Every MLB player is about to be in the best shape of his life

The long wait is over. Major League Baseball camps officially open Tuesday. The opening of camps is a time of great optimism in the game. Every player had a great offseason, every player is healthy and every player feels their team can compete for the World Series. It’s no surprise that we see plenty of puff pieces propping up even the most questionable of players around this time.

The most popular of those puff pieces is “Player X is in the best shape of his life.” They are impossible to avoid. One player might show up to camp claiming he put on 15-17 pounds of muscle in the offseason. Another enrolled in a crazy, new workout plan designed to keep him on the field for 150 games.

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If the article is done well, the reader comes away thinking that player is in for the finest statistical season of his career. He’s in the best shape of his life! How can he be bad?

Even though we know they are silly, these pieces are still fun to track. Craig Calcaterra over at Hardball Talk has made a habit of highlighting best shape of his life articles over the past few years. His efforts have done a good job highlighting a number of players who came into camp making that claim.

But now it’s time to get more comprehensive. One intrepid Royals blogger is attempting to put together a document featuring every single player who reports to camp this year in the best shape of his life. Shaun Newkirk, who goes by @Shauncore on Twitter, is compiling every story he sees that mentions a player going through some extreme body change.

The list was just created, but there are already 11 names on it. Once camps officially open Tuesday, that number should grow exponentially.

Tracking all the best shape of his life can be tough, so Newkirk is asking fans to send him links on Twitter if they see anything that might fit. It’s an ambitious and silly idea that we can get behind.

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By now, fans know not to take these too seriously. Most of the players who are in the “best shape of their lives” are guys who desperately need positive coverage. It’s usually young players fighting for more playing time (hello, Michael Conforto), or guys trying to recover after poor years (see Carlos Gomez). Pablo Sandoval gets his own category. He’s the Lifetime Achievement Award Winner for best shape of his life articles.

It should be a fun experiment. These puff articles are generally met with skepticism. Now that we’ll have a comprehensive list to reference, we can see just how much a player reporting to camp in the best shape of his life matters. It might not lead to a groundbreaking discovery, but it’s enough to entertain us before games begin.

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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at christophercwik@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik