The 2025 MLB regular season is upon us (even though Opening Day is technically still more than a week away), and it’s time for us — on pain of termination — to rank the top 100 players in baseball.
The rankings you’ll soon be thundering about to the uncaring heavens above and double-birding are based upon reasonable expectations for 2025, using things like age, trajectory, scouting profile, and recent performance history to arrive at those expectations. In essence, we’re making educated guesses at which players will provide the most value in 2025. While a player’s performance in 2024 is very relevant to these rankings, it’s not the sole consideration. Again, these are in essence predictions of which players will be the very best in the season to come, and there’s more to it than just eyeballing last year’s outputs.
As for what matters, with position players it’s a mix of batting, defense, and baserunning. On offense, we’re not concerned with things like RBI. Getting on base and hitting for power matter above all, as do playing time, context of the player’s home ballpark, and production relative to positional peers (e.g., the offensive bar is lower for shortstops and catchers than it is for first basemen and DHs). For pitchers, run prevention and workload will be the drivers, but we’ll also give some consideration to underlying fundamental indicators like strikeouts and walks. We’re ranking players based on actual baseball considerations as opposed to anything having anything to do with fantasy (although there’s obviously some overlap).
Winter and spring injuries have a major bearing here, and if a player because of health concerns figures to lose a major chunk of his season, then he’ll lose a spot he otherwise would’ve earned. Others suffering injuries not quite so serious will see their ranking drop based on those worries, but they’ll still make the cut.
Before we begin, a necessary reminder for the potentially outraged page-viewer from former Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelias: “You are not compelled to form any opinion about this matter before you, nor to disturb your peace of mind at all. Things in themselves have no power to extort a verdict from you.”
100-91
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90-81
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80-71
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70-61
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60-51
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50-41
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40-31
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30-21
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20-11
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10-1
MLB top 100 players by team
- 9 players: Dodgers
- 7 players: Braves, Cubs
- 6 players: Blue Jays, Phillies
- 5 players: Astros, Diamondbacks, Mariners, Padres
- 4 players: Giants, Orioles, Mets, Red Sox, Yankees
- 3 players: Guardians, Rangers
- 2 players: Angels, Cardinals, Pirates, Reds, Royals, Tigers, Twins
- 1 player: Athletics, Brewers, Marlins, Nationals, Rockies
- 0 players: Rays, White Sox
Outraged by that upon which you have just lain jaundiced eyes? As always, reach out to the author at his personal email address — [email protected] — with all your complaints.
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