The best baseball players born on Dec. 5

Who are the best players born on each day of the year? We have a list for every day on the calendar.

Here’s a subjective ranking of the top five for Dec. 5.

1) Christian Yelich (1991)
The 2018 National League MVP tops the list of players born on Dec. 5 with an impressive resume which includes back-to-back NL batting titles in ’18 and ’19, when he finished with averages of .326 and .329 respectively in his first two seasons with the Brewers after spending the previous five years with the Marlins. The left-handed-hitting outfielder’s trophy case also includes a Gold Glove Award, which he earned in 2014 for his defensive prowess.

2) Cliff Floyd (1972)
Floyd broke into the bigs with Montreal, and in his first full season he was a contributor to an Expos squad which led the Majors in wins for the strike-shortened 1994 season, when they finished 74-40. He went on to win a World Series title with the Marlins in 1997 and was an All-Star in 2001. He played a total of 17 seasons in the Majors with seven teams before hanging up his spikes and getting into broadcasting, eventually joining MLB Network as an analyst.

3) AJ Pollock (1987)
The Gold Glove Award-winning outfielder played collegiately at Notre Dame before spending his first seven seasons in the Majors with the D-backs. He was an NL All-Star for Arizona in 2015 and signed with Los Angeles prior to the 2019 season, where he would go on to win a World Series with the Dodgers the next season. Pollock was traded to the White Sox in 2022, before spending '23 with the Mariners and Giants.

4) Gary Roenicke (1954)
Roenicke, an outfielder who helped the Orioles to the 1983 World Series championship, once won a fan $1 million in ’84 when he blasted a grand slam at Yankee Stadium to secure the jackpot of a promotion for a lucky winner.

5) Justin Smoak (1986)
The switch-hitting slugger was a first-round Draft pick of the Rangers before being traded to Seattle in a 2009 blockbuster deal which sent Cliff Lee to Texas. The first baseman would go on to become an All-Star for the Blue Jays in 2017 and crush a career-high 38 homers that year.

Want to see more baseball birthdays for December 5? Find the complete list on Baseball Reference.