The best baseball players born on March 7

March 7th, 2024

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 March 7:

1) Jeff Kent (1968)
A five-time All-Star and four-time Silver Slugger Award winner, Kent is Major League Baseball's all-time leader in home runs by second baseman with 351. The 2000 NL MVP Award winner with the Giants, Kent hit .290/.356/.500 with 377 total homers and 1,518 RBIs in 17 big league seasons.

2) J.R. Richard (1950)
One of the most dominant and intimidating pitchers in big league history, the 6-foot-8 flamethrower led the National League with 300-plus strikeouts in both 1978 and '79. However, less than a month after starting the 1980 All-Star Game for the NL, Richard's career was cut short at age 30 by a stroke.

3) Joe Carter (1960)
A five-time All-Star and two-time Silver Slugger Award winner who had 100 or more RBIs in 10 of his 16 big league seasons, Carter is best known for being one of only two big leaguers to end a World Series on a home run. His 1993 walk-off blast for the Blue Jays vs. the Phillies was second only to Pirates Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski, whose own walk-off shot vs. the Yankees came in Carter's birth year of 1960.

4) Jeff Burroughs (1951)
Burroughs made his debut with the Washington Senators as a teenager in 1970, and just four years later he won the American League MVP after the franchise moved to Texas. Burroughs batted .301/.397/.504 with a league-leading 118 RBIs in his MVP season of '74, and he never finished higher than 16th in the MVP voting for the remainder of his 16-year career.

5) Jimmie Hall (1938)
Hall's big league career got off to a great start, as he finished third in the American League Rookie of the Year voting in 1963 and was named to the AL All-Star team in '64 and ''65. However, after combining for 78 homers with the Twins in his first three seasons, he went on to hit just 43 more before his career ended after the 1970 campaign.

Others of note:

Michael Harris II (2001)
Harris won the 2022 NL Rookie of the Year Award and helped the Braves to the NL East title while hitting .297 with 19 homers, 20 stolen bases and a .853 OPS in 114 games for Atlanta in his first season in the bigs. He followed that up by hitting .293 with a 114 OPS+, 18 homers and 20 steals in '23.

Jack Armstrong (1965)
Armstrong's career year came in 1990, when he won 12 games and was named to the National League All-Star team for the World Series champion Reds. The right-hander tossed three scoreless innings of relief in Game 2 of the Fall Classic vs. the A's that season.

José Canó (1962)
Canó had a cup of coffee with the Astros in 1989 (1-1, 5.09 ERA in 23 innings), but he's best known as being the father of eight-time All-Star Robinson, as well as his son's BP pitcher when Robinson won the 2011 Home Run Derby.

Want to see more baseball birthdays for March 7? Find the complete list on Baseball Reference.