The three best players in each league should play the entire All-Star game

There would have to be some way to designate this. Maybe among the starters, the top three in OPS in each league would play the whole game (they could be called co-captains or something like that). Or, it could be the top three vote getters among the starters (indicating that they are fan favorites).

I would like to see guys like Judge and Ohtani for the full game (my guess is that many other fans would, too). There would still be plenty of chances for the managers to get substitutes into the game. But there must be some players that the fans would especially like to see. 

In the later innings of a close game, I want to see big guns coming up, not lesser stars. These would be guys who were stars before the current season and are having good or great seasons once again.

Here are suggestions for this years game for both leagues. The OPS of each guy at the break is after their name. In parentheses is their OPS+. Then something about their careers prior to 2024 that suggest they are marquee players.

Judge 1.112 (207) Rookie of the Year 2017 & MVP 2022
Soto .985 (175)  Co-winner of Babe Ruth Award 2019 (post season MVP)
Henderson .956 (174) Rookie of the Year 2023

Ohtani 1.036 (189) Rookie of the Year 2018 & 2 time MVP
Yelich .933 (159) 2018 MVP
Harper .983 (174) 2 time MVP

These are all top stars, big name players who are having outstanding seasons once again. They should be featured in an all-star game to give fans their money's worth. That is the idea of the game, right?

Power hitting, base stealing third basemen are rare

I noticed that Jose Ramirez has over 200 HRs and 200 SBs. That seemed unusual for a third base man.

So I had Stathead call up all the guys who played at least 50% of their games at third base who had at least 200 HRs & 200 SBs. The table below shows the results:

Player	HR	SB
George Brett	317	201
Jose Ramirez	239	220
Howard Johnson	228	231

That is not many. One guy some people asked me about was Alex Rodriguez. He played about 43% of his games at 3B (and even at SS it was less than 50%, so he would not even come up in a search like this at that position).

Then I used Stathead to call up all the guys who had 150 HRs and 150 SBs while actually playing 3B (this is an option in Split Finder).

Player	HR	SB
Mike Schmidt	509	174
David Wright	242	196
Jose Ramirez	194	165

This still is not many. But pretty impressive for Jose Ramirez to be on both lists. So I lowered the cutoff to 125 for both stats.

Player	HR	SB
Mike Schmidt	509	174
Chipper Jones	389	128
Alex Rodriguez	287	136
David Wright	242	196
George Brett	198	138
Jose Ramirez	194	165
Howard Johnson	149	154
Carney Lansford	139	206
Terry Pendleton	138	127

Still only nine guys. And two of them barely made the cutoff on SBs. Jones had only 128 and Pendleton had only 127.

There were 10 shortstops at those cutoffs. But AROD was on both lists.

Player	HR	SB
Alex Rodriguez	344	177
Derek Jeter	255	351
Jimmy Rollins	229	469
Francisco Lindor	225	172
Barry Larkin	194	378
Alan Trammell	177	224
Hanley Ramírez	174	243
Édgar Rentería	140	291
Trea Turner	137	227
José Reyes	127	481

All of the links below are to Stathead search results and are for the 125-125 club unless otherwise noted.

There are only four first basemen. Bagwell is the only one at 200+ in each stat.

There are 16 2Bmen. 7 are 200-200. Sandberg had the most HRs in the group with 277 (& 311 SBs). Morgan leads with 680 SBs (& 266 HRs).

There were 38 left fielders. Only two were in the 200-200 club, Rickey Henderson and Barry Bonds.

There were 70 CFers. There were five in the 200-200 club.

There were 49 RFers. There were also five in the 200-200 club here.

This option does not allow for grouping all OFers together. But if I use the 50% of games played in the OF option, there were 329 guys who were in the 125-125 club. There were 179 in the 200-200 club.

There were no catchers who had 125+ of both. Here are all the catchers at 75+ for both stats. There were only 7 and only two, Fisk and Rodriguez, were 100+ in both.

Update July 18, 2024: There have been 54 players in total (no matter what position(s) they played) in AL/NL history with 200+ HRs & 200+ SBs.

There have been 180 players with 125+ of both.