The 2021 baseball season is upon us, which means that all eyes are on the titans in Southern California and New York, everyone else is fighting to be 16th best, and the Orioles are about to introduce you to some pitchers you’ve never heard of before. But wherever your team’s prospects of success lie this year, there is one thing that’s guaranteed: we’re about to have a bunch of dudes running around on a field doing goofy things and athletic feats for us in front of a camera — and the Internet will be there to capture the best moments.
That is why we’re back with the fourth annual All-GIF Draft™, where we draft and discuss the players who are primed to create plenty of these little moments of joy this year that can packaged into GIFs for all to see and potentially retweet. (Check out last year’s, if you want.)
Once again, we invited on some friends of the pod to draft against us, resulting in a vast array of ideas and opinions on what makes a good GIF. In the past, we’ve looked at bat flips, defensive wizardry, on-field antics, pitches with stupid movement, and more — but this year, the field got wider than ever.
The first half of the draft featured picks from Shakeia Taylor, Bradford Williams Davis, Hannah Keyser, and Clinton Yates. Listen to “The 2021 MLB All-GIF Draft, Part 1” now:
1. José Ramírez (and his helmet), Team Friends
“I don’t know why it doesn’t stay on his head. I feel like that should be studied, is José Ramírez’s head too small for the helmet? What is happening here?”—Shakeia Taylor (Twitter)
2. Fernando Tatis Jr., Team TP
“The environment that he’s playing in really elevates him. The fact that he’s surrounded by a bunch of other fun, young, exciting players, and clearly has an organization that’s behind him all the way — that makes me excited to watch him.”—Alex
3. Trevor Bauer, Team Friends
“This is not an endorsement of Trevor Bauer’s character. This is not an endorsement of Trevor Bauer’s place in the game. This is an endorsement of perhaps four seconds of this man — this fool — doing something very stupid and it setting the Internet ablaze when he does it.”—Bradford William Davis (Twitter)
4. Francisco Lindor, Team TP
“He’s type of guy who can have a GIF walking into a game, on the field, dugout interviews, any of those things. He’s got five too GIF-ability.”—Bobby
5. Ji-Man Choi, Team Friends
“He’s a good player on a decent team, and he’s got the skills element… but the splits! The splits are where it’s at. You will make a GIF every time Ji-Man Choi does the splits to catch a ball at first base.”—Hannah Keyser (Twitter)
6.Shohei Ohtani, Team TP
“He’s the kind of guy who reflects the breadth of human emotions. All of us see ourselves in Shohei Ohtani.”—Alex
7. Luis Robert, Team Friends
“He doesn’t really speak English, but emotes quite a bit. If he’s got full commercials explaining to America why he need not speak English, you can expect a lot of hand gestures and various things that are happening with all sorts of people that do not involve talking, which is why he’s perfect for GIF selection.”—Clinton Yates (Twitter)
8. Devin Williams, Team TP
“It’s like pressing the same button in Mortal Kombat of picks, because he’s just going to throw a bunch of Airbenders and the GIFs are all just going to be people swinging through the Airbender. But the thing about the Airbender is that it moves in a different direction every three times he throws it.”—Bobby
9. Tim Anderson, Team Friends
“What does he have that no one else has in Major League Baseball? A personal photographer. As far as I can tell, there is someone whose job it is to follow Tim Anderson around and take pictures of him and slow-mo videos and Instagram reels and set it to cool music…We’re just going to get a lot more of Tim Anderson in our lives doing cool, fun shit.”—Jake Mintz, Céspedes Family BBQ (Twitter)
10. Amir Garrett, Team TP
“Having a guy who can instigate and has fun jeering the other team means you have GIFs of Amir Garrett, but he’s also going to generate GIFs of other people just by trying to get a rise out of them.”—Alex
11. Dominic Smith, Team Friends
“You have to think about the various avenues towards great GIFs. You need the guy who’s good enough to have moments, whether that’s a home run plus a bat flip plus a reaction. You need the guy who is in the dugout reacting. You need the guy who’s smiling and laughing while he’s playing baseball…Dom checks a lot of those boxes, and on a big team who’s on TV a lot.”—Jordan Shusterman, Céspedes Family BBQ (Twitter)
12. Juan Soto, Team TP
“He’s gonna win MVP this year. I feel really confident about it. Therefore, he’s going to have a lot of attention as he should, he’s the best young hitter in the history of baseball. Obvious Soto GIF-ability potential is him taking pitches and doing his little dance…It’s not going to give us the GIF of the year but it’s a consistent baseline.”—Bobby
13. Mookie Betts, Team Friends
“Defensive highlights: really great. Highlights at the plate: also great. When you can combine them into one person, even better. What you want is someone who has really high ceiling on both sides of the ball, and Betts, in addition to being a tremendous hitter, is prone to some highlights in the outfield. Plus he does fun stuff when he gets on base, he has an expressive face.”—Meg Rowley (Twitter)
14. Ronald Acuña Jr., Team TP
“Flow like no other. Chains banging on his chest as he rounds the bases. Having the absolute time of his life in the outfield…He is having a ton of fun in the dugout, especially because he has a lot of teammates who he’s really close with. Having a team around you that you can really bond with and be loose and let down your guard with really matters.”—Alex
15. Yu Darvish, Team Friends
“I’m hedging my bets and basing all this on Pitching Ninja coming through and going berserk with Yu Darvish…He has this strut as well when he walks off the mound that he knows he’s a badass. Even if he gave up that bomb, it doesn’t matter. He knows that he’s great.”—Randy Wilkins (Twitter)
16. Cody Bellinger, Team TP
“We’re on a continuum towards position players over the years in the GIF Draft because they just have more opportunities…Bellinger is going to hit some home runs, have some massive bat flips, but also in the playoffs last year, he literally ended multiple games with home run robberies. So you get that potential upside, more scenarios in which you can get a legendary GIF.”—Bobby
“It’s a ridiculous face!”—Hannah Keyser
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Thus concludes this year’s All-GIF Draft! We hope you have as much fun watching these players this year as we do. Be sure to hit us with your favorite GIFs of these players over on our Twitter — or tell us who we missed!
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