In sports that require a player to play on offense and defense (such as basketball and ice hockey), a two-way player refers to a player who excels at both. In sports where a player typically specializes on offense or defense (like American football), or on pitching or batting (like baseball), it refers to a player who chooses to do both.
Basketball
Commonly used in basketball, a two-way player excels at both the offensive side of the game and the defensive side of the game.
Some of the best two-way players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) have been awarded the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Kevin Garnett, and Giannis Antetokounmpo are the only Defensive Player of the Year winners to have also won the NBA Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) during their careers. Jordan, Olajuwon, and Antetokounmpo won both awards in the same season.
In the Women's National Basketball Association, Yolanda Griffith, Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, Lauren Jackson, Candace Parker, Tamika Catchings, Sylvia Fowles, and A'ja Wilson have won both the WNBA Most Valuable Player Award and the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. Griffith, Swoopes, Leslie, Jackson, and Wilson won both awards in the same year, with Swoopes doing so twice.
Hockey
In the National Hockey League (NHL), the term two-way forward is used for a forward who handles the defensive aspects of the game as well as the offensive aspects of the game. The best two-way forward is presented with the Frank J. Selke Trophy. The term two-way defenseman is used to describe a defenseman who also makes contributions on offense. Occasionally, a player will be designated as both a defenseman and forward in has career; some recent examples are Nicolas Deslauriers, who was listed as a defenseman in his time in the QMJHL and in his first two professional seasons but as of 2022 is listed as a forward; and Dustin Byfuglien, who began his junior career as a defenseman before being moved up to right wing by the Chicago Blackhawks, then was moved back to defense when he was traded to the Atlanta Thrashers.
Only two players have won both the Hart Trophy (the NHL's MVP award) and the Norris Trophy (the defensive player of the year award): Bobby Orr three times and Chris Pronger once, each time in the same season.
Baseball
Background
In Major League Baseball (MLB), there are few true two-way players, as position players generally do not pitch, and most pitchers are poor batters. In the American League especially, the two-way player had mostly ceased to exist, as the designated hitter (DH) rule has allowed a team to have a designated batter bat in place of the pitcher since 1973. Ironically, this very rule was what largely made it possible for two-way player Shohei Ohtani to pitch and bat on separate days. Prior to 2021, pitchers in the National League still had to bat for themselves, but they were usually poor batters. In 2017, the average batting average for all of MLB was .255. The average batting average for pitchers was .124, significantly worse than the league average.
Until Shohei Ohtani in 2021, Babe Ruth (in 1918 and 1919) was the last player to pitch 100 innings and have 200 plate appearances as a batter in the same season. (Bullet Rogan achieved the same feat in the Negro leagues, which were not considered major leagues at the time.) Two-way players are still common in college baseball, with the John Olerud Award being given to the best two-way player of the season. However, by the major league level, a player is usually better at either pitching or batting, and rarely is given the chance to do both.
Effective with the 2020 season, "two-way player" became an official MLB roster classification. A player qualifies once he reaches the following statistical milestones in either the current or the immediately previous season: At least 20 MLB innings pitched. Appearing in at least 20 MLB games as a position player or designated hitter, with at least 3 plate appearances in each of the 20 games.
Once the player qualifies, he retains two-way status for the remainder of the current season plus all of the next season. Two-way players do not count against the limit of 13 pitchers (14 for regular-season games after September 1) on a team's active roster instituted in 2020, and also are not subject to restrictions on pitching by position players that were also introduced in 2020.