The unveiling of MLB Network’s 2024 Top 100 Right Now is complete, with five Phillies cracking the list. That number puts them in a fourth-place tie: The Braves (nine) lead the way, with the Astros and Dodgers boasting seven; the Diamondbacks, Mets, Mariners, Orioles and Rangers equal the Phillies at five.
The Top 100 Right Now isn’t necessarily a prediction of who will have the 100 best 2024 seasons. Think of it like preseason awards voting in the NCAA. It takes stock of the best players in the game as they stand for just the 2024 season — in other words, 2025 and beyond aren’t at issue. That limitation is why Shohei Ohtani is ranked No. 4 on the list, rather than Nos. 1, 2, 3-6 and also 7.
The Phillies’ five on the list is down from seven a year ago, with Aaron Nola falling out and Rhys Hoskins both dropping off the list and departing the team.
Kyle Schwarber is the lowest Phillie to make the cut, at No. 57 — a 13-spot drop from a year ago. (That drop, it feels prudent to say, isn’t necessarily due to diminished production. Young talents like Adley Rutschman, Bobby Witt Jr. and Corbin Carroll have vaulted in the list, which naturally slots everyone below them down.) This year, Schwarber is sandwiched by Twins starter Pablo López above him and D-Backs first baseman Christian Walker below.
The weirdness of Schwarber’s 2023 season — and the debate over whether it was a good one — has been plenty dissected. fWAR (1.4) and bWAR (0.6) are skeptical, but MLB Network seems to treat Schwarber’s credentials a little more practically. The middle of the Top 100 for him feels fair.
Next is J.T. Realmuto at No. 46, whose 17-point drop from the year before maybe is partially his doing, despite the above disclaimer. His .252/.310/.452 slash last year wasn’t awful by any means, especially for a catcher. But by his standards — as one of the best catchers in the league and someone with an outside shot at the Hall of Fame — it was a down year. He’s sandwiched between two catchers on the Top 100, with the Dodgers’ Will Smith above and Braves’ Sean Murphy below. The three of them in that order feels right, too. There’s no huge gripe with placing him two spots above Max Fried, either, nor with Realmuto three below Luis Arráez.
The upper echelon of the Top 100 is where things get interesting, as far as Phillies are concerned. Zack Wheeler is up seven spots to No. 28, making him the third-highest pitcher on the list (with Ohtani discounted). The Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, at No. 9, properly beats him out. No qualms.
But if we’re going for substance over flash, there’s not a great argument to rank Braves starter Spencer Strider ahead of Wheeler — much less by 11 spots — at least yet. Strider struck out 13.5 batters per nine innings last season, but his fourth-place finish in National League Cy Young voting was plainly laughable, given his ERA dangerously close to 4.00. It may have even been a better season than Wheeler’s, but ERA, innings pitched, WHIP, walks per nine — basically everything other than FIP, a bad stat, and strikeouts — would beg to differ. Strider may have even had the better 2022 — but arguably not, and if the postseason counts, this whole comparison isn’t really a discussion at all.
It’s remarkable what Trea Turner had to do in the final two months of the season to go from .236/.289/.367 in early August to 16th on the Top 100 — and ninth-best National League MVP betting odds — but that’s what he accomplished. His dreadful first four months as a Phillie dropped him five spots from last year’s edition, but in between Austin Riley and Strider (with Carroll below him) feels reasonable. You could argue for someone like Wheeler or even Kyle Tucker to leapfrog, but there’s only one player in the top 15 you’d probably move below Turner, so 16th is reasonable.
Julio RodrÃguez is extremely good and incredibly fun. He’s the first player in MLB history to hit at least 25 homers and steal at least 25 bases in each of his first two seasons. He might even be a superstar already. He’s not the 10th best player in baseball. And that brings us to Bryce Harper.
Harper predictably leads all Phillies on the list and comes in at No. 11 — one spot below J-Rod and six ahead of his ranking a year ago. It came in 29 fewer games, but Harper beat RodrÃguez in OPS by 82 points last season, topped him by 24 the previous year and won MVP the year before that while RodrÃguez was in the minor leagues. You don’t even need to summon postseason pedigree to find that Harper — right now, before the 2024 season, with long-term projections irrelevant — is the better player, and quite conclusively so. It’s no knock on RodrÃguez, who’s 23 years old and could very well put that question to rest this summer.
The Mike Trout vs. Bryce Harper debate started when the two teenage-ish prodigies debuted in 2011 and 2012, respectively, but we haven’t relitigated it much for nearly a decade, and for good reason. Perhaps we can start again. This is the first time Harper is ahead of Trout on the MLB Top 100 Right Now — and the margin is slim, with Trout at No. 12. Harper has tons of work to do to give him the career advantage, but the way things are trending — with Trout spending considerable time on the shelf and unlikely to get his much-awaited chance to wreak havoc in October, which has become a regularity for Harper — maybe he’ll challenge him within a few years.
It’s hard to rebut the Harper-over-Trout pick right now, though, and if you’ve made it this far, you certainly agree there are much better reasons to unleash your fury in X or Instagram comment sections. Or maybe you don’t, and you’ll flood mine instead.
Overall, though, the top of MLB Network’s list is actually quite solid. We’ll leave it at that and agree to disagree on what’s not. My DMs are open.
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Prickly Pete Salmonella
February 22, 2024 at 11:00 pm
Trout 12? The guy never plays.