Hero and Villain Stories of Baseball

We’re in the midst of a bit of a sports valhalla, with some of the narratives surrounding the championships we’ve witnessed from a storybook perspective.

We’ve had undefeated Indiana football, the BASKETBALL program that was previously the worst in history, run the gamut to beat the titans of college football with Curt Cignetti cementing himself and no longer needing to be Googled.

We’ve had the New York Knicks, the plucky squad of Villanova friends that just wanted to play together, slay the alien of Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs, and somehow talk everyone into a New York sports team being lovable underdogs from the heart that they play with as they snapped a Finals draught from the early 1970’s.

We’ve had the Carolina Hurricanes, the small market “so close yet so far” team of this Rod Brind’Amour era, finally break through to win the Stanley Cup over the Vegas Golden Knights, the expansion team that many loathe for their salary cap theatrics, the spoils of an expansion franchise, and employing Carter Hart.

We’ve had the Seattle Seahawks exercise their demons over the New England Patriots in the Malcolm Butler game with SAM DARNOLD at quarterback, the man who was formerly seeing ghosts as a Jets quarterback!

The Los Angeles Dodgers going back-to-back… the Michigan Wolverines winning a basketball championship with old, well-paid transfers… not as uplifting.

There are heroes and villains in sports. It’s what makes it beautiful. This stretch of hero narratives has been on a hot streak, and the question is whether we may see another in baseball now that the Dodgers have gone back-to-back with a billion-dollar roster, a plethora of MVPs, and a unicorn named Shohei Ohtani. 

Let’s take a look at some of the narratives around the baseball landscape and identify some of the heroes and villains. If you’re a fan of a villain, it’s nothing personal! It’s just the perception that this was to be the storybook ending.

There are heroes and villains on every roster, but let’s examine it from a macro level this year.

HEROES

Seattle Mariners

Cal Raleigh World Baseball Classic incident aside, the Seattle Mariners are still the underdog Cinderella story of baseball. They had a 21-year postseason drought after having some of the most iconic faces in baseball history play for them, including a 116-win season. They made the ALCS last year but came up just short against the Blue Jays.

The city of Seattle already has the Seahawks’ championship in the bag this year, but wouldn’t it be a storybook ending for them to also get their first World Series in franchise history in the same year?

Milwaukee Brewers

The Brewers are the small-market team that always has it figured out during the regular season as a powerhouse- a low-payroll operation that makes trades and sees players consistently get better when they join the team with some sort of development magic. Then, the postseason rolls around, and the big bad large market teams have given them heartbreak after heartbreak, from a dropped Trent Grisham catch, a Pete Alonso homer off a closer, and running into the Dodgers.

They look just as unstoppable this year, if not more, because Jacob Misiorowski is the ace that you just have to see to believe in a fashion where you tell your friends that don’t watch baseball to see this human flamethrower. They continue to prove us wrong in the regular season until they prove us right when they’ve lost in the postseason, so it would be sweet vindication for Pat Murphy and the Brew Crew to show that the way they’ve constructed a team year after year can finally work when it counts.

Cleveland Guardians

After the Cubs were vindicated, it came at the expense of the Guardians, who now have the longest World Series drought. The city of Cleveland will always be the underdog “Believeland,” but ultimately, it won’t be truly redeemed until the Browns break through. However, when healthy, this Guardians team is the best it’s been since that 2016 World Series run.

The problem? It never is.

We’d love to see the “always the bridesmaid’ Jose Ramirez that took a pay cut to stay in Cleveland get a ring amongst some of the best young talents in the game after finally getting this young core of Messick, DeLauter, and Bazzana all up at once and bring this team sweet redemption as a model of consistency in the AL Central. Still, they’ve got to invest in a medic first.

Toronto Blue Jays

Who wouldn’t love a bounce back of the Blue Jays, who were a single pitch away multiple times against the Dodgers last year, to come back one year later?

On top of that, they’ve had a year from hell in which 13 key players have been injured all year, Vladdy has one Rogers Centre homer, and somehow, they’ve remained afloat.

Atlanta Braves

It’s a bit of a stretch to call a large market like Atlanta a plucky underdog story, but the Braves have dealt with enough injury and adversity since 2021 that bringing it all together with a core that they believed in and extended essentially everyone all at once would be magical, especially in the year of Ted Turner’s passing, where he made the team capable of being seen nationwide. They’ve also got the “hey! This team is good enough to throw punches at the Dodgers!” aura around it that makes them a leg up in the “lesser evil” market.

There’s also just a lot of personalities that you’d love to see win a ring with the Braves, swapping Freddie for Matt Olson, Michael Harris II looking like a star, and Ronald Acuna Jr. not having been healthy for their last one.

St. Louis Cardinals

No, the Cardinals that have won the World Series more than any NL team in history don’t necessarily need another one. But THIS TEAM doing it would be different than any of them in the most non-St. Louis fashion is possible. This team’s highest-paid player going into the year was Dustin May, after they tore down the team and started a youth movement, with a 69.5 preseason win total.

They’ve been so steady at the plate with a Jordan Walker turnaround, a JJ Wetherholt NL ROY campaign, and a ton of the “classiest fans in baseball” pioneering the tarps off movement, where they carry the good vibes throughout the year by just taking their shirts off. Some things are bigger than sports.

Chicago White Sox

It wasn’t too long ago that the Chicago White Sox were losing 121 games and doing nothing but advertising the campfire milkshake and cheap concessions because they had nothing else to be positive about. It wasn’t just that they were bad- it was a fall from grace where they were seen as World Series contenders in 2020, only to have Eloy Jimenez fall into walls, Tony LaRussa drive drunk, Tim Anderson get punched in the face, and the losing streaks were some of the worst you’ve ever seen.

Unbelievably, they’ve been… blessed? The new Pope is a massive White Sox fan. They signed Munetaka Murakami, who changed the locker room by implementing bidets in the clubhouse and hitting massive tank job home runs, and all of the young talent they’ve acquired during the rebuild, Miguel Vargas, Colson Montgomery, and their young pitching staff, are coming together all at the right time. The unprecedented turnaround has been so surprising it feels miraculous, making it feel like the Cinderella story in the American League, as they’ve proven it wasn’t just a first-month fluke. That whole lineup, aside from Andrew Benintendi, is 26 and under and looks like it’s here to stay.

San Diego Padres

They have been the West Coast little brother to the Dodgers for this long. The darling who had their football team taken away to Los Angeles. The small market team that operated like a star-hunting, forward-thinking franchise under the late great Peter Seidler before his passing. Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. aren’t exactly the most well-received superstars nationally, but the little engine that could in the Padres, which always acts as if they need to take a big swing to have a chance against the big bad Dodgers, to maybe get their first World Series, is incredibly plucky. Unfortunately, this year it doesn’t feel like they’re having fun.

Tatis didn’t hit a homer until 207 at-bats, and it’s a lot of reliance upon bats that were intended to be fliers. Who knows what AJ Preller will do at the deadline to try and vault them back into where they need to be and get Petco Park rocking again, but we want this fun group to break through badly.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Unless you are tired of him and his coverage, people generally want to see Paul Skenes on a winning team in Pittsburgh. Though in a down year, he’s a generational pitcher on maybe the most infamous “we’re going to cut costs” teams in sports that have had fans wishing Bob Nutting would sell the team for years. With pitcher primes feeling shorter and shorter, it feels like they’re already on the clock auditioning to prove to Skenes that they’re invested in winning, and they at least tried a bit with extending Konnor Griffin and adding a few bats this offseason.

The world hasn’t seen very many meaningful games at one of the best sporting event sites in baseball; the Pirates being able to actually pull this off, make the dance in October, and prove to Skenes that they’re a serious franchise before the mock trades come out sending him to a large market, would be a great story.

Texas Rangers

The Rangers are having arguably the most forgettable season in baseball. They’ve never been more than 3 games above .500, and that was when they were 4-1. Yet if the postseason started today, they’d be hosting a playoff game!

People would be as indifferent to the Rangers as they were when they played the Diamondbacks and then forgot about it, but they would at least have the hero narrative going for them, as many would likely want to see Jacob deGrom get a ring, given how high and low his career has been.

VILLAINS

Philadelphia Phillies

It’s kind of sacrilegious to make America’s sweetheart, Kye Schwarber, a villain, but it kind of just feels right to put the city of Philadelphia here because Philly fans wouldn’t want it any other way. They fired their manager, Bryce Harper was making weird decisions with his toothpaste, and is angry with his own president, who said he wasn’t elite, and suddenly they’re back to being a force in the NL, with Christopher Sanchez looking like your potential All-Star Game starter, as Don Mattingly has apparently righted the ship.

The turnaround has been unbelievable, but make no mistake- this is still the same core that wanted one last ride that you should still label as the villains that want you to doubt them with every Bryce Harper ejection.

Los Angeles Dodgers

This goes without saying. They’re so rich with talent as the two-time World Series champions with the best player in history, more money than God, the best resources to develop young talent, and they have beautiful sunny 75-degree days each game with a ton of fans that come and get their Instagram-worthy picture in their LA hat.

The spoils are plentiful, and they’re the standard, possibly even causing a lockout. They even finally have a sort of villainous character in Daulton Rushing for the first time!

Tampa Bay Rays

It’s kind of unfortunate that the Rays are considered villains because they really haven’t done anything necessarily “wrong.” It’s just people love to hate on the Trop. They consistently get superstar talent and then dump them for cheaper players. Their starters are consistently in the bottom 10 of quality starts because they don’t let them go deep into games (see Blake Snell in the 2020 World Series!), and the lack of spending and winning by being computer nerds just feels kind of gross.

This might be an outlier season, though, because Junior Caminero and his home-run hitting Dominican flair at such a young age are built to be a superstar, Chandler Simpson might be the fastest man alive, and Yandy Diaz and his massive biceps are built to be a ton of fun.

Miami Marlins

Like the Rays, the team did nothing wrong. Sandy Alcantara is a legendary pitcher we’re seeing in real time. Otto Lopez and Xavier Edwards are the best infielders in baseball. This is also a team that has historically traded away any semblance of talent they accumulate as soon as they start winning games. After the best month of any team in the league in June, it certainly feels like this is the young core that is finally here to stay.

However, putting aside that Loan Depot Park is an abyss with no fans, the world is not ready for the Miami Hurricanes to be good at football, Giannis to play for the Miami Heat, the Florida Panthers to have the Tkachuk brothers, and the Marlins to be playing dominant baseball all at once. Maybe the Dolphins are so bad that it evens it out.

New York Yankees

The evil empire. Need I say more?

Similar to Rushing on the Dodgers, Cam Schlittler has leaned into being the wrestling heel to the Red Sox fans, at least, so while Judge is the Captain America “always do and say the right thing,” guy, having a Yankee that wants to be the villain is back on the menu again!

Chicago Cubs

The Cubs have sort of lost the universally-beloved underdog narrative after snapping the streak in 2016, and it’s a bit rooted in Pete Crow-Armstrong hate. He plays like a bat out of hell, a puppy dog to some, but is essentially the divisive character of baseball because of his charisma. He’ll misplay a ball in the outfield after making the most incredible diving catch you’ve ever seen, chirp at the fans, and flex his muscles, hitting the cycle, and then get thrown out in 30 minutes.

The Wrigley fans love it, but the White Sox and Dodgers fans that he wants to take aim at, despite being so young, find it abhorrent.

He’s leading the NL in WAR for position players not named Ohtani, but was 14th in outfield all-star voting! There may be some vitriol towards Craig Counsell leaving the Brewers to be the highest-paid manager and then consistently getting beat by the Brewers, too, but the Cubs, no longer operating like the innocents with nothing to lose, have rebranded the squad to start acting like the big market teams they should be in talks with.

Las Vegas/Sacramento A’s

What a shame, given how likable Nick Kurtz, Jacob Wilson, Shea Langeliers, and more are.

If the A’s were to win this year, it would be gross to award it to maybe the most dysfunctional planning committee of all-time that took away Oakland’s team, makes them play in a sandbox (that would be considered a Mickey Mouse ring nationally), and is about to move them to soulless Vegas, where the ball could potentially be Coors Field on the moon. It wouldn’t feel right.