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Bradford Doolittle
What makes a baseball player exciting?
In some ways, this is an unanswerable question, an aesthetic judgment that defies quantification. What makes a player exciting? Who can say? You know it when you see it.
The beauty is that there is no right answer, as ESPN’s most exciting MLB player brackets — last year’s debut and the 2025 version released Tuesday — help illustrate. Excitement in baseball comes in many different forms, and different fans will be drawn to different traits.
“I just like seeing guys who can do a lot of different things on the field,” said James Woodthe Washington Nationals’ representative in the bracket, who embodies several common qualities among our 32 entrants:
• With a 2025 baseball age of 22, he’s young. The bracket overall skews young, with the average age (26.4) more than two years younger than the MLB average (28.6).
• We’re still getting to know Wood, who debuted just last season. The median debut season of our 32 entrants is 2022. Three players — Nick Kurtz, Roman Anthony and Colson Montgomery — have debuted since this year’s Opening Day.
• At 6-foot-7, Wood is tall for a hitter. That’s the same height as Aaron Judge and just 2 inches taller than ELLY DE LA CRUZ and Kurtz. The average height in MLB is 6-1½.
• Wood has a quick bat that generates hard contact. His swing speed (76.1) ranks in the 95th percentile and his average exit velocity (94 mph) is in the 98th percentile, according to Statcast. Collectively, the hitters in the group own an average swing speed (74.9) far above the MLB average (71.6) and generate much higher exit velocities (92.2 mph versus the average of 89.2).
But in the end, it’s not any one of these things that mark a player as exciting. It’s a combination of skills — and it looks a little different for each of them. For Wood, it’s a rare mashup of that height, the grace of movement, the almost laconic body language that suddenly explodes when bat meets ball or when he is chasing down a fly ball in center field.
“Just being able to hit for power and run the bases, play defense, just affect the game in a lot of different ways,” Wood said. “I think that’s the way to bring excitement.”
For his part, Wood grew up admiring left-handed hitters such as Curtis Granderson and Robinson Canoand originally tried to model his game after Barry Bonds. Wood might also remind you of a lefty-hitting Dave Winfield because of his build and the way his long limbs kind of unfold as he moves.
“I haven’t really watched a whole lot of video on [Winfield],” said Wood, smiling because it’s not the first time he has heard the comparison to the Hall of Famer. “I’ve gotten that one a few times, especially when I was in San Diego. I probably need to do a little more homework.”
Nearly all of the 28 hitters in the bracket are superior athletes and run well, helping them fill the columns of the stat sheet. But you can also get there by being a pure masher — Kyle Schwarber can’t run and hardly plays the field anymore, but with baseball’s second-highest hard-hit rate (behind the rookie Anthony), he hits the ball so hard so often that you can’t take your eyes off him. Even when he’s striking out.
“The loudest roars I hear during the game are either home runs or a big strikeout,” Wood said. “Or when someone hits one down the line and everyone’s just running all over the bases.”
Given the variety of ways in which a position player can manifest exciting qualities, it’s fairly difficult for a pitcher to get into the bracket. We’ve got five of them, or, well, 4½.
The half-pitcher is Shohei Ohtani who, on the pitching side, demonstrates the two things that register as most exciting, at least in our nomination process: He’s a starter, and he’s dominant.
According to strikeout-minus-walks percentage, a solid proxy for dominance, our four qualifying pitchers — Pull Skubal, Garrett Crochet, Paul scenes and Jacob deGrom — rank first, third, fourth and sixth, respectively, in K-BB% across MLB. If Ohtani qualified, he’d edge Crochet for third.
Ohtani also registers as more than a little exciting at the plate, rating in the 99th percentile in exit velocity, the 94th in swing speed and well above average in sprint speed. The full swath of skills is unmatched in the grand pool of players in MLB history, so that’s tough to beat.
You already knew all about Ohtani, of course. One of the fun things about the bracket is that because every team gets at least one nominee, it’s a chance for more casual fans to realize that dynamic performers are found across the majors even if they haven’t yet achieved the fame of national superstars such as Ohtani, Judge and Juan Soto.
The players know who these stars are, though. When asked to name some of his favorite players to watch, Wood cited familiar names including Judge, Corbin Carroll and Fernando tate Jr.., whom he saw as a onetime Padres prospect, and Soto, for whom he was once traded.
Then, unprompted, Wood said:
“I like teams like Milwaukee. They don’t have a lineup full of sluggers, but they’re the best team in baseball right now because they defend and they run the bases better than anybody. It’s a headache playing against them. You got guys flying all over the place. So yeah, they’re fun to watch.”
This points to another way to get into the bracket: stand out on MLB’s best and most exciting team. Which brings us to Milwaukee Brewers nominee Brice Takewho seemed slightly taken aback when told he had been selected. You can understand the reaction because Turang has plenty of competition in the excitement category in his own clubhouse.
“We just got guys who are gamers,” Turang said. “I’m not saying other teams don’t, but the guys in here have competitive at-bats, steal bases, drop bunts, play great defense. We are just playing every aspect of the game.”
The Brewers are all over the team leaderboards in categories including fielding run value (third), sprint speed (second), stolen bases (second) and Fangraphs’ baserunning value metric (first). This is how a team that ranks 19th in home runs can be second in runs scored, even in 2025 baseball.
Turang embodies all of that and even has added some power to his arsenal, which has helped him stand out that much more. As a Gold Glove second baseman, he’s one of nine middle infielders in the bracket. Add in four center fielders and one catcher (Cal Raleigh), and 14 of the entrants play up the middle on defense, where athleticism like Turang’s can really shine.
Not surprisingly, Turang’s favorite player to watch early in life was Ken Griffey Jr., who was a teammate of Turang’s father, Brian, for two seasons with the Seattle Mariners. Later, Turang’s interests tilted toward Ichiro Suzuki, Vladimir Guerrero Sr. and Andrelton Simmons.
Among contemporaries, Turang echoes Wood in that he simply marvels at how many different ways players in today’s game can exhilarate.
“They’re all a little bit different,” Turang said. “You have guys like Bobby Witt, who rips the cover off the ball, plays good defense, can run, can do kind of everything. And then you got guys like Judge who are big, strong dudes hitting massive homers.”
There is truly no one thing that marks a player as exciting, and perhaps the real proof is provided by the fans in the ballpark who react to the amazing things they see unfold on the green expanse before them. There is much to see.
“I feel like the game is faster than it’s ever been, so athletic,” Wood said. “The power and speed combo, there’s a lot of guys who did it, but I feel like now there are more than ever. There’s a ton of guys who can hit 30 and steal 30.”
