The Olympic Medals of the 2024 MLB Season

The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris have officially concluded, and the delightful weeks where you somehow found yourself yelling and cheering someone on in a sport you didn’t know existed until now will likely go on hiatus until the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

When will baseball be back on the slate of games? MLB, baseball, and the Olympics have had an on-again, off-again relationship due to the crossover of seasons, much like hockey and the Winter Olympics, but ultimately, getting more eyes on the sport and having opportunities to grow the game globally will still be something to celebrate despite it likely being unsigned veterans or developing prospects participating.

With MLB players’ lack of Olympic participation capabilities, it’s time to create our own Olympics for what we’ve seen during this baseball season.

There should be a clear Gold winner and silver and bronze at the podium for the honorable mentions that could fit the category.

The awards will be themed based on some of the other sports going on within the games this year, with some explanation behind them.

For better or for worse, here are the Olympic medals of our 2024 MLB season.

TRIATHLON GOLD MEDAL: Houston Astros

What does a triathlon represent? Endurance that no one can comprehend. The idea of completing three different sports for that amount of time (not to mention avoiding swallowing dirty water in the Seine this year) is unfathomable to the average person. The competition is indeed a marathon of patience.

That embodies the Houston Astros playing the 162-game season.

With their worst start since the tanking era, 25-33 in June, we labeled them as a dynasty that was finally dead as they showed their age, had upcoming free agents, a brand new manager, and a bullpen they went all-in on only to blow egregious leads.

Baseball is a 162-game triathlon for a reason. Just like that, the Astros are back- they made up the 10-game deficit in the AL West to punch back with the Seattle Mariners and look like the Astros again with a 37-22 record since June. Not every sport is a 100-meter sprint!

Silver: San Diego Padres

Bronze: Arizona Diamondbacks

SKATEBOARDING GOLD MEDAL: Cincinnati Reds

One of the newest additions to the Olympics, skateboarding, also, quite simply, looks the coolest. Even when you get injured, the skateboarders shrug it off, wave to the fans, and likely say “radical” and “gnarly” and look like they’re having the most fun possible. The skateboarding gold medal goes to the team that has been the most fun to tune in and watch this season, regardless of wipeout.

The Cincinnati Reds are guaranteed fun chaos every single night despite likely not making the postseason this year. Elly De La Cruz is likely going to steal as many bases as possible, leg out a double into a triple, or even make an impossibly challenging throw from shortstop on any given night. Great American SMALL Park gives up the most home runs in the majors, 127 over the Dodger Stadium, leading to chaotic box scores. Hunter Greene routinely throws 100 mph fastballs, and now, it looks like the ace we thought we were getting by adding more pitches. And, despite the lackluster win column, the Reds are a young team that just has fun playing together.

Silver: Baltimore Orioles

Bronze: Philadelphia Phillies

TABLE TENNIS GOLD MEDAL: Cleveland Guardians

The ultimate misconception. When you hear the name, you think of the ping pong party game played in many garages and think, “I can do that if I trained hard enough at it!” which is entirely wrong. The reflexes of the table tennis competitors are that of natural-born killers.

The most misconceived, threat-level assassin team is the Cleveland Guardians. The first-year manager, Steven Vogt, was thought to be brought in as a transitional players’ guy now that the Tito Francona era is over. They’re still an AL Central, bottom-10 payroll that missed the postseason last year and was thought to be trading ace Shane Bieber. They hit a historically-low amount of home runs last year and didn’t do anything to address the power department.

Their 2024 has been the opposite of the overlooked, cursed, small-market team. The Guards are in the top half of the league in home runs. They’ve consistently had firm command over the AL Central and are near the top of the league, and they’re still the youngest team in baseball and just getting started. The bullpen has had plenty of miles put on it, but once it gets into the 6th inning or beyond, if you don’t have a lead, you’re probably not going to get a run off of Emmanuel Clase, Hunter Gaddis, or Cade Smith with the best ERA in baseball (2.69). They’re table tennis, not ping pong, and should be considered a real contender.

Silver: Kansas City Royals

Bronze: Milwaukee Brewers

SAILING GOLD MEDAL: New York Mets

Sailing does not sound nearly as smooth as the Bobby Darin song. You must navigate chaotic high and low waves, choppy waters, and even potentially spinning out and capsizing from colliding with other sailors. It’s a roller coaster on a boat in the water, much like the emotions of being a sports fan.

The sailing gold medal goes to the New York Mets and their fan base, who have had unbelievable highs and lows they’ve had to navigate all season long, declaring, “It’s entirely over, and we need to sell Pete Alonso and all of our starters and begin again,” to “Are we actually better than the Braves in the NL East and did Grimace the purple mascot from McDonald’s save my life?”

That’s right—the season was absolutely dead, and the vibes could not have been lower until Grimace threw out the first pitch. They went 12-2 with the best OPS in baseball in that span, had shortstop Jose Iglesias become a pop star with his hit song OMG, and rallied the entire team, and now they’re in a position to get an NL Wild Card.

Whether they make it or not, navigating those waters in this 162-game season deserves a gold medal.

Silver: New York Yankees

Bronze: St. Louis Cardinals

3×3 BASKETBALL GOLD MEDAL: Atlanta Braves

In regulation basketball, the only times that the US Men’s team has not received the gold medal was either in Argentina or in countries that no longer exist. The expectation is to win and to win comfortably, so when 3×3 basketball was introduced as an Olympic Sport, surely the United States would be just as dominant, right? Wrong. Despite college basketball legend Jimmer Fredette being the #1 ranked 3×3 basketball player in the world, the US failed to qualify in 2020 and went 2-5.

This is the award handed out to the team where it just somehow didn’t work out this year relative to expectations, and that’s the Atlanta Braves. After a historic season where they were the best regular season offense of all-time with the home run record and the only team in history with an OPS over .900 in the modern era, they had Ronald Acuna Jr. coming off of a 40-70 MVP season and Spencer Strider the preseason Cy Young favorite to exact revenge on the Phillies for knocking them out of the postseason last year.

It’s been a year from Hell in all actuality. Strider, Acuna, and Albies have all been injured, Matt Olson and Michael Harris II have largely underperformed, and the pitching staff, aside from Chris Sale and Specer Schwellenbach, has been lackluster recently to the point where they’ve been on the outside looking in at some point due to the Mets and never a threat to the Phillies at all this year.

Maybe in 2025, when the gang is back together again, they can hit the reset button because we all kept assuming they would figure it out, but they were never able to push the ball up the court in a full-court 5×5 game like their offense when it was humming last year.

Silver: Toronto Blue Jays

Bronze: Chicago Cubs

PHOTO: ClutchPoints