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Hitters

CF Mel Irving, Baltimore Terrapins, 2026
The Terrapins’ young center fielder’s greatest season came the year after he hit the greatest home run in Terrapins history, a walk-off, come-from-behind two strike blast into the right field stands at Terrapins Park. He followed up that homer with an MVP year: a league-leading 8.9 WAR, driven by his defensive value (resulting in his first Gold Glove) and a .320/.372/.523 line with a career-best 35 homers (the only time he cracked 30). His 190 hits and 340 total bases each led D2. While Irving remains one of the greatest defenders in the game, with 11 straight awards in center, his offensive game has never been as good as it was in that age 23 season, when he was the best in the game.

CF Kyle DuBell, Chicago Whales, 2029
Another young CF with one extraordinary season. DuBell was never the defender Irving was, but at his best his bat made up for that value, including in his only MVP season, 2029. DuBell hit .296/.364/.631 with 44 homers and 39 doubles, driving in 128 for the D2 champion Whales. His 8.2 WAR led D2 that year, and helped the Whales climb back to Division 1, where the franchise originated. DuBell’s 2029 was in the middle of his most productive stretch as a player, but he fell off a cliff after his age 29 season and has never regained his production, topping 3 WAR only once since 2031.

LF Pedro Quiroz, New Orleans Zephyrs, 2029
Some of the highlights of Quiroz’s amazing 2029 are detailed in the previous section, and in truth this list could have replaced this year with 2028, 2030, or 2026, all of which ended with higher WAR totals than 2029. But 2029 was a season of legend, in which Quiroz cemented himself as the Federation’s greatest slugger, smashing the record of 60 homers in a season by two, and the total bases record by 1. Quiroz batted .313/.374/.664, and led D2 in at bats, plate appearances, hits, slugging, runs created, wRC+, runs, RBI, and OPS - though, incredibly, not WAR: his subpar fielding dragged his value down to a “mere” 6.5 WAR. Despite that, the season remains one of the most cherished and remembered in NABF history, a bit of New Orleans magic at the end of an incredible decade of baseball.

3B Brian Runnion, Charlotte Hornets, 2025
The only infielder on the list for these cycles is Runnion, who held down third base for the Charlotte Hornets through most of the 2020s. It’s almost impossible to choose between his 2025 and 2026 seasons, but the Hornets’ conference title in 2025 puts that year over the edge. Runnion was both the team and Division MVP in 2025, the first of his three awards, as he hit .294 while leading the Division in on-base percentage (.439), slugging (.604), OPS (1.034) and WAR (8.3) as well as a host of other categories. He was far and away the best position player in Division 4 that season, his 8.3 WAR amazingly close to double that of the next closest, the San Antonio Missions’ Sam Martinez, with just 4.8.

CF Bobby Usry, New Orleans Zephyrs, 2027
Just as his teammate Quiroz would do two years later, Bobby Usry captured the sport’s attention in 2027 with a record-breaking run as he targeted Jonathan Allen’s 220 hit record, set with the Salt Lake Gulls all the way back in 2010. He would do so successfully in the season’s final week, with the record-breaker stopping play in New Orleans as Usry - already an established star though in only his second season in the Big Easy - was honored by the club. He would go on to set the Division 4 single season hits record with 225 in 2031 while with the Browns; he would also set the all-time hits mark that season, a mark he continues to both hold and grow.

Pitchers

SP Jim Betz, Baltimore Terrapins, 2025
Jim Betz was 36 years old, in his third season with Baltimore. He’d just returned to Division 2, where he’d begun his career with the Havana Sugar Kings, a franchise where he’d had his finest years, and while he’d been excellent for the Terrapins in 2024 many doubted he’d be able to repeat it as Baltimore climbed the ladder. He didn’t: he blew 2024 out of the water with a sterling 20 win season in which he threw almost 220 innings and allowed only five home runs. Five. On top of that incredible figure, Betz put up a 2.27 FIP (57 FIP-) and 8.2 WAR while taking home both a Championship share and a Pitcher of the Year award. On a team of stars, it’s hard to say Betz was the biggest reason the Terrapins did what they did in 2025, but he was certainly in the inner circle.

SP Bob Paul, Los Angeles Angels, 2026
Bob Paul has now had two successful careers: the first between 2020 and 2028 as an ace starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels, and the second as an all-time great closer with seven different franchises since 2029. This season was the finest of that first career, as he provided a struggling and in-transition Angels squad with its only true anchor. Paul went 16-6 for a losing franchise, striking out just under a batter an inning with a 2,81 FIP (64 FIP-). He walked just 5% of the hitters he faced that year, dominating a tough Division 1. He was denied a Pitcher of the Year Award - it went instead to Boston’s Hector Rayfield for an almost objectively worse season - but he was clearly the most valuable pitcher to his club, and maybe the only thing in those years that kept LA out of Division 2.

SP Brian Tate, Albuquerque Dukes, 2026
Tate had a short career, but a brilliant one. For four years with the Dukes, he was the best there was in both Division 4 and Division 3, leading in WAR each of those seasons while revitalizing a struggling Dukes franchise. 2026 was the second, and greatest, of them, as Tate earned 7.7 WAR with a miniscule SIERA of 1.59, a 54 FIP-, and an almost unheard-of 12.1 K/9, which at the time set a record among D4 starting pitchers and was one of the top all-time NABF marks. He also held opponents to just 1.4 walks per nine, also a D4 best. The season earned him the first of his two Pitcher of the Year Awards, the second coming in 2028, the year before his career fell apart.

SP Danny Rzasa, Baltimore Terrapins, 2025
This is an old-school baseball pick: if you put Rzasa’s advanced metrics up against his teammate Betz, or Paul, or anyone else on this list (and several off it) it doesn’t hold up. But there’s a place for record-breakers, even people who break records in stats as problematic as wins. Rzasa did that, with one of the most lopsided W-L records you’ll ever see: a 23-3 2025 for the record-breaking Terrapins. Rzasa’s ERA challenged for the league lead at 2.41, though the FIP of 3.30 was less dominant - an 83 FIP-. Rzasa struck out over a quarter of the batters he faced, but walked 6.5%. For many other teams it would have been an ace-level performance; for Baltimore he was a #3. But it’s his name in the record books.

SP Chad Martucci, Denver Bears, 2030
The Denver Bears had never won their conference before 2030, and no one deserves more credit for their victory that season than the journeyman Martucci. He never fit the mold of a Denver pitcher - he wasn’t a power guy, and wasn’t a groundballer. By this point in his career, he was 34 years old and a soft-tosser, a finesse pitcher with impeccable control and wily breaking stuff who piled up strikeouts without lighting up radar guns. When he came to the Bears he had never even appeared in an All-Star game, but something about that thin air worked for him, and he became a new pitcher. By 2030, he was a three-time All-Star who had led D3 in WAR twice and was about to do it a third time, with the best season of his career. Though his 4.13 ERA gave him his doubters, he struck out well over a batter an inning while walking just 46 in almost 220 innings of work. He was somewhat homer prone, but with few runners on base it didn’t hurt as much, and his FIP was a strong 3.14, a 68 FIP- with a 2.79 SIERA. The combination of big innings and few baserunners gave him a 7.0 WAR, the highest in his career and the pinnacle of his late career transformation.

CL Matt Heitzman, Baltimore Terrapins, 2026
It’s a sign of the Terrapins’ dominance that three pitching seasons wind up on this list, including the first by a reliever. Heitzman was an accidental closer, having stepped into the role at the start of 2025 due to a spring training injury, but he took to it immediately and was soon named the permanent closer. He saved 43 games in 2025 to lead D2 and hurled 9 scoreless frames in the 2024 D2 Championship over Vancouver. The next season, 2026, he set a new single-season record with 51. He struck out nearly 30% of the batters he faced - 10.6 K/9 - and allowed just 4 homers in 60 innings of work. His 1.7 WAR was top among D2 relievers, and he won the 2026 Reliever of the Year, even getting a handful of votes for Pitcher of the Year.