Goodnews: Yelich has been tasked with ranking the top MLB players’ weekend custom bats.

While you could rightfully question MLB‘s marketing and raising awareness of Players’ Weekend, it’s here and it’s going to be a great time. Baseball fans have seen several iterations of this weekend but we are set up for a fun time around the league. Specifically, it seems like what fans are anticipating the most is players being able to use custom bats for MLB Players’ Weekend.

Now that the weekend is about to get fully underway, though, we’ve started to see many of the custom bats that will be used either get leaked or posted online. And let’s just be real, it’s been wildly entertaining to see what some of the players — and, likewise, various bat manufacturers — have been able to conjure up and pull off.

However, we can’t just stop there! For MLB Players’ Weekend, we’re testing these personalized bats against one another. And we have ranked the nine best custom bats that will be in the batter’s box for this event, and our ranking is final—that is, completely and utterly subjective

 

Blue Jays utilityman Ernie Clement received first dibs on the No. 2 Pencil bat that was intended for this weekend while playing a day game against the Cubs on Friday. We’ll let you see it in his hands.

It’s undeniably an incredibly cool bat. However, it would be far more awesome if there was some uniqueness and no one else was adopting the same design. This model is owned by Ryan Jeffers, Taylor Ward, Clement, and a number of other people, which is why it ranks bottom in our rankings.

I refuse to be among those who pretend to be more intelligent than the MCU. Like everyone else, I’m a huge fan of the Infinity Saga and was present for most of the films’ premiere weekends. Nevertheless, Josh Jung, an infielder with the Rangers, broke out the Captain America bat, and while it’s good, it’s not really making a difference.

My distaste for that bat relative to many of the rest, though, it does make me desperately want the Arlington-area media to ask Jung his thoughts about Robert DowneyJr.’ s return to the MCU as Dr. Doom.

Does Brandon Marsh’s appearance make him easily recognizable? Naturally, of course! There’s not much doubting who the Phillies fan is when you mix the damp hair and beard. That being said, you can choose to have your image on a personalized bat.

Put an end to your self-promotion. That’s not why I’m here, and when I attempt to basically assess bespoke bats, that’s not what I tend to do. Instead of just the players’ faces on the lumber, we want a really cool allusion or tribute.

Custom crayon bats, such as the pink one Harrison Bader of the Mets will be wearing this weekend, are marginally superior to the No. 2 pencil bats. Although the design is exactly as neat, I think it has a slightly better quality than the pencil.

Most specifically, I like that this design can be replicated in the color of a player’s choosing. That’s instant variety that simply isn’t there with the pencil bats that we’ve seen, so I’m giving the crayon a pretty decisive edge there.

Okay, okay, we’ll get a little sentimental and mushy here. While Bryce Harper’s kids may not exactly have the sharpest artistic skills at this point (which is a factual statement and not at all a jab at them given their age!), it’s still a very touching gesture on his part to allow his kids to sketch and color the designs for his bats. They’re crayon bats too, just with that extra special touch.