Matt Carpenter

I discovered this week's MLBoyfriend when I was looking for a new second baseman for my fantasy team. Matt Carpenter came highly recommended by the experts and, fortunately, was available. So, he now plays for the New York Yankees and the Lake Washington Gillygoofangs. 

Carpenter's stat last week are certainly MLBoyfriend worthy. He had 7 runs, 4 home runs, 11 RBI's, a .500 batting average and 2.060 OPS. However, if I'm being honest, the real reason I picked him is the mustache.

Carpenter's mustache is a thing of beauty. (FWIW, the hair is pretty good too.) The term "porn 'stache" is kind of played out, but when you run the bases looking like this...

..."porn 'stache" is apt.

Carpenter has a history of great facial hair. His beard when he played for the Cardinals was pretty epic.

However, this is a case of less is more. By getting rid of the beard, Carpenter has made the moustache a star. It ranks amongst the best facial hair baseball in my humble opinion--and we're not just talking about current players but in the whole history of Major League Baseball.

Congratulations, Matt Carpenter! You are my MLBoyfriend of the week. You can thank the mustache, man.

UPDATE: After I posted this, MLB named Matt Carpenter the AL Player of the Week. Shockingly, there was no mention of his mustache in the announcement.

Zack Wheeler

Zack Wheeler pitched two great and, statistically speaking, nearly identical games last week.

On Sunday, July 3, Wheeler went 7.0 innings against the Cardinals. He gave up 4 hits, walked one batter and had no earned runs scored against him. He ended with both a quality start and a win.

On Friday, July 8, Wheeler went 7.0 innings against the Cardinals. He gave up 5 hits, walked one batter and had no earned runs scored against him. He ended with both a quality start and a win. That's right, I was able to copy and paste the stats from the last game and just change the date and number of hits. Everything else--even the opposing team--was the same.

Wheeler ended the two games with a 0.00 ERA and 0.79 WHIP. The Philadelphia Inquirer is obviously biased towards the Phillies, but with stats like that, it's fair of them to ask "Zack Wheeler: Best Starter in Baseball?"

Congratulations, Zack Wheeler. You and all the Phillies fans who are upset about your All-Star Game snub can take comfort that someone recognized your talents this week.

Rowdy Tellez

Rowdy Tellez takes the prize this week for a few reasons. First, his name is Rowdy--which is the best first name in Major League Baseball since my old friend (and two-time MLBoyfriend) Buster Posey retired. Second, he put up some great numbers last week. He had 6 runs, 5 home runs, 12 RBIs (the most in MLB), a .240 average and 1.201 OPS.

Also, this year, I'm all about body positivity and celebrating some of the bigger boys of baseball.

Then, I saw this story:

Before the game, Rowdy gave his biggest fan a thank you gift for driving down to see him all the way from Canada.#ThisIsMyCrew pic.twitter.com/C43tf6NoaG

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) June 26, 2022

And the deal was sealed for Rowdy.

Congratulations, Rowdy Tellez! You are my MLBoyfriend of the week.

Isaac Paredes

Isaac Paredes had a week to celebrate last week. One quarter (26.3157894737%, to be exact) of his at bats resulted in home runs.

Paredes ended the week with 5 home runs, six runs, 9 RBIs, a .579 average and a 2.093 OPS.

I usually look for one picture of the new MLBoyfriend celebrating and/or being celebrated to put at the end of the post. There were A LOT to choose from this time.

Articles with headlines like, "Tres for Paredes! Infielder notches Rays' 7th 3-HR game" and "Rays' Isaac Paredes goes yard again -- hits fourth home run in two games against the Yankees" come with photos of Paredes on well-earned victory laps. His most recent Instagram post is of a classic sports tradition for the winning team's MVP.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Isaac Paredes (@isaacparedes99)

My personal favorite pic of Paredes last week was posted with Saturday's story, "Isaac Paredes propels Rays to comeback win over Pirates".

Congratulations, Isaac Paredes! You are my MLBoyfriend of the week. One more reason for you to celebrate.

Liam Hendriks

This is definitely a first for MLBoyfriend: I have selected a player who did not actually play at all last week. Liam Hendriks has been on the 15-day IL. So why is he my choice for the week? Well, some news broke about him. Here's another first for the blog, I'm using People as a source. This is the headline that caught my eye: MLB Pitcher and LGBTQ Ally Made Liam Hendriks Made Sure White Sox Had a Pride Night Before Joining the Team.

Hendriks raised the Pride Flag at the White Sox ballpark before last year's Pride Night and will do so again this year. He says of his allyship:

“For me, it’s just being a decent human being. You are going to have people you just don’t get along with purely based on personality, but race, sexual orientation or anything like that should never come into it. They should never be part of the equation of why you have a disdain for somebody, and that’s something that I think the more people talk about, hopefully it gets more normalized.”

In my research on Hendriks (a.k.a. Googling "Liam Hendriks"), I discovered that he publicly stood up for his teammate Tim Anderson in the wake of the Josh Donaldson incident. Long story short: A month ago, Donald made comments to Anderson that were at best disrespectful and some would say racist on the field. Donaldson was fined and suspended, but the whole thing has remained in the news because he appealed the suspension. Donaldson has been trying to rehabilitate his image with some lame explanations for his behavior. Hendriks called Donaldson's excuse, and I'm quoting here: COMPLETE BULLSHIT.

Another aspect of my "research" for these posts is checking out the player's Instagram account. Hendriks has a good one. Two posts stood out to me. First, this one in which he participates in an effort to raise awareness of gun violence:

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A post shared by Liam Hendriks (@hendriks_31)

Then, there was Hendriks' latest Instagram post from a White Sox event at Chicago's Field Museum. Sure, he's super cute in the pic, but his wife, Kristi, is clearly the star. Every gay at the party wants to hang out with that girl.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liam Hendriks (@hendriks_31)

Congratulation, Liam Hendriks! You are my MLBoyfriend of the week. Quite an achievement considering you didn't spend one minute of the week on the field.

Marcus Semien

Marcus Semien was such an obvious choice that there's really not much to say. Last week, he had a .480 average and 1.536 OPS with 7 runs, 4 home runs, 6 RBIs,  and 2 stolen bases.

On Tuesday, June 7th, Semien had 7 hits and 3 home runs in one day as the Rangers faced off against the Guardians in a double header. 

And Semien did all that looking like this:

SRSLY.

Congratulations, Marcus Semien! You are my MLBoyfriend of the week.

Alejandro Kirk

It's almost impossible to measure catchers' performances behind the plate, but it's safe to say that Alejandro Kirk was the best catcher at the plate last week. 

Kirk had a whopping .450 batting average and 1.522 OPS with 8 runs and 7 RBIs. He got to wear the Blue Jays' coveted "Barrio Jacket" 3 times last week to celebrate the home runs he hit.

Last week was not a fluke for Kirk. He's coming off an excellent month of May in which he had more extra-base hits than strikeouts.

I'd like to take this opportunity to shame fat-shamers. At 5'8"and 245 lbs, Kirk is officially "obese" according to the body mass index. In fact, his BMI of 37.2 puts him much closer to the "morbidly obese" category than the "overweight" one. This elite athlete, one of the best in Major League Baseball right now, "needs" to lose at least 70 pounds to be his "ideal" weight. For more information on what absolute garbage the BMI is, listen to "The Body Mass Index" episode of the excellent podcast Maintenance Phase.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

Congratulations, Alejandro Kirk! You are my MLBoyfriend of the week. I'd also like to thank you for giving me a reason to post my favorite baseball photo of the week.