The 2024 MLB Bald-Star Team
A different way to look back on the baseball season that was
Bald is beautiful.
The examples of this are many: Kelly Slater, Samuel L. Jackson, Charlie Brown, me.
And as I thought about how to review the 2024 MLB season, besides a rote assessment of my preseason power rankings, the New York Yankees’ collapse in the World Series provided an assist.
“Mookie giving hope to all 30-something balds,” I texted my buddies, after watching Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts rejoice at winning his third championship.
“Need a bald stars full lineup from Out in Left,” Miles replied.
Yes. Yes, we do.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a retrospective of the 2024 season, I give you the inaugural Out in Left MLB Bald-Star Team!
(Shoutout Miles for the inspiration—follow This is Football, the podcast he produces featuring Kevin Clark, one of the most thoughtful and insightful NFL analysts in media.)
A couple show notes before we begin:
If you feel I missed a deserving Bald, or catch a new Bald next year, then please let me know. It’s difficult to determine who is bald via the internet. Most photographs and videos of players and managers are with their caps on.
I excluded players with buzz cuts. The Out in Left Bald-Star Team is about accepting people as they are. Aesthetic fraudsters need not apply.
Manager: Brandon Hyde, Baltimore Orioles
Considering managers are often the oldest on-field personnel, there are surprisingly few who qualify to lead the Bald-Star Team. Orioles skipper Brandon Hyde is a solid selection, though. Stout and gruff and sporting a gray beard, he’s straight out of MLB manager central casting, and he’s paid his dues leading the Orioles through some brutal seasons from 2018 to 2021.
He’s rewarded now with a star-studded roster, one that logged 91 victories this season and a second-consecutive playoff berth. The Orioles are 0-5 in those postseason appearances, but with by far the best young core in the game Hyde is primed to lead the Bald-Star Team for years to come.
Hyde’s best moment as Orioles manager so far came in 2021 during a game in a miserable, 110-loss season. Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Robbie Ray suspected the Orioles of knowing his pitch selection and announcing it to the batter by yelling “ándale.” Exasperated, Ray stepped off the mound and stared at the Orioles dugout, but like a bear protecting its cubs Hyde yelled, “Pitch the fucking ball. We ain’t saying shit!” Jomboy Media broke down the scuffle in a video. The video’s sponsor? Keeps, a company offering various hair-loss treatments.
Starting Pitcher: Zack Wheeler, Philadelphia Phillies
Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler is about to get robbed of a Cy Young Award for the second time. In 2021, he lost to Corbin Burnes, who the Milwaukee Brewers used as a glorified middle reliever. This year, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America is going to give the award to the Atlanta Braves’ Chris Sale. This is maddening for two reasons:
Screw “rate basis.” Burnes might have had a better WHIP and Sale might have had a better SO/9 and blah blah blah—who cares? In the sagacious words of Herm Edwards, you play to win the game, and the best way to do that is to have the best players on the field as much as possible. Wheeler’s teammate Aaron Nola has thrown the most innings of all pitchers in baseball since 2020. Number two? Wheeler himself. Burnes’ 167 innings in 2021 were the fewest ever for a Cy Young-winning starter, and Sale didn’t pitch in the playoffs this year because of something with his back. Wheeler was dominant in his one playoff start. The best ability is availability.
No Atlanta Brave should be recognized for anything until the franchise disavows and their fans stop doing the tomahawk chop chant.
Zack Wheeler is inarguably the best free agent signing in baseball since joining the Phillies in 2020, and his being denied two Cy Young Awards is a grave sporting injustice. I am glad to be bald, if only because I can stand in solidarity with my ace.
Relief Pitcher: Tanner Scott, San Diego Padres
You’ve probably never heard of Tanner Scott because he played for some woeful Orioles teams, then he was traded to the Siberia Marlins. He could peg you with one of his 100-mph fastballs and you’d still have no idea who he is. But the San Diego Padres traded a ransom to bring him in at this year’s trade deadline, and there were two things that slowed Shohei Ohtani this postseason: a separated shoulder, and Tanner Scott. A lefty reliever, and finally a free agent at 30-years-old, Scott is about to make a gazillion dollars a year to pitch maybe 65 innings. God bless him.
Catcher: Jacob Stallings, Colorado Rockies
I thought Jacob Stallings, a 6’5” beanstalk probably playing the wrong sport, was going to take this spot by default. The best catchers this season were able to get a haircut, and Stallings didn’t have enough at-bats to qualify for the leaderboards, but he had a good season! Logging 1.7 bWAR in just 82 games at age-34 is nothing to sneeze at. He also has a special place in my heart for ruining the lives of New York Mets fans a couple years ago.
(Edwin Diaz emphatically pointing up at Stallings’ bomb as if it was a pop-up is laugh out loud funny.)
First Baseman: Christian Walker, Arizona Diamondbacks
Christian Walker is quietly one of the best all-around corner infielders in baseball. He’s so quiet about it I had to search deep in the archives for this blurb. Here is what I found:
He’s from the Philadelphia suburbs.
He’s good at baseball.
He’s a free agent.
That’s all I got. I hope he’s a good guy, and I hope he gets paid a lot of money.
Second Baseman: Brandon Lowe, Tampa Bay Rays
Brandon Lowe hit 100 home runs faster than any primary second baseman in MLB history. He hit 39 home runs in 2021. He’s hit 42 over the last two years, despite playing only 216 games. It makes sense why the Rays wasted little time this offseason to exercise his $10.5 million option for 2025. For that kind of power, that salary is a pittance. It’s also a shame that that power is wasting away in obscurity in Tampa. Sorry—St. Petersburg. Or, wherever the Rays are going to play this season. In any event, second base is filled with young and scrappy players with long locks flowing behind their skinny frames. It’s great to see a Bald mash at the position.
Third Baseman: Jake Burger, Miami Marlins
The man named Jake Burger looks exactly how he’s supposed to, and he plays exactly how he’s supposed to. He can’t field, he barely walks, he strikes out a lot, and he doesn’t make contact often, but when he does—mercy. Few players hit the ball as hard and as far as Burger, who will have a place in the Bald-Star Team as long as his thick thighs carry his exquisitely round dome onto a ballfield.
Shortstop: Mookie Betts, Los Angeles Dodgers
If on one end of the Bald Spectrum we have Burger, a meatball of a man, then on the other we have Mookie Betts, a wiry fashionista. Coming into spring training, all the talk was Betts transitioning from right field, where he won six Gold Gloves and an MVP, to shortstop, probably the most demanding defensive position besides catcher. While he moved back to right field midseason after recovering from a broken hand, the experiment deserves to be recognized and it speaks to his character and his athleticism. (Betts is also an excellent bowler.)
Outfield: Mookie Betts, Los Angeles Dodgers
So good and so bald, he needed to be listed twice. This is from a few years ago, but c’mon:
In all seriousness, Betts is one of my favorite players in baseball. Of course, he’s one of the best all-around players in the game, and his dynamic style of play lends itself to Top 10 lists and YouTube clips, but he’s also a thoughtful interview and prolific off the field.
When the Red Sox won the 2018 World Series, Betts declined to go to a White House ceremony presided by Donald Trump, and I suspect Betts asked the two idiot Yankees fans who thrashed at him in Game 4 of this year’s World Series where they were on January 6. His winning the World Series again is a win for humanity—except for Boston. The Red Sox deserve to be contracted from MLB for trading away prime Mookie Betts.
Outfield: Adolis Garcia, Texas Rangers
I feel like Adolis Garcia emerged from Earth’s core fully formed as a chiseled Bald Star. There’s essentially no baseball record of him before his age-28 season in 2021. After defecting from Cuba in 2016, he bounced around the St. Louis Cardinals organization, which then sent him to the Texas Rangers for nothing but cash. The Rangers even tried to cut him, but when no other team wanted him they invited back him to spring training ahead of the 2021 season. Then he hit 31 home runs and batted in 90 runs across 149 games. I have no idea how or why this happened.
Since then, he’s hit 91 more home runs playing almost everyday. Data nerds will point out that his advanced stats are average, and his only skills as a baseball player are hitting the ball hard and far, when he does happen to make contact. But I ask the data nerds this: Have you carried your team to a World Series victory?
Outfield: Brandon Nimmo, New York Mets
As annoying as I find Brandon Nimmo—for the love of God, stop sprinting to first when you get walked—and for as much as I hate the Mets, Nimmo is a fine player, and a tough one. In this year’s playoffs, he soldiered through severe plantar fasciitis. As someone who’s experienced debilitating PF, I do not understand how he played baseball and did so at the highest possible level.
But I should clarify: Brandon Nimmo is not bald. He only should be. I can spot a thinning, receding hairline from a mile away. And at the same time as I tell him to cut out the Little League nonsense, I’d also like to tell him that he has nothing to fear in accepting his fate. Bald is beautiful.
Enjoyed this very much!
Amazing work