These are the 7 most fascinating players right now

So much of the fun of baseball is watching players grow, change and evolve. In many ways, all these players -- players we follow all season, every season, until next thing you know you’ve spent a decade thinking about these people -- are characters in a story we watch our entire lives. And these characters’ stories are constantly altering, going in and out of focus, emerging and receding. And like any great story: The best characters are the most fascinating ones. This is, after all, the story you’ve been watching for years.

Thus, here’s a new semi-regular feature here at MLB.com: Seven Fascinating Players In Baseball Right Now. They’re my picks for the impressive, unusual, curious, compelling, amusing players you see when you flip from game to game right now. They’re undeniably fascinating.

All stats entering Tuesday.

J.P. Crawford, SS, Mariners

The last time the Phillies made the postseason was 2011, of course, but really the last year of that whole previous Phillies generation was probably 2014. That was the last year for Jimmy Rollins in Philadelphia -- in many ways the heart and soul of those teams -- and the year before they traded Chase Utley to the Dodgers. It was the time when Phillies fans had to come to terms with the fact that that highly successful era was over, when the team began trading away their veterans to stock their farm system. And that farm system, and the future it was supposed to foretell, was represented by J.P. Crawford.

Crawford was the jewel of the Phillies’ Minor Leagues back then, but it wasn’t just that: It was that he was supposed to take over for Rollins, to in many ways be Rollins -- the bridge to the next generation. In 2017, in Triple-A, Crawford got Phillies fans particularly excited with an inside-the-park grand slam, punctuated with a hilariously effective slide into home, that made them think they were getting a superstar.

But -- much like that whole era of supposed Phillies phenoms -- it didn’t work out. He missed time with a forearm injury his rookie year in 2018, then broke his hand at the end of the season. The Phillies grew impatient and traded him to Seattle (along with Carlos Santana whom the Mariners had for exactly 10 days) for Jean Segura and Juan Nicasio, and Crawford struggled to establish himself as a defensive specialist who still couldn’t find his swing. His best offensive season, heading into this year, was last year, when he hit nine homers and got on base at a .338 clip -- an average season at best.

Check it out, though: He, at the age of 27, finally looks like the superstar the Phillies have been waiting for. He’s hitting .375 and slugging .625 for a team that’s battling for first place, and still playing the sort of defense that the Phillies could totally use right now. He got himself a big five year, $51 million extension right when the season began. He was worth waiting for after all. But hey: Nobody ever accused Philadelphians of being patient.

Travis d’Arnaud, C, Braves

Do you know the name Craig Robinson? No, not the guy from “The Office” now in the Pizza Hut commercials. He was an infielder in the ’70s who set a record in his second season in the big leagues: He came to the plate 148 times and did not walk once. That’s the most plate appearances without a walk in MLB history. He hit .226 that year; that was also his OBP.

d'Arnaud is off to an excellent start for the Braves, with two homers and a .333 average. But he also currently has more plate appearances without a walk than anyone in baseball: 63. (He has been hit by a pitch twice.) d’Arnaud is too good of a hitter not to get walked at some point. But still: He’s almost halfway to Robinson’s mark. (Chad Pinder and Yadier Molina, at 53 and 48 plate appearances respectively, are right behind d’Arnaud.)

Randal Grichuk, OF, Rockies

Every time Randy Arozarena did something during his incredible 2020 postseason run, Cardinals fans winced, because they’d famously traded Arozarena away that offseason, along with José Martínez, for left-hander Matthew Liberatore. (Who remains the Cardinals’ top pitching prospect.) It was part of a stretch where the Cardinals were criticized for letting all sorts of thriving outfielders go, from Arozarena to Stephen Piscotty to Oscar Mercado to Tommy Pham to even Luke Voit (who was not an outfielder but was leading the Majors in homers) while the team itself had one of the least productive offensive outfields in the game.

The Cardinals have figured out their outfield -- though Tyler O’Neill and Dylan Carlson are off to slow starts this year -- but it turns out that the one who got away may have been none of those guys. It’s Grichuk -- whom the Rockies traded Raimel Tapia for right before the season began -- who is mashing right now. For all the Kris Bryant hype and Connor Joe human interest stories, Grichuk (along with C.J. Cron) is crushing the ball the most, putting up a .338/.389/.523 slash line while playing a perfectly respectable center field. Fun fact: Grichuk only has eight fewer career homers than Bryant despite being essentially the same age.

Jurickson Profar, OF, Padres

On the Ballpark Dimensions podcast this week, my colleague Mike Petriello called Profar a “post-post-post-post-post-hype prospect,” and that’s exactly right. There was a time when there was as much debate about whether Profar or late Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras was the top prospect in baseball as there was about Harper vs. Trout. But despite being called up at the age of 19 in 2012 -- the year after the Rangers last won the American League pennant -- Profar never panned out for the Rangers, and by the time they traded him to the A’s in 2018, fans weren’t even that upset. (Imagine telling a Rangers fan in 2012 that they’d trade their star prospect to the hated A’s.)

He ended up in San Diego in 2020, where he was perfectly respectable before struggling again in the Padres’ disappointing 2021 season. This year, though, with Fernando Tatis Jr. out, Profar has boosted the Padres lineup, not with his average (which is .176) but with his power. He has five homers for the Padres, first on the team, which is wild to even think about: Imagine saying, before last season, that the Padres’ team home run leader for the first month of the 2022 season would be Jurickson Profar.

David Robertson, RHP, Cubs

A decade ago, there were legitimately people who said, “You know, the Yankees have a reliever on their roster who is in fact better than Mariano Rivera,” and they were talking about this guy. Robertson had a 1.08 ERA in 2011 and even got an MVP vote. Then in ‘14, he had the unenviable job of taking over for Rivera after he retired, but Robertson did great, finishing third in the AL with 39 saves. He cashed that in with a free agent deal with the White Sox and was so well regarded that he was the closer for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic in 2017. (He closed out the Gold Medal game against Puerto Rico.) After returning to the Yankees in a midseason trade that year and posting a 3.23 ERA the next, he signed a two-year deal with the Phillies heading into 2019. But he ended up throwing only 6 2/3 innings for Philadelphia before needing Tommy John surgery. He rehabbed in the Atlantic League and didn’t return to the Majors until 2021, when he threw 12 innings for the Rays, though he did play for the USA at the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

Robertson signed a deal with the Cubs this year, thinking he’d just be another arm in this pen, but it turns out: He’s now a closer again. And he has been terrific: He has five saves, and has given up zero runs (and only one hit) in 10 innings. While he’s here … you know, there’s another World Baseball Classic coming next year …

Daniel Vogelbach, 1B, Pirates

Vogelbach, for more than a half decade, was the gloriously rotund Quad-A guy you could dream on: If the Mariners ever just let him play -- something they were famously hesitant to do -- he could be a new breed of leadoff man, an OBP guy who was the literal opposite of a Vince Coleman type. He got one real chance at it in 2019, when he hit 30 homers (and, amusingly, made an All-Star Game) and had a .341 OBP, but his .208 average ultimately doomed him. He rattled around in Toronto and Milwaukee for a couple of years as a lefty bat for hire, but he didn’t get a chance to play full time again until this year. And it’s the Pirates, of all teams, who have just signed him up, given him a regular job and let him just go with it.

It’s working fabulously. He has three homers, is hitting .292 and has an OPS+ of 144. And he’s even batting leadoff most of the time. Your uncle, who remembers Vince Coleman, is very confused when he comes to the plate to start the game. But it’s really working.

Michael Wacha, RHP, Red Sox

During his rookie season with the Cardinals, there was no more terrifying man at Fenway Park than Michael Wacha, who took his incredible run late in 2013 and in that postseason into Boston for the 2013 World Series. (One of the primary storylines of that series was “can anyone on earth hit Michael Wacha?” I’m serious, it was!) Wacha would have two, maybe three more decent seasons after that initial rush, but arm injuries got him, as they have gotten so many. He ended floating to New York in 2020, where he had a 6.62 ERA in seven starts, and then was the worst starter for the Rays last year, putting up a 5.05 ERA for a team that was otherwise stacked with pitchers. It was reasonable to believe no one would sign him this offseason.

Surprise: Back at Fenway Park with the Red Sox, Wacha has been the ace for a team that desperately needs one. In four starts, he has put up a 1.77 ERA, thanks largely to giving up just two homers in 20 1/3 innings. There is some reason for worry -- he’s putting up the highest walk rate and the lowest strikeout rate of his career -- but the guy who was once the incredible phenom tearing up Fenway in October is now the savvy veteran keeping his staff afloat. Life’s a rich pageant.