The march toward the 2024 regular season in Major League Baseball continues through spring training action. As we kill some time, I will power rank different things each week. I already kicked off the spring with my pre-spring power rankings and then worked through the top 10 offenses and top 10 rotations.
This week, we’ll discuss players, but it’s with a wrinkle. I’m going to pick the best player on each of the 30 teams and then rank those 30. That means this most certainly is not a “top 30 players” ranking. Just look at the Dodgers. Even if we leave everyone else out, there’s Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. Those three players are all very, excruciatingly obvious top-30 players in baseball. For this exercise I can only grab one, however.
It will not be Ohtani. Not this year. This was an incredibly difficult decision, but Ohtani can’t pitch this season, so he’s only a designated hitter. I do not think it’s out of the realm of possibility that Ohtani has such a ridiculous offensive season that he proves to be the best Dodgers player. I still think he’ll be amazing enough at the plate and on the bases to easily be a top-20 (and that’s conservative) player this season.
But Mookie Betts is around. In addition to hitting .307/.408/.579 (163 OPS+) with 40 doubles, 39 homers, 107 RBI (as a leadoff man), 126 runs and 14 stolen bases, Betts played more than 700 innings of outstanding right field, filled in with exceptional defense in 485 innings at second base and even played 98 innings, capably, at shortstop. That kind of value pushes Betts over any DH, even a fully functional Ohtani.
This is also a good time to point out these are most certainly not fantasy rankings (note the defensive value factoring in) and, we must reiterate, this is not “the 30 best players.”
Finally, this should have been evident, but it’s for the 2024 season, so it’s predictive and I’m doing that on my own.
Let’s rock.
Ranking the best player for each of the 30 teams
