MLB All-Quarter Century Team: Breaking down the 40-man roster — plus special selections

Just when you thought we couldn't possibly have more fun with our MLB All-Quarter Century Team than we've had so far … nope!
We've made our picks for the starters on this team. You've made your picks. So what could get bigger or better than that?
It's time to announce the whole darned roster. That's what.
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We should really be doing this standing at home plate … in St. Louis … or L.A. … or at Yankee Stadium. In prime time. With the prospective members of this team filling the seats, waiting anxiously to see if they made it … then tearfully hugging everyone but the beer vendors when their names are called.
All right, so that's not going to happen. But you know what is going to happen? We're going to reveal all the names of The Athletic's MLB All-Quarter Century Team right here, right now. And this team is as magical as you'd expect it to be.
Ready? Cool. Let's do this. Is this thing on?
BUT FIRST … Let's explain how we got here. The starters on this team were voted on by all of you. So in the spirit of democracy — and the spirit of not wanting to listen to 11 billion complaints about our picks anymore — we're going with your lineup, rotation and closers.
So who picked the rest of this team? That would be us — Stark and Kepner. We got ourselves into this mess. We came up with this idea. We've driven this bus this far. We'll take it the rest of the way.
How big is this roster? That was the hardest question to answer in this whole process. The bigger, the better — that was our vote. And we still didn't have room for everybody.
So can we apologize now — to Chipper Jones, Freddie Freeman, Bryce Harper, Joey Votto and Joe Mauer? You guys have had a fantastic century. But there's never enough slots for every player you'd like to include on teams like this.
Oh, and we also have some bonus categories, because if you're going to celebrate the quarter century, why the heck not?
Let us know how you think we did. That always goes well. And now …
Here are the position players on our All-Quarter Century Team.
We share the consternation of the Joey Votto, Freddie Freeman, Paul Goldschmidt and Todd Helton fan clubs that those stars are not on this squad. But this is what the voters wanted. Please remember that.
Albert and Miggy reeled in a combined 87 percent of the votes. The only other candidate who even topped 3 percent was Freeman (with 6.6 percent). So when the people speak, we listen … unless we don't. But we did here. So if you're not happy, blame your fellow Americans, not us.
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Once again, this is what you voted for. Robbie Canó, don't you know you only collected 13.9 percent of this vote? Dustin Pedroia and Jeff Kent, it would be fun having you be part of this, but it wasn't close.
Despite all the fan grumbling about buzzers and trash-can lids, Altuve had more than a 10 percent cushion in the voting between himself and the rest of the field. And Utley got nearly twice as many votes as Canó. So who are we to argue … unless we're in the mood to argue?
Also stay tuned for one of the runners-up at this position to sneak onto this team. You'll see!
There's a compelling case for Jimmy Rollins to sneak in over Lindor. But that is not how our voters saw it. So did we hear you loud and clear, America? Of course we did.
Jeter breezed in as the starter, so this was always going to be about who joined him on this team. And Lindor was the clear second choice, more than tripling Rollins' support, 22.6 percent to 7.4 percent. That raises all kinds of enjoyable Mets-Phillies intrigue. But just so it's clear, it isn't coming from us!
We'll be totally upfront on this. We were not in agreement on this one. Guess who the prime suspect was who inspired that debate?
Tyler's position: How can we not go with A-Rod as the backup third baseman? The voters came within 22 votes of electing him. He hit 548 homers in the 2000s. He was the WAR leader at this position. And yeah, he had issues, but we have other performance-enhancing drug scoundrels on the team. Don't we?
Jayson's position: I recognize all of that. A-Rod was an awesome baseball player. But here's another guy who was: Larry (Chipper) Jones. And I object to leaving Chipper off this team. Who was the only third baseman in the 2000s in the .300/.400/.500 Club? Chipper. He hit .364 and won a batting title — at age 36. He was still making All-Star teams and getting MVP votes at age 40. And he deserves to make this roster, over a two-time PED offender.
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So in the end, it was Tyler and the voters 2, Jayson 1. And that's how we decided. But we spent more time spinning our wheels over this spot than anywhere else on the roster.
Well, isn't this a fun couple? Look, you all had your chance, America. You could have gone to the polls and renounced these evil 'cheaters.' If you wanted to throw a big hug around Matt Holliday, Juan Soto, Lance Berkman or Christian Yelich, we wouldn't have stopped you.
But that isn't what you did, is it? Bonds and Manny combined to collect just shy of 80 percent of the votes in the left-field portion of this election. (Granted, nearly 70 percent of that went to Barry.) So we just went with it. At least we're talking about two of the greatest hitters who ever lived. You'll just have to ignore a few subplots when this team takes the field. You can do that!
Other than Mariano Rivera, nobody attracted a bigger chunk of the votes in this election than Trout (76.7 percent). And while there was some grumbling about that in the story comments, this is where we get to reassure you. You got this soooo right.
But then what? We wouldn't have had a problem with Andruw Jones, Torii Hunter, Jim Edmonds or Andrew McCutchen as center fielder 2.0 on this team. And the voting was tight enough that we probably could have overruled the fan vote if we felt strongly enough. But Beltrán was the best all-around player of them all. He finished second in the voting. And if you want to wear a trash can over your head when he's introduced, we get it. Just shower immediately afterward.
Right field is so overloaded with great choices, there is zero justice in naming this team and acting like it's fine that Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper and the original artist known as Vlad Guerrero aren't on it. Maybe we can fix some of that injustice. Maybe. Keep reading and see.
But Ichiro and Judge had to be on here. We're not certain the right guy is starting, but we've been down that road. Ichiro won the fan voting by a couple of hundred votes. So how about that: We're actually going to field a lineup with only one Yankee starting. Is there some deeper meaning in that? Discuss.
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Ohtani might not be the starter we expected. But he's the starter you voted for. He blitzed Big Papi by nearly 1,000 votes. And that about did it for the drama at this position.
Jim Thome? Enjoy your summers in Cooperstown, N.Y. Nelson Cruz? You had a memorable career. But from the moment we kicked off this project, we knew the two designated hitters were going to be the most multi-talented human ever to play baseball and the Face of the Red Sox Curse Busters. And for once, we were actually right.
Joe Mauer and Pudge Rodriguez were first-ballot Hall of Famers. But our voters wanted Buster and Yadi. So what did they get? Buster and Yadi — as their All-Quarter Century catching legends.
Should we have overruled the people on this one? There's certainly a case for Mauer over Yadi. But Molina and Posey finished in a virtual dead heat, separated by only 22 votes. So we're not going there. We don't hate your team, Minnesota. It's just American democracy at work.
Here's a 40-man team with 24 position players and 16 pitchers, including specialists, etc.
1B — Pujols, Miggy
2B — Altuve, Utley
SS — Jeter, Lindor
3B — Beltré, A-Rod
LF — Bonds, Manny
CF — Trout, Beltrán
RF — Ichiro, Judge
C — Yadi, Posey
DH — Ohtani, Ortiz
It sounds strange to list Mookie Betts as the utilityman on this team. He's a future Hall of Famer, a three-time World Series champion, an MVP winner and a three-time MVP runner-up. But it's his own fault. Betts has played more than 10,000 innings in the outfield, primarily as the best right fielder of his era. But he's also spent about 2,000 innings on the dirt, at second and short — mainly after turning 30. He's an all-around force, and making him our top utilityman underscores his laudable example of what it means to be a team player.
The switch-hitting Zobrist played every day and almost everywhere, appearing at eight positions (not catcher) while showing that a utilityman could get rich lugging all those gloves around. Zobrist earned more than $86 million in his career and left his mark everywhere he went, helping the Rays become a force and winning titles with the Royals and Cubs, for whom he was World Series MVP.
It seems so quaint now, but for most of this quarter century, one whole league allowed its pitchers to hit. Every manager, then, wanted a guy on his bench who was there for one reason only: to grab a bat, terrify the closer and obliterate a baseball.
Nobody personified this better than Stairs, who cheerfully acknowledged his simple goal to go deep every swing. Stairs connected on 19 pinch homers in the 2000s, five more than any other pinch hitter of the era — plus one very memorable blast ripped into the night in the 2008 NLCS:
Gore played in nine seasons — and only once had more than eight plate appearances. He was a pinch-runner extraordinaire, and the Royals, Cubs, Braves and Mets all deployed him in the postseason. Gore won three championship rings for three seasons in which he compiled three total at-bats: 2015 (Royals), 2020 (Dodgers) and 2021 (Braves). Overall, Gore was 48-for-58 in stolen base attempts, postseason included, scoring 36 runs while collecting just 16 hits.
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In 1986, the Red Sox lost a would-be World Series clincher when they failed to insert a defensive replacement at first base. In 2004, they made sure that wouldn't happen by acquiring a Gold Glove Award-winning backup. Mientkiewicz didn't hit much, and he didn't have to. All he had to do was make the plays at first base, and the biggest was easy: catching Keith Foulke's underhand toss for the final out of a cathartic World Series victory.
Wise made the greatest catch of the quarter century, especially given the circumstances. On July 23, 2009, with the White Sox, Wise entered for center field defense in the ninth. He promptly chased down a deep drive by the Rays' Gabe Kapler, crashing into the fence, bobbling the ball after gloving it, then snaring it barehanded, in mid-air, as he twisted and tumbled to the ground. Moments later, Mark Buehrle completed his perfect game.
The three 200-game winners still roaming MLB clubhouses — Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw — were obvious picks. And while Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez divided their greatness – 92.7 combined WAR in the 1900s, 96.9 in the 2000s — you weren't about to tell them they lost this election. (And we don't blame you!)
Your five picks left us with two slots. And the more we thought about it, the more we felt that WAR doesn't quite tell the tale. Zack Greinke has the fourth-most WAR of any pitcher in the 2000s, with 72.4. That's 10 more than Roy Halladay and CC Sabathia. It's a significant gap.
But Halladay and Sabathia were first-ballot Hall of Famers who burned to uplift their teams, embracing everything an ace should be. Halladay is this century's leader in complete games with 66 — including a memorable one in October. Sabathia ranks first in innings with 3,577 1/3. Greinke should have a plaque in Cooperstown. But aura counts, too, and Halladay and Sabathia belong.
'Enter Sandman' and 'Hell's Bells.' The cutter and the changeup. The 600-save club. The names on MLB's reliever of the year awards: Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman. You've been paying attention.
But what about all those other closers? Joe Nathan was awfully good. Jonathan Papelbon and Francisco Rodríguez had hundreds of saves and monster Octobers. But we went with a new Hall of Famer (Wagner) and the only three pitchers with 250 saves and 12 strikeouts per nine innings in the 2000s: Chapman, Kimbrel and Jansen.
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Only two pitchers in the 2000s have appeared in at least 600 games with an ERA under 3.00 and fewer than 50 saves. Conveniently for us, one is a lefty and one is a righty. So let's hear it for two guys who rarely got the 'S' by their names but still made a big difference.
Some lefty setup men were nastier on lefties than Watson — Javier López (held lefties to a .202 average), Randy Choate (.195), Damaso Marte (.189) and so on. But Watson had a stealth run as a reliable run preventer for the three Pittsburgh playoff teams of the 2010s, won twice for the Dodgers in the 2017 World Series and reeled off nine consecutive full seasons with at least 60 appearances.
We hear about the best bullpens having 'different looks,' right? That's all the more reason to welcome O'Day to the mix. The submariner held righties to a .198/.266/.295 slash line, reaching the postseason six times with Texas, Baltimore and Atlanta. Like Watson, he made one All-Star team — but we're sure this is a much bigger honor.
Miller made 66 of the most forgettable starts of the 2000s. Pitching mostly for also-ran Marlins teams, Miller had a 5.70 ERA as a starter, with an opponents' batting average near .300. Fortunately for Miller, he pitched his final decade (2012-2021) exclusively in relief — and in that role, he changed the game. With a slingshot delivery from his 6-foot-7 frame, Miller dominated with fastballs and sliders, posting a 2.58 ERA while striking out 13.2 batters per nine innings. The term 'high-leverage' was basically invented for Miller, who showed the value of using the best arm in the bullpen to snuff rallies at the most critical points — even if they happened before the ninth inning.
It's not just the four championships that make Bruce Bochy the manager of the quarter century. It's the master class he gives whenever his teams play in late October. Bochy is undefeated in four World Series in the 2000s, only once needing more than five games to finish the job. No manager has deployed relievers with such consistent success as Bochy, who has managed 21 World Series games for the Giants and Rangers in the 2000s and never lost when leading after the first inning.
In 2004, when Theo Epstein led his hometown team to its first title since 1918, he was really just getting started. Three years later — with just six holdovers from the first roster — the Red Sox won again. After a late-season implosion in 2011, Epstein moved on to Chicago to slay a beast even more ferocious than the Bambino — the Billy Goat.
In Boston, Epstein had inherited a winning team. With the Cubs, he took over a last-place team and rebuilt it in five years. In 2016, the Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908, part of a run of five playoff appearances in six seasons that ensured Epstein a future spot in Cooperstown.
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It's been named for a disgraced energy company, a popular orange juice brand and, now, a Japanese air-conditioning manufacturer. It's not a living history museum like Fenway Park, Wrigley Field or Dodger Stadium. It's not a charming, modern marvel like you'll find in Seattle, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and so many other places.
But if you want to tell the story of baseball in the 2000s, you can't do it without that wacky bandbox in downtown Houston. It's not about the train that chugs above left field, or the grassy hill that once rose in deep center. It's about the postseason … and the scandal. This the only ballpark to host five World Series in this century, with the 2005 Chicago White Sox, 2019 Washington Nationals, 2021 Atlanta Braves and 2022 Astros all clinching on that field. The 2018 Boston Red Sox and 2023 Texas Rangers clinched pennants there. Albert Pujols hit a memorably majestic home run.
And, as you may have heard, the Astros banged some trash cans there, too.
The Hall of Fame honors one broadcaster each year with the Ford C. Frick Award. But the Hall really should consider making an exception for Kruk and Kuip, who formed a bond as Giants teammates in the 1980s and have been an inseparable Bay Area institution in the booth for nearly four decades. From their trove of Emmys to the top spot they routinely claim in fan rankings to the greatest honor of them all — the near universal love and acclaim that they've received from generations of Giants fans — Krukow and Kuiper are as decorated and celebrated as any regional voices across all sports.
Their descriptions and accounts have been the backbeat as the franchise moved from Candlestick Park to the shores of McCovey Cove in 2000. They captured the sheer joy and incredulity when the Giants won four National League pennants and three World Series championships. They perfectly played into the anticipation every time Barry Bonds cocked his wrists in the batter's box and awaited the next pitch. A Bonds home run without Kuiper's signature call — 'Hits it high! Hits it deeeep! OUTTA HERE!' — would be like the Rolling Stones showing up without a drum kit. The broadcast's standard first-inning recitation of the Giants' defense wouldn't be the same without the catcher in the squaaaaat, as only Krukow can enunciate it. If you try to list all the catchphrases, you'll probably need to sit down for awhile. So grab some pine, meat. Through personal tragedies and significant health challenges, Krukow (73) and Kuiper (75) are still going strong at the top of their craft. Both of them say they can't imagine being away from the ballpark — and from one other. — Andrew Baggarly
If you're old enough to remember Lonnie Smith plowing into Brian Harper at the plate, you might miss those medieval collisions of yore. If you believe — as Roger Angell did — that no player should simply be given second base in extra innings, you might hate the automatic runner. If you love sacrifice bunts, you probably wish pitchers still hit.
But what's not to love about the pitch timer? Introduced in 2023, it worked instantly and flawlessly, restoring the natural rhythms of the game while shedding the stuff nobody liked: stepping off, stepping out, 'clearing the mechanism,' all the self-indulgences that players quickly learned to live without. In 2021, the average time of a nine-inning game was 3 hours 10 minutes, the slowest ever. In 2024, it was 2 hours 36 minutes, the fastest in 40 years.
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When the century dawned, a few fearless and grizzled veterans were still allowed to wear a batting helmet without ear flaps. The last — Tim Raines' nacho bowl — from the 2002 Marlins — is on display at the Hall of Fame.
But while you can't eliminate risk in baseball, you can mitigate it in a sensible way. David Wright's Great Gazoo helmet and pitcher Alex Torres' skull-protector were well-intentioned, but never caught on. The C-flap, however, protects a hitter's jaw in a practical, unobtrusive way. Giancarlo Stanton pioneered it in 2016, and soon it was ubiquitous. Thankfully.
'The C-flap, man,' the Brewers' Keon Broxton said in 2017, after taking a fastball off it. 'That thing saved my life.'
Remember Owen Wilson as a Washington Nationals pitcher in 'How Do You Know'? What about 'Trouble With The Curve,' where the top draft prospect is a chunky hothead who only hits fastballs? And who could forget 'Million Dollar Arm,' starring Ken Rosenthal and some guy named Jayson Stark?
Hmm… maybe don't answer that.
The biggest hits of the 2000s have been 'Moneyball' and '42,' big-budget movies with A-list stars. They both tell important stories. But the vote here is for 'Sugar,' written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, which explores the other side of fame: failure. We know that many teenagers leave the Dominican Republic to pursue baseball stardom. But do we really grasp the isolation, pressure and culture shock that come with the effort? This movie powerfully humanizes it.
The animal kingdom abounds with potential team names. And for much of this century, minor-league franchises have used adjectives to expand their options. With a quack-quack here and an oink-oink there, we've welcomed the Rubber Ducks, IronPigs, Trash Pandas, Sod Poodles, Yard Goats, Rumble Ponies and more to the farm.
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But our favorite is delightfully simple: the El Paso Chihuahuas. It makes you smile without trying too hard. It's uncommon, perhaps even unique, in the sports landscape. It has a local tie, referring to the Chihuahuan Desert where El Paso sits. Plus, an alternate logo features a chihuahua swinging a bone in the style of the Swingin' Friar, the mascot of the parent San Diego Padres.
Brilliant, all around. El Paso, take a bow (wow).
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Marc Serota, Gregory Shamus, Ronald Martinez, Jamie Squire, Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

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