MLB Rank 2024: Top snubs, overrated and underrated players - ESPN

Our ranking of the top 100 MLB players in 2024 is here! And you know what that means: It's time to talk about what we got right — and wrong.

We asked five of our voters — Buster Olney, Jeff Passan, Jorge Castillo, Bradford Doolittle and David Schoenfield — to take a look at our MLB Rank list and tell us what they and their colleagues messed up and what surprised them the most. Who did we leave out? Who's too high or too low? And what players will crack the top 100 — and even the top five — in the future?

Let's hear what they had to say.

Olney: The presence of relievers, as well as their collective impact, is growing in MLB. But it was Atlanta Braves reliever A.J. Minter who noted, as he looked over our top 100 list, how few relievers we had on it. Devin Williams, who could be one of the most important players to move before this year's trade deadline, is at No. 99. Given the volume of innings that individual relievers throw, the lack of bullpen guys makes sense, but it doesn't square with the collective impact that bullpens have on the game in this era.

Passan: Just how few starting pitchers populate the top of the list. Gerrit Cole is the only one in the top 10. Just four are among the top 30: Cole, Spencer Strider, Corbin Burnes and Zack Wheeler. Of the top 50 players, 22% are starting pitchers; on the whole list, it's 28%. The degradation of the starting pitcher is one of the biggest stories of the past 20 years in baseball, and the consequence is evident when the person who dictates the game — the one standing on the mound — is seen almost as an afterthought by those weighing the best players.

Castillo: Seeing just one catcher in the top 45 and just six overall. Adley Rutschman, the Baltimore Orioles' franchise