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A new poll of more than 100 Major League Baseball players has revealed who they think are the worst organizations, the most overrated players, the best overall players, and much more.
From The Athletic…
This spring, over the course of two and half months, we interviewed more than 100 players — almost evenly split between the American and National Leagues — across 18 teams and granted them anonymity to get their unfiltered takes on some of the biggest and most controversial storylines in baseball. In addition to their thoughts on Los Angeles’ prolific offseason spending spree, we learned who they think is the most overrated player and the things former players say that irk them the most.
As they also point out, this is “not exactly a scientific poll,” but it is interesting nonetheless.
The first question they asked MLB players is “Who is the best player in baseball?”
Take a wild guess who came out on top.
If you said Shohei Ohtani then you’re not brain dead. However, it wasn’t quite the runaway that many would expect as the Dodgers’ star only got 46 percent of the vote.
Atlanta Braves’ oft-injured speedster slash slugger Ronald Acuna, Jr. was named the best player in baseball on 26.5 percent on the ballots.
Others who received votes included Mookie Betts, Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Gunnar Henderson, José Ramirez, Adley Rutschman, Corey Seager, and Zack Wheeler.
It is certainly interesting to see Bryce Harper’s name on that list considering he was voted the most overrated in The Athletic’s poll in 2018 and 2019 (by a landslide).
One of the other more interesting questions posed to MLB players by The Athletic was, of course, the aforementioned “Who is the most overrated player in baseball?”
Unlike in 2019 when Harper got 62 percent of the vote, this year the voting was a little tighter.
This year, Jazz Chisolm, Jr. of the Miami Marlins took the top spot with 20.3 percent of the MLB players’ votes.
Anthony Rendon and his boondoggle of a $245 million contract (he hasn’t played in more than 58 games in a season since signing that deal with the Angels in 2020) grabbed 10.2 percent of the votes for second place. (Strangely enough, Rendon was voted the most underrated player in baseball in The Athletic’s MLB player poll in 2019.)
Others on the list include Carlos Correa, Tim Anderson, Jack Flaherty, Pete Alonso, Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman, Elly De La Cruz, Manny Machado, Blake Snell, Yordan Alvarez, Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Jeimer Candelario, Emmanuel Clase, Gerrit Cole, Rafael Devers, Adolis García, Bryce Harper, Alek Manoah, Carlos Rodon, Julio Rodríguez, Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton, Spencer Strider, Marcus Stroman, Alex Verdugo, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Christian Yelich.
Among the other questions that were asked of MLB players in the poll include who do you most want on your team based solely on vibes, whether or not the season is too long, whether MLB should shut down midseason so players can participate in the 2028 Summer Olympics, how analytics have affected their careers, and which organizations have bad reputations among players (yes, we’re looking at you Oakland A’s and Chicago White Sox).