Baseball Reference identifies 26 players as having a breadth and volume of skills and performance to have amassed – by the time all was said and done – at least 50.0 offensive WAR (oWAR) and at least 15.0 defensive WAR (dWAR). There are some inner, inner-circle all-timers here, some “If we’re starting a ballclub, let’s make sure to get that guy” names: Willie Mays, Honus Wagner, Johnny Bench, Mike Schmidt, to name four.
Mays is one of two center fielders among the 26, along with Kenny Lofton.
Wagner captains a large contingent of 10 shortstops, joined by Jack Glasscock, George Davis, Bill Dahlen, Bobby Wallace, Luke Appling, Lou Boudreau, Pee Wee Reese, Alan Trammell and Cal Ripken, Jr.
Bench leads a collection of four catchers, along with fellow Cooperstown-ers Carlton Fisk, Gary Carter and Iván Rodríguez.
And then there are the third sackers, headed by the greatest hot corner maestro ever, Schmidt. Three others make the cut here: recently elected Hall of Famers Scott Rolen and Adrian Beltré and the acrobatic, springing, nimble and powerful Graig Nettles. Manny Machado is just below the cut on the defensive side, pairing his 50.5 oWAR with a 14.4 dWAR. It’s just one more area where the 14-year vet has climbed so high already as to make whatever remains in the journey so compelling to follow.
Manny Machado homered and singled twice to reach (and surpass) 2,000 career hits. He’s one of nearly 300 players to get to 2,000 in a career.
~Machado is the 55th player to have at least 2,000 knocks through his age-32 season and one of three to do this while also having at least two-thirds of his games at third base. In this trio, he joins Adrian Beltré (2,033 hits) and Ron Santo (2,028).
~Machado is one of 18 players to have – through an age-32 season – at least 2,000 hits with at least 750 of them going for extra bases. By decade of debut season, that full list looks like this:
1910s Rogers Hornsby
1920s Lou Gehrig, Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott
1930s Joe Medwick
1940s Stan Musial
1950s Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Henry Aaron, Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson
1980s Ken Griffey, Jr.
1990s Álex Rodríguez, Adrian Beltré
2000s Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera
2010s Manny Machado
~By a lot of counting numbers, Machado and Beltre look quite matched through their age-32 seasons.
| Name | Games | Hits | 1B | 2B | HR | RBI | XBH | TB | ToB |
| Adrian Beltré | 1,959 | 2,033 | 1,265 | 430 | 310 | 1,113 | 768 | 3,449 | 2,639 |
| Manny Machado | 1,825 | 2,001 | 1,242 | 384 | 357 | 1,102 | 759 | 3,492 | 2,671 |
*In all of the categories referenced in the table, Beltré would end his career with a top-50 mark: Games (15th), Hits (18th), Singles (50th), Doubles (11th), Home Runs (31st), RBI (25th), Extra-Base Hits (15th), Total Bases (15th), Times on Base (40th).
~For all players who could/can claim at least 67% of their total games at third through their age-32 seasons, Machado’s bWAR (60.4) at this stage ranks as the seventh highest. Eddie Mathews was at 85.9 through his age-32 season, followed by Mike Schmidt (74.2), George Brett (70.3), Ron Santo (69.8), Wade Boggs (63.4) and Buddy Bell (60.5). The aforementioned Beltré was at 58.1, directly below Machado.
Corbin Carroll doubled and tripled in the Diamondbacks’ win on Monday, pushing his doubles, triples and homers tallies to double-digits in each (14, 10, 20). 20 players in the All-Star era have reached the break with at least 10 of each, including, most recently before Carroll, Jarren Duran in 2024. With the exception of the 1990s, every decade since the 1930s has seen at least one player do this. Three of the five players who have posted a 20-double, 20-triple, 20-homer season since 1933 were at least halfway there in all three categories when the All-Star break interrupted the season: Willie Mays in 1957 and both Curtis Granderson and Jimmy Rollins in 2007. The other two in the club – Jeff Heath (1941) and George Brett (1979) – missed out, with Heath having only five triples and Brett entering the break with nine home runs.
Marlins catcher Agustín Ramírez doubled and homered in a 5-1 win over the Reds to raise his home run tally to 14 and his extra-base hit number to 31. Since 1933, there are 17 first-year players who’ve posted a 14-31 line before the All-Star break, with Ramírez the first to do this since Seattle’s Julio Rodríguez in 2022. The full list:
1930s Zeke Bonura (1934)
1950s Orlando Cepeda (1958)
1960s Tony Conigliaro (1964), George Scott (1966)
1980s Alvin Davis (1984), Pete Incaviglia (1986), Wally Joyner (1986)
1990s Travis Lee (1998)
2000s Albert Pujols (2001), Eric Hinske (2002), Evan Longoria (2008)
2010s José Abreu (2014), Trevor Story (2016), Cody Bellinger (2017), Pete Alonso (2019)
2020s Julio Rodríguez (2022), Agustín Ramírez (2025)
Miami’s Xavier Edwards went 3-for-5 with a pair of doubles in his club’s win, lifting his slash line to .289/.359/.333. The leadoff hitter, who is 11th in the NL in average, is one of three qualifying players in 2025 who owns a higher on-base percentage than slugging mark, along with Seattle’s J.P. Crawford (.284/.385/.378) and Milwaukee’s William Contreras (.236/.351/.340). The last season that concluded with multiple qualifying players batting at least .280 with a higher on-base than slugging mark: 2009, when the trio of Luis Castillo, Chone Figgins and Nick Johnson did this. Castillo made a habit of this during his career, posting seven such seasons, which ties for the third most ever. 19th century Hall of Famer Billy Hamilton had nine campaigns that fit the bill, while another 19th century batter, Cupid Childs, had eight. At seven, there is John McGraw and Roy Thomas (also making their big league debuts in the 19th century), along with 20th century Hall of Famer Luke Appling.
Freddy Peralta (6.0 IP, 0 R) recorded his 10th win of the year while dropping his ERA to 2.74 as the Brewers handled the Dodgers, 9-1. Peralta leads the NL with his 10 victories and owns the league’s eighth lowest ERA. The right-hander is the 21st Brewers pitcher to reach double-digits in wins before the All-Star break (and the first to do this since Brandon Woodruff in 2019). Among all of them, only Bill Travers (10-6, 1.91 ERA) in 1976 rode a lower ERA into the break than Peralta.
Christian Yelich hit his 18th home run of the year in the Brewers’ win. On May 21, Yelich took an 0-for-5 day to drop his slash line to .184/.276/.324 in 48 games and was averaging a homer about once every seven games. In his 38 contests since then, he’s popped out 11 longballs and posted a .351/.407/.622 line.
Kansas City’s Bobby Witt, Jr. homered and singled while his teammate Salvador Perez homered and doubled – two cogs in an explosive (for this club) four-homer, 9-3 win.
~Witt owns 46 extra-base hits (third in the AL) – tied for the third most ever for a Royal before the break. Mike Sweeney’s 56 in 2001 occupies the top spot, while Witt’s 50 in 2024 is the closest anyone has gotten to matching him. In 2000, Jermaine Dye also posted 46.
~In 13 home games in June of this season, the Royals combined for four home runs. They matched that monthly total in this, their first home game this July.
~Perez has 11 homers and 16 walks on the season, doing a pretty decent job of steering his career supremacy in the round-tripper category (284) over the free passes column (259). As a reminder, none of the other 254 players in baseball history who can claim at least 250 home runs can also boast of more of them than walks.
The Blue Jays doubled up on the White Sox, 8-4, for their ninth consecutive win. The victory, which gave Toronto its longest winning streak since 2015 when they had a pair of 11-game runs to match the franchise record – lifted the team’s record to 53-38 (.582). The Jays have reached the All-Star break with a better winning percentage on five occasions:
.609 in 1992 on the way to the World Series title (96 wins)
.602 in 1985 on the way to the AL East title (99 wins)
.595 in 1984 on the way to a second place finish in the AL East (89 wins)
.590 in 1991 on the way to the AL East title (91 wins)
.586 in 1987 on the way to a second place finish in the AL East (96 wins)
José Ramírez doubled and homered to keep marching toward more of a top-line presence on Cleveland’s franchise leaderboards. The two extra-base hits gave him 692, leaving him only 32 behind the all-time leader, Earl Averill. The line also pushed his total base tally to 2,870, leaving him 16 behind the number two guy, Tris Speaker (Averill is at the highest rung, with 3,200).
The rarely seen walk-off walk came into view at Angel Stadium, where Nolan Schanuel drew a bases-loaded free pass in the ninth to give the Halos a 6-5 win over the Rangers. The franchise has 13 game-ending walks in the past 50 seasons, with Dick Schofield responsible for two (the only Angel with more than one). Schanuel’s walk-off walk was the first for the franchise since 2008, when Garret Anderson and Chone Figgins each had one. Across all of the Majors over these past 50 seasons, Schofield’s two don’t quite lift him into top status, as a half dozen players each had three: Mike Cameron, Jim Fregosi, Paul O’Neill, Darrell Porter, Jorge Posada and Gorman Thomas.
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Roger Schlueter
As Sr. Editorial Director for Major League Baseball Productions from 2004-2015, Roger served as a hub for hundreds of hours of films, series, documentaries and features: as researcher, fact-checker, script doctor, and developer of ideas. The years at MLB Production gave him the ideal platform to pursue what galvanized him the most – the idea that so much of what takes place on the field during the MLB regular and postseason (and is forever beautifully condensed into a box score) has connections to what has come before. Unearthing and celebrating these webs allows baseball to thrive, for the present can come alive and also reignite the past.