Major League Baseball

MLB: Most Interesting Man in Baseball - Part II

Updated Mar. 5, 2020 12:42 a.m. ET

Fansided, Jim Turvey/FanSided via Call to the Pen

Frank Victores-USA TODAY Sports

Earlier this week we began the process to find the Most Interesting Man in Baseball. In Tuesday's post, we laid out the criteria (have to be active, have to be a player, seeding based on Twitter followers) and met the cast of characters.

For the uninitiated, we settled on eight modern baseball characters: The Cagey Veteran, The On-field Quirk, The Exception to the Rule, The Straight-up Weirdo, The Next Big Thing (?), The Just So Damn Good, The He's One of Us and Yoenis Cespedes. A representative for each was selected and now we can move on to the good stuff – the matchups.

We didn't get around to seeding on Tuesday, so here are the official pre-bracket ranks (once again, based on Twitter follows, as taken from Rembert Browne and his "Who Won the Year" articles).

1 Mike Trout: 2.21M followers

2 Yoenis Cespedes: 152K followers

3 Sean Doolittle: 60.8K followers

4 Glen Perkins: 45.4K followers

5 Trea Turner: 21.3K followers

6 Carter Capps: 2,402 followers

7 Ichiro: 315 followers*

8 Shohei Otani: N/A

* I'm not even 100 percent sure this is actually Ichiro's Twitter account… It's been inactive since 2011 and is following precisely one other person… Classic Ichiro.

Alright, we now have our seeding and thus our matchups, so let's get this underway. Today will be the quarterfinals, with the semifinals and finals decided over the weekend.

Quarterfinals

Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

1 Mike Trout vs. 8 Shohei Otani

Our first matchup pits The Just So Good against The Exception to the Rule. In Trout and Otani we have a true battle of skill. Trout is the best player in the world, while Otani is the best player playing outside of the U.S. right now.

Of course, "best" is not what we're trying to quantify; instead, we are worried about "interesting."

Let's tackle Otani first. The 22-year-old righty is a pitcher first and foremost, and, wow, what a pitcher he is. As Ben Lindbergh noted in his excellent piece on Otani for The Ringer, Otani recently broke the NPB record with a recorded pitch speed of 165 kilometers per hour (or 103 mph). He did this in a save attempt because although Otani's main job is that of starting pitcher, there is nothing this man can't do. For MLB comparison's sake, he's at least as interesting as Aroldis Chapman, King of the Fast Pitch in the U.S.

Of course, Otani is a starter first and foremost, and given that he is fresh off an NPB MVP, it's probably not too surprising that he is a very good one at that. Just how good was he though? We cited these stats last article, but let's hit you with them again real quick. In 2016, Otani went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA, 0.957 WHIP and 11.2 SO/9. For comparison's sake, here were Clayton Kershaw's numbers in 2016: 12-4, 1.69 ERA, 0.725 WHIP, 10.4 SO/9. Outside of Kershaw's just stupid-low WHIP, those numbers look mighty similar. So we'll add 80 percent of Clayton Kershaw's "interesting-ness" to Otani.

We're not done yet, though. As you all know, Otani can bring it with the stick as well. In 382 plate appearances in 2016 (he was used as the team's DH throughout the season when not pitching), Otani hit .322 with 22 HR and an OPS of 1.004. For MLB comparison's sake, in his historic debut, Gary Sanchez hit .299 with 20 HR and an OPS of 1.032. So now we can add one full Gary Sanchez-worth of interesting to Otani.

So is a combination of Aroldis Chapman, 80 percent of Clayton Kershaw, and Gary Sanchez enough to top the best player in the world? In a word, no.

We busted out a few Trout nuggets in Part I of this series, but it's time to go back to the well with a few more crazy stats:

Trout is on pace to shatter MLB records and completely re-write the record books. Being able to see how that plays out is simply too much to fall in round one, even if his matchup is a three-headed version of Chapman, Kershaw, and Sanchez. Trout moves on.

David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports

2 Yoenis Cespedes vs. 7 Ichiro Suzuki

See this is where the Twitter followers method of seeding has a weakness. This is a potential championship matchup in the very first round. Of course, if we want to have a spicy first round, maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Like Michael Scott, its weaknesses are actually its strengths.

Cespedes and Suzuki represent two ends of the spectrum. Cespedes is a true showman, a man who can pull off riding a horse to spring training and actually look cool doing it.

Yoenis Cespedes rode a horse to practice today…. pic.twitter.com/JSaxIDPBNA

— Kent (@RealKentMurphy) March 1, 2016

He's a man who can host family barbecues flashy enough to inspire one of the funniest Twitter accounts in the sport.

It's not just off-the-field stuff with Cespedes, though. It's shocking that MLB hasn't implemented a rule to disallow the use of an actual howitzer instead of a right arm, but they are still allowing it.

Cespedes' throw, animated: pic.twitter.com/QUKlXHGWZy

— Ranger Wob (@World_Wide_Wob) August 16, 2015

Unfortunately for Ces, he ran into a buzzsaw in the first round. The resident Cagey Veteran in MLB right now, Ichiro is on such a different level that he has earned the Prince-eqsue one name treatment. He has Ichiro running across the back of his jersey, and those six letters are all any baseball fan needs to immediately recollect hundreds of amazing baseball highlights. You thought Cespedes had an arm on him? Peep this:

That cat is a cool 42 years old in that video. Come on. Japan's main man moves on.

Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

3 Sean Doolittle vs. 6 Carter Capps

Bullpen battle! The two men from baseball humor's equivalent to the Upright Citizens Brigade (the bullpen) meet in the first round. As noted in Part I, the bullpen is a veritable breeding ground for some of the best characters in league history. From Rollie Fingers to Dennis Eckersley to (my favorite player of all time) Dan Quisenberry, MLB bullpens are always stacked with a great group of weirdos.

In 2017, no two are more interesting than Doolittle and Capps. On the field, Doolittle is a strong reliever, with an ERA+ of 126 over his five years in the major leagues. Doolittle is most interesting off the field, however. Doolittle has been a known commodity for a few years now, as he is one of the most entertaining follows on Twitter. A's Twitter even had a Sean Doolittle Appreciation Day back in 2014 inspired by one of FanSided's own.

Doolittle most recently made news when he and his wife hosted 21 Syrian refugee families. In the current political climate, this made big news, but as Doolittle told Sports Illustrated in a recent article:

To us it seemed like a humanitarian thing to do… Helping people in need is not a zero-sum game. And compassion shouldn't fall along political lines.

That's a pretty cool dude.

Let's be honest, Capps doesn't really have a chance here. His pitching motion is pretty cool, and his ERA+ of 331 in 2015 was certainly interesting, but Doolittle cruises in this first-round matchup.

Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports

4 Glen Perkins vs. 5 Trea Turner

The He's One of Us vs. The Next Big Thing (?) matchup – a classic. These are two of the most common characters in baseball, and these two guys are at the head of their class respectively.

Here's a quote from Perkins' foreword to the 2017 Baseball Prospectus Annual:

I stumbled upon BP sometime in early 2009 when I read an article containing the acronym FIP. Advanced statistics, at least from a player's point of view, were not even in the embryonic stage, but that term and its meaning stuck its tentacles in my brain and didn't let go.

Doesn't that sound like a guy you'd love to bump into at a bar and realize four hours later that you had just engaged in the best baseball conversation of your life?! "We could be friends!" you might think to yourself.