is what caused his back injury in 2013 and time will tell if he's able to keep doing it in the years to come. In the middle of the 2015 season, he was traded to the Kansas City Royals due to the struggling Reds needing to rebuild; though he struggled to pitch consistently well for his new team in the second half of the 2015 regular season, he would prove to be a vital piece of the Royals' starting rotation in the postseason, where he helped led the team to a World Series Championship with quality pitching, especially in World Series Game 2, where he pitched a complete game two-hitter against the New York Mets. His time with the Giants has been something of a mixed bag; he was okay in 2016, his first year with San Francisco, but has struggled heavily with injuries in the years since.
• Madison Bumgarner is a starting pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks who made his name with the San Francisco Giants. An imposing left-hander with a deceptively easy delivery (although he does everything else, including batting, right-handed), Bumgarner was mostly known for two things - being the junior member of the heralded Giants rotation (he debuted in the majors at the age of 20 and pitched in the World Series^note very well, throwing 8 shutout innings for a Game 4 win as a 21 year-old rookie), and for being the second-best left-handed pitcher in the NL West Division, overshadowed by the downright unbelievable Clayton Kershaw. However, MadBum achieved national prominence in 2014 when, with the rest of the Giants' once-vaunted pitching staff in tatters around him, he put the Giants on his back and carried them to a championship. His overall postseason stats - 52.5 innings with a 1.03 ERA, 45 strikeouts to 6 walks - were some of the greatest in baseball history, and he emphatically cemented his case by coming into the deciding Game 7 as a reliever, on two days' rest^note The modern standard is 4 days in between games. and throwing five shutout innings for the win. His postseason stats as a whole are impressive- he has a 2.14 career postseason ERA- but his World Series stats are absolutely insane. In 36 innings over 5 World Series games in 2010, 2012, and 2014, Bumgarner has allowed a grand total of one run ^note  A seventh-inning solo home run from Salvador Pérez in Game 1 of the 2014 Series , good for an 0.25 ERA. Also notable as one of the best hitting pitchers of recent years—his home run stats since 2013 would project to 30-plus homers over a full season. In fact, on June 30, 2016, with the Giants set to meet their cross-Bay rivals, the A's, in Oakland with Bumgarner starting, Giants manager Bruce Bochy announced that the team would not use a DH^note (since the game was in Oakland, AL rules, with the DH, would be used) and let Bumgarner bat for himself. This would be the first time in 40 years that a team deliberately chose to let a pitcher hit instead of a DH.^note The only other time in that period that a team had a pitcher hitting instead of a DH (Andy Sonnenstine for the Rays in 2009) was because of a lineup card mixup. The move worked–Bumgarner doubled in his first at-bat of the night, leading to a 6-run third inning for the Giants. Spent about half of the 2017 season on the DL because of a shoulder injury he got when he crashed his dirt bike, and also missed a lot of time in 2018 after breaking his hand in spring training. Signed with the D-backs as a free agent after the 2019 season, with part of the reason reportedly being his horses. While he later disputed that item, he did admit in February 2020 that he competed in rodeos as a team roper^note a timed event in which two mounted cowboys rope a steer, with one lassoing the head and the other the hind legs under the alias Mason Saunders. He does that right-handed, too. That said, MadBum and his wife live in the Phoenix area in the offseason and by all reports love it there. In 2021, he pitched a no-hitter against the Braves, although it didn’t count as it was in a scheduled doubleheader, which were 7 innings at the time.
• Corey Kluber, a two-time AL Cy Young Award winner (2014 and 2017) as the ace of the Cleveland Indians, now pitches for the Tampa Bay Rays. The right-hander had a rather prolonged path to the majors, first going undrafted in 2004 out of high school (after overuse-related injuries), and then after three solid college years at Stetson having a mediocre three years in the Padres' system. He was traded to the Indians during the 2010 season, initially being assigned to Double-A. Kluber had a cup of coffee with the Tribe in 2011, pitching 3 games in relief at the end of the season, and then while in Triple-A the following year, mastered a two-seam sinking fastball, which proved to be his ticket to The Show. He was called back to Cleveland in 2012, this time as a starting pitcher, but didn't pitch particularly well and ended up spending the first few weeks of 2013 in the minor leagues before being called up again in mid-April, this time for good. He was a decent but not spectacular pitcher in 2013, but then he had a breakout season and established himself in 2014 as one of the AL's best pitchers, narrowly winning the Cy Young Award over Félix Hernández ^note As an interesting comparison that illustrates Kluber's long path to the big leagues compared to the much shorter path of Hernández, who pitched his first game as a 19-year-old: Kluber's first major league start was 7 years almost to the day after Hernández's first major league start, but Kluber is just two days younger than Hernández. Kluber went on to finish third in Cy Young voting in 2016, win the award again in 2017, and win 20 games in 2018. However, he got off to a very slow start in 2019 before suffering a pair of injuries that caused him to miss most of the season, after which he was dealt to the Rangers in a move that smacked of a salary dump. Kluber slid further toward Glass Cannon status in 2020, when he tore a muscle in his throwing shoulder in the first inning of his debut with the Rangers, missing the rest of the (COVID-shortened) season. He then signed a relatively cheap free-agent deal with the Yankees for 2021, and looked to be bouncing back, including throwing a no-hitter that May... until suffering a different injury to his throwing shoulder during said no-hitter, costing him a minimum of two months. Known for stoicism on the mound, he's a power pitcher whose best pitches are the aforementioned two-seamer and a breaking ball that variously resembles a slider and curve.
• Jacob deGrom is a right-hander for the Texas Rangers who became one of MLB's top pitchers in the last years of the 2010s while with the Mets. He went undrafted out of high school in Florida, ending up playing college ball at Stetson (where the aforementioned Corey Kluber had played a few years earlier). Unlike Kluber, deGrom didn't start out as a pitcher, playing only shortstop during his first two college seasons until he made some appearances as a reliever late in the 2009 season. As a junior, the Hatters' coaches moved him to part-time reliever, and midway through that season moved him entirely into the starting rotation. He did well enough for the Mets to select him in the ninth round of the 2010 draft. While in the minors, deGrom had his first Tommy John surgery, but recovered well enough to make it to the majors in 2014. He was named NL Rookie of the Year that season, and went on to have a 2018 season that was spectacular in all respects except one: his 10–9 record, which was largely due to the Mets offense failing to give him any run support that would put them in the lead when he was pitching. He led the majors in ERA (1.70) and fewest homers per 9 innings (0.41), and was the overwhelming choice for the NL Cy Young Award; his 10 wins were the fewest for any Cy Young-winning starter. The following season, he started out slow, but had a mind-blowing second half, going 7–1 with a 1.44 ERA after the All-Star break. DeGrom was again a near-unanimous Cy Young Award choice. After entering free agency at the end of the 2022 season, deGrom signed a 5-year, $185 million deal with the Rangers. He later had a second Tommy John surgery. When he was healthy he's was one of the harder throwers among starting pitchers; his best pitches are a four-seam fastball and a slider, but can also effectively mix in changeups, curves, and sinkers.

Shohei Ohtani

• Shohei Ohtani, currently a pitcher and designated hitter with the Los Angeles Dodgers (though only hitting in 2024 while recovering from ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, colloquially known as Tommy John surgery), is arguably the face of baseball, and the first player to be a superstar as both a pitcher and hitter since Babe Ruth a century-plus earlier. He played for the Los Angeles Angels from 2018 to 2023 when he signed a massive contract with the Dodgers. See his own page for more.

Managers

• William "Buck" Showalter is the former manager of the New York Mets, having been hired during the 2021–22 offseason. A former minor league player for New York Yankee affiliated teams, and since the early 90s, a manager for the New York Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks, Texas Rangers, and in-between those, and baseball analyst for ESPN he was hired by the Baltimore Orioles in the middle of the 2010 season. As this was during the O's Audience-Alienating Era (an age where fans were abandoning the team, and holding the "Free the Birds" walk out movements to protests Peter Angelos' poor ownership of the team), he had a rather large task in front of him. He immediately got to work as he coached the worst team in the league at the time, and finished their season with 34 wins of 57 games played under him. Additionally, he made it clear to the team and fans, consistent under performance would have you on the bus to the AAA Norfolk Minor League team until your skills improved. His first full season with the O's in 2011 was another rebuilding year, capping it off with the now famous "Game 162", on September 28, 2011, "The Best Night of Baseball" where the last place in division O's knocked their rivals the Boston Red Sox out of the playoffs on their last game of the season. This fired up both the team, and fan base for the next season. And it showed as in 2012, the Dork Age officially ended, with the O's securing a Wildcard playoff, knocking out the Texas Rangers, before losing to the Yankees in the playoffs. 2013 was another winning season above .500 win average, and 2014 Showalter managed the team to a dominating 96-66 win-loss record as the AL East champions, preventing the playoff regular Yankees from even making it to the playoffs and receiving the American League Manager of the Year award. However, a new Dork Age, including a disastrous 2018 season that saw the O's lose a franchise-record 115 games (yes, more than in any of their seasons as the St. Louis Browns!), ended with both Showalter and GM Dan Duquette being shown the door. Showalter would return to managing in 2022 with the Mets, immediately leading them to a 101-win season, though losing the NL East in a tiebreaker to the Braves and the Wild Card series to the Padres. Nonetheless, he was named NL Manager of the Year—his fourth such nod, having also earned the honor in the AL with the 1994 Yankees, 2004 Rangers, and 2014 O's. This tied him with Bobby Cox and Tony La Russa for most MOY awards, and also made him the first manager ever to win that award with four different teams. If you need any further proof of how popular and successful he's been, fans regularly cheer him on just as much as the players, with chants and signs of "The BUCK stops here!" and "BUCKle Up!"

Owners and executives

• Billy Beane is the Oakland Athletics' executive vice president for baseball operations, as well as a former major league outfielder. Entering the sport with high expectations due to his high school success, he performed poorly for most of his professional career, barely qualifying for a major league spot, and ultimately retired at the age of 27, accepting a job with the A's in the front office and rising to become general manager in 1998. Constrained heavily by Oakland's small budget, he constantly has to come up with ways to find players that are being undervalued by the rest of the league for Oakland to compete. He's mostly been successful, particularly during the early 2000s, when Oakland was practically the only team to embrace sabermetric principles, where they had 4 straight playoff appearances. His job got a lot harder when the rest of the league copied his ideas, but he's actively working to find other ways to stay ahead of the game, and still has been able to give Oakland a few surprisingly competitive seasons, though he's also made some less-than-stellar moves along the way, notably trading away star third baseman Josh Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2014-15 offseason for an underwhelming package of prospects, only to watch Donaldson win the AL MVP the following year and lead Toronto to their first postseason appearance in 23 years. After the 2015 season, Beane was kicked upstairs to oversee the A's baseball operations, while his former assistant took over the day-to-day GM job. Brad Pitt played him in Moneyball, a movie that followed the A's 2002 season. He's become one of the ever-growing list of big-name Americans (in celebrity, net worth, or both) who've invested in soccer teams, becoming part of the ownership group of Barnsley, a club currently in the EFL Championship, the second level of English soccer, in 2017. This wasn't Beane's first venture into that sport; he had previously been an adviser to Dutch Eredivisie side AZ Alkmaar.
• Theo Epstein was one of the first general managers of a big market team to copy Beane's ideas. He was first hired by the Red Sox in 2002 at the ripe old age of 28, shortly after an unsuccessful attempt by the Red Sox to hire Beane himself. Epstein's use of sabermetrics combined with a much bigger budget than the A's had an immediate impact on the Red Sox, and they won the World Series for the first time in 86 years in 2004. Following a disappointing season in 2011 that saw the Red Sox suffer one of the biggest late-season collapses in history and fall one game short of the playoffs, Epstein left the team to join the Chicago Cubs. Not content with ending just one baseball "curse", Epstein spent the next few years rebuilding the team from the ground up and in 2016, the Cubs had their first 100-win season in more than 100 years, made the World Series for the first time since 1945, and won it for the first time since 1908.
• Derek Jeter was the CEO and part owner of the Miami Marlins until he resigned and sold his stake in February 2022. A former shortstop who retired at the end of the 2014 season after playing his entire career with the New York Yankees, he was generally thought of as the "heart and soul" of the run of great Yankees teams from the mid-'90s to the 2010s, although he was usually not their best player statistically in any single given season. In his last season, Jeter was the only active player with 3,000 career hits. He is also personable and charismatic, and had a tendency to play well in clutch situations. However, sportswriters and Yankees fans often had a Godlike reverence of him to the point of causing a Hype Backlash for everyone else. However, even with the backlash, he was widely still considered an undeniable Hall-of-Famer, and he ended up being inducted into the Hall in his very first year on the ballot (only one vote shy of a unanimous induction). He went on to help start a website dedicated to publishing stories written by athletes, The Player's Tribune, before joining the ultimately successful effort to buy the Marlins from Jeffrey Loria. While he ran the baseball and business operations of the Marlins, he only owned 4% of the team; the vote in owners' meetings belongs to the lead investor, hedge-fund billionaire Bruce Sherman.^note Sherman is a cousin of Judy Sheindlin—as in Judge Judy. His more famous but controversial decision as owner - the December 2017 trade of the aformentioned Giancarlo Stanton to his former team, which, while sending shockwaves to baseball in general, did not deter the Yankee fans, who thanked him for the trade which while it cost them Starlin Castro, also repeated a prior incident in 1919, when the Yankees got Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox and gave the team, for the first time in almost a century, two HR leaders at the same time. The 2017-18 offseason would also see several of Stanton's former teammates moving teams as well under his watch (most notably Christian Yelich to the Brewers, Marcell Ozuna to the Cardinals, and Dee Gordon to the Mariners, with J.T. Realmuto also being traded the following year), in what was criticized by many as a fire sale along the lines of the sales that Loria used to make regularly. Aside from his duties for the team, in his role as team president he has been active in engaging with the people of Miami that have supported their team through the years, including the huge Latino community present there, such as exiles from Cuba and people from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and many others. Jeter left in 2022 with the Marlins having the worst overall record in the NL during his tenure as CEO.
• Kim Ng, GM of the Marlins from 2020–2023, is the first woman ever to hold said position in any of the traditional major leagues of North American sports. A Chinese American born in Indianapolis and raised in various parts of the New York City area, she played softball at the University of Chicago before starting her career in the White Sox front office. While there, she was the first woman to present (and win) a team salary arbitration case. Ng then moved to the American League offices in 1997 before moving on to the Yankees the next year and the Dodgers in 2001. She remained in LA for the next decade, serving as assistant GM for much of that period. In 2011, she left for the MLB offices, serving in baseball operations under former Yankees and Dodgers manager Joe Torre. After interviewing five times for GM vacancies during her career, she hit paydirt when she was named the Marlins GM. The Marlins had an overall losing record during her tenure, but Ng ended it on a high, putting together a 2023 roster that made the playoffs for the first time since the team won the 2003 World Series. Even though the team exercised an option to keep her on as GM at the end of the 2023 season, Ng declined her own option to stay on, amid rumors that she was a candidate for higher-profile GM openings. Ng later hinted that she left because the owners indicated that they would have the GM report to a new president of baseball operations.

Broadcasters

• Joe Castiglione: A radio play-by play broadcaster for the Boston Red Sox since 1983. Not to be confused with the Oklahoma Sooners athletic director.
• Bob Costas: A well-known sportscaster for NBC from 1980–2019, Costas has commentated on a wide variety of sports throughout his career but has made no secret of his particular love for baseball. In the '80s he teamed with analyst Tony Kubek to form NBC's #2 MLB crew, and when the sport returned to the network in the '90s (following a four-year stint on CBS), Costas ascended to the #1 spot, calling three All-Star Games and three World Series. Since leaving NBC he continues to call select games for MLB Network. In 2018 Costas was given the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting by the Baseball Hall of Fame; he has the distinction of being the award's first recipient to have announced the sport exclusively on the national TV level.
• Joe Davis: Hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2016, Davis had the highly unenviable task of taking over from the legendary Vin Scully as the team's lead TV play-by-play voice after the latter's retirement at the end of that season, but amazingly enough he has by and large been accepted and even embraced by the fans as a worthy successor. As if that wasn't enough, he was tabbed to replace Joe Buck as the primary announcer for the Fox network's national MLB coverage in 2022, following Buck's move to ESPN and Monday Night Football. Again, Davis met the challenge, earning particular accolades for his call of Bryce Harper's pennant-winning home run for the Phillies in Game 5 of the 2022 NLCS. Given his relatively young age (35, as of 2023), it seems likely that Davis will be one of the sport's premier voices for many years to come.
• Jacques Doucet: The most famous baseball broadcaster you've never heard of... unless you speak French. The Montreal native began his career in print journalism, but moved to radio in 1969 as a part-time color commentator for the newly launched Montreal Expos. He became the Expos' full-time French-language radio play-by-play man in 1972, most notably creating much of the modern French lexicon of baseball (along with his broadcast partner Claude Raymond).^note Montreal formerly had a minor-league team that was most notable as Jackie Robinson's last stop before making history with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In those days, the Royals' Francophone announcers in Montreal would use English terms for baseball concepts that didn't exist in French. Doucet remained the voice of the Expos until the team left for Washington after the 2004 season. He was out of broadcasting for a year before returning with a minor-league team in Quebec City. In 2011, he returned to MLB broadcasting as the French voice of the Toronto Blue Jays, a position he continues to hold.
• Tom Hamilton: The premier Large-Ham Announcer in today's MLB, Hamilton has called radio broadcasts for the Cleveland Guardians^note formerly Indians since 1990. Immortalized (on Newgrounds, of all places) for his increasingly excited call of Cleveland's unlikely 15-14 comeback win in a 2001 game against that season's juggernaut Seattle Mariners.
• Jon Miller: One of the best-known and most respected play-by-play men in the sport, Miller started calling big-league ball at age 22 with the Oakland Athletics in 1974. Over the ensuing decades he's had stints with the Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, and – since 1997 – his hometown San Francisco Giants, for whom he's the lead radio broadcaster. He also spent twenty years (1990–2010) teaming with Joe Morgan on national Sunday Night Baseball telecasts for ESPN, and called 13 World Series on ESPN Radio. Miller, who was given the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010, is also known for his dead-on impressions of such other baseball announcers as Vin Scully and Harry Caray.
• Bob Uecker: A former big-league catcher,^note Braves 1962–63 and 67, Cardinals 1964–65, Phillies 1966–67 Uecker has been the lead radio play-by play broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers since their inception in 1971. Dubbed "Mr. Baseball" by Johnny Carson, he is well known for his self-deprecating anecdotes concerning his rather mediocre playing career. He also did some national MLB broadcasting with ABC and NBC, starred in the sitcom Mr. Belvedere as George Owens and in the Major League movies as Harry Doyle, and made guest appearances as himself on Futurama and in well-remembered TV commercials for Miller Lite beer. Uecker was the 2003 recipient of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasters.

Other

• Rob Manfred succeeded Bud Selig as commissioner in January 2015. Manfred first worked with MLB as an outside counsel in 1987, became a full-time MLB employee in 1998, and became Chief Operating Officer at the end of the 2013 season. His first significant headlines came after the the 2015 season when he shot down Pete Rose's latest bid for reinstatement to MLB. However, he would later allow the Reds to enshrine Rose in the team's Hall of Fame and formally retire his number in 2016. One of his top priorities so far in his time as commissioner has been improving the pace of play of the game, pushing for changes such as requiring batters to keep one foot in the batter's box at all times, replacing the four-pitch intentional walk with a hand signal, limiting the amount and length of mound visits by coaches and managers, and adding a pitch clock to minor league games, requiring pitchers to pitch the ball in no more than 20 seconds when no runners are on base. Though so far he hasn't been as surrounded by controversy as some previous commissioners have been, there has been controversy over rising home run rates. Since the middle of 2015, major league baseball has seen an explosion in home runs, with rates of home runs even higher than they were during the "steroid era" of the late '90s and early 2000s. Many analysts have concluded that changes to the ball are responsible for the rising home run rates, with balls being tighter-wound than they have been in the past, causing them to fly farther. Manfred has denied making any intentional changes to the ball, despite a significant amount of evidence suggesting the ball has been "juiced" since mid-2015.

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