"Mookie Betts deserves to be above Aaron Judge"; "Juan Soto should be dropped a few notches" - Fans disappointed by MLB's latest Top 10 players list

The MLB released its top 10 players list heading into the 2025 regular season. With Spring Training almost here, MLB Network has been counting down the top 100 players, and it revealed the top 10 last night. It has, like all of their lists this offseason, been met with pushback from fans.

Their list, from 10 to one, is Gunnar Henderson, Jose Ramirez, Freddie Freeman, Yordan Alvarez, Francisco Lindor, Mookie Betts, Juan Soto, Bobby Witt Jr., Aaron Judge, and Shohei Ohtani.

Unsurprisingly, fans went to the comments to express their disappointment with the list.

"Freddie Freeman too high up on the list, he's good but I don't think he's top ten," another added.

"Until it’s seen that Ohtani can be a great pitcher again this is outrageous. Judge is a better hitter and plays defense" one said.

"Does a two-way superstar automatically outrank elite specialists? Some would argue a dominant hitter or pitcher deserves the top spot," another noted.

"Lindor isn’t better than Alvarez or Freeman and if we are being honest, Ramirez is also better," one complained.

Even the top spot is controversial. Fans didn't have a good opinion of most rankings on this particular list.

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Top 10 MLB players by fWAR

The conversation around who the best player — or in this case the top 10 players — is in the sport of baseball is more nuanced than this, but fWAR does a good job of sorting players by value. It takes a lot of factors into account, though it is affected by overall playing time.

Aaron Judge led baseball in fWAR (Imagn)

However, based on that metric, the list the MLB Network provided has a very different top 10. Here's how the 2024 fWAR leaderboard would've ranked the 10 best players:

1. Aaron Judge, 11.2 fWAR
2. Bobby Witt Jr., 10.4 fWAR
3. Shohei Ohtani, 9.1 fWAR
4. Juan Soto, 8.1 fWAR
5. Gunnar Henderson, 8.0 fWAR
6. Francisco Lindor, 7.8 fWAR
7. Jarren Duran, 6.7 fWAR
8. Jose Ramirez, 6.5 fWAR
9. Elly De La Cruz, 6.4 fWAR
10. Ketel Marte, 6.3 fWAR

Players like Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, and Yordan Alvarez were not on this list. Part of that is due to injuries, especially in the case of Betts. He played 116 games and still ranked 22nd in baseball with 4.4 fWAR. MLB Network's list is also done to adjust for injuries and partly to predict that said players will have a better year this season.