Joe Posnanski's Top 100 Players in Baseball

Thinking Juan Guzman might show up then: "If only he could have clocked down to 45 seconds between pitches."

Yeah he's clearly very focused on peak for some of these picks. Based on that it's hard to argue against Snider whose for a time was pretty awesome (just unfortunately less awesome than the two CFers in the same city at the same time).

In keeping with all that, Sadaharu Oh at #69--and the expected sniping in the comments section. Myself, no idea. If he'd played a little closer to Hideo/Ichiro's time in Japan--there's a 10-year gap there--I'd feel more confident in assessing him.

His numbers were certainly awesome:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/japan/player.cgi?id=oh----000sad

Roy Campanella post seems to have brought out the trolls but I'm not clear what's controversial about him (admittedly you do have to kinda assume that that from 20-25 he was also the best catcher in the world, but given the fact that most independent observers THOUGHT exactly that not sure what issue there is either). In fact all it's doing for me is indicating how fucking weird C WAR is.

Yeah, I don't know why some of the commenters (a couple especially) don't take this in the spirit in which it's written, which is more like a combination of the 100 Best Players and the 100 Best Stories. Having said that, it was interesting to find out that Campanella's home/road splits were so drastic; Snider had a moderate split, Robinson didn't have much of a split at all.

The entire list is full of assumptions about how good some of the Negro League players really were (including the ones that later played in MLB), I figured his readers would have accepted that by now. When he puts Josh Gibson in the top 20 the trolls will have a field day.

Right but these are not huge assumptions since a lot of these dudes were pretty great when they did get to mlb and best African-American players of next gen were clearly equal or better than white contemporaries. Oh is as clemenza points out biggest leap since there is no baseline.

No question they were great but trying to assign them a ranking in a top 100 is very speculative, or like clemenza said, a combination of greatness and storyline. Like for Monte Irvin, Pos assumes that he would have had at least another 7-8 seasons that were at least as good as the few he had in MLB, and ranks him more or less according to that assumption. And he was more or less done as a star player by 35, which might or might not mean anything (plenty of HOFers declined quickly in their 30's). There's just no way to know, but at the same time you can't leave these guys out of a discussion about the best players of all time. Basically I don't envy anyone who tries to rank that generation of African-American players.

Right but by the same token you have to do adjustments of all the pre-integration MLB ballplayers as well. The whole exercise is very speculative and single out Negro Leagues ballplayers seems a bit odd.

I too btw find Campanella's H/R splits fascinating.

It's not the same thing though. You could say that in an integrated league, Babe Ruth would have been 10% less productive and correct his career numbers based on that. That's different than inventing ten prime-level seasons for a guy who wasn't playing (=was barred) in the league at the time. They're both speculative but to very different degrees, IMO. f

But yeah, there's no real way to be sure, etc.

They were playing in another league though at a very high level. 10% less productive (and it could be more than that really) is also kind of a big too because a lot of the big larger than life "records" are ones that were from that era. If Ruth only has 600 home runs and/or hit 54 in single season then I think it would diminish his stature definitely.

If you were applying a universal yardstick over all time, 90-95 of the greatest 100 are likely playing right now.

xpost

They were playing at a high level but their stats aren't reliable (or weren't kept at all), so we need to rely more on first hand accounts, which are probably as inaccurate and prone to exaggeration as stories about MLB old timers are. It's not a big deal if you're trying to find who the best players were, or even who deserves to be in the HOF. But if you're making a list of the top 100 players of all time and trying to compare players across different leagues and eras, then you need to look at the numbers or else it's mainly just guesswork.

I pulled the 10% number out of thin air, it could definitely be more than that.

disturbing thought: pete kozma may be one of the top 2000 baseball players who ever lived

*shudders*

I would say the whole exercise of ranking the 100 best players is mainly guesswork. :D I mean really how do you compare Ty Cobb and Rickey Henderson? They were playing completely different games.

Story of Ty Cobb carrying Kid Nichols stats around slaying me.

Great comment on that post that can apply to our discussions on this board too (new board description?)

How dare you rank this player so low or so high!
WAR
So much better than player x who I presume you’ve ranked much higher
So much worse than player x who I assume hasn’t made your list
Morris! Garvey!
(If you don’t like it why do you read)
(Park effects, stories!)
I have ranked so and so in this spot.
My rankings are perfect!
Your rankings should match mine exactly
EXACTLY!
blah blah blah blah
yadda, yadda, yadda
(stop posting your opinion)
(adjustments for player quality)
Negro Leaguers shouldn’t be ranked
The Japanese play baseball?
PEDs, PEDs, PEDs!
(Amphetamines!)
More Home Runs is all that matter
(more walks is all that matters)
Strikeouts
(teams with bad defenses)
RBI, RBI, RBI, FEARED!
(Teh Fear!)
(Stop capitalizing)
This list is biased!
This list is not consistent with other lists
STATS
STATS
STATS
(Stories)
(Fun)
(Publish a book)
Grammar error!
typo!
Uninformed!
(thanks for writing so much!)
This player was the worst, doesn’t belong in the top 200!
Look at my list! Use MY LIST!!
Jack Morris!

Murray so relatively high has surprised me more than anything so far. I'm fine with it, but I'm sure there'll be lots of pushback in the comments. A real mystique player when such things ruled the day, right in the middle of the pack of HOF first baseman by newer metrics. But, again, a great story for Posnanski.

Yeah that's not where I see Murray at all.

I'm OK with it. He's been favouring peak over career but the career guys still belong somewhere on the list.

At least 5 more dudes should be ahead of him at first base though (Gehrig, Foxx, Pujols, Bagwell, Thomas) and then maybe some turn of the century guys. That seems like a lot of first baseman.

Love seeing Reggie so relatively high. When I get all wishy-washy nostalgic about '70s baseball, he's probably second on my I-want-to-go-back-there list after Fidrych. That one segment in the Ken Burns series where he jokes about how good he is at shoveling it out to reporters (right after a typically pious interview) is priceless.

Reggie's numbers are mind-boggling when they're scaled to a 1996 run scoring context. Basically if he were around in the 1990's then he would have had Jim Thome's career, i.e. a 600+ HR three true outcomes player (and sure enough, their WAR's are almost the same).

Stearns article great. Never even heard of that dude.

John Stearns? where, where?

John Stearns actually mentioned in Yount piece, but Turkey Leg Stearnes was who I meant above.

#57 is Roy Hobbs. Reads like something from a movie.

Most striking thing about Hobbs was his stunning resemblance to Robert Redford.

not true, the Hobbs I know struck out

I never read of a "Leg" in Turkey Stearnes' name before

Obviously I just wanted it to be there so much I read it in. :D

I was keeping up until yesterday afternoon, but god, they're up to 171 comments on the Jeter post.

Looking at Chipper Jones' #s I am SHOCKED by how not awful the defensive rating for him is. I always thought he had a bit of a rep as a poor defender but these actually look pretty respectable.

The Jeter article was probably the sloppiest one of the series thus far, he just completely misrepresents him. He wasn't average in his first couple of years once you account for his position (which is clear from his oWAR, and he was RoY in '96), he wasn't the clear "leader" of the '98 team (except in retrospect), to name just two examples.

Plus, the idea that Jeter didn't do well in MVP voting = Jeter was underrated is a total fallacy, because being CAP'N JETES THE FACE OF BASEBALL doesn't mean he's the best player in the league who deserves the MVP. There might be two years where he had a legit claim to the MVP. It's like saying that everyone loved Mo Rivera, he dominated at his position for 15+ years, so why didn't he ever win a Cy Young? It's not really much of a mystery.

yeah, he was 2nd and 1st among AL nonpitchers in WAR in '98 & '99, only in the top 10 twice more.

His most valuable stat might be having 540+ PA for 17 straight seasons (all but two of those were 650+).

Wow Steve Carlton is crazy. I completely repressed that for some reason (even though I vaguely remember that interview when it happened).

Whoa, I knew he was eccentric but didn't realize he was a conspiracy nut.

he's the Woody Allen of Cy Young winners

(sorry, posting on behalf of "Jim Bunning truthers")

I thought the breakdown of his '72 season was amazing. He was lousy for a full month, Pedro/Koufax the rest of the way. And, by Joe's research, the team didn't make as much of a difference as you might have assumed (some, yes).

Junior at #51. Good pick. Don't know if I could think of another player where a) the career totals are imposing, but b) there's this albatross of coulda-shoulda because of how they were compiled. I was so caught up in him and Thomas for those first few years. And yes, it was probably clear already, before 2000, that Bonds was the superior player.

This got me thinking -- if Bonds had had Griffey's career after '98, how would he have been remembered? Everything he did from 2000-2005 also helped remind people of how great he had been before that. I guess he'd be lumped together with Thomas as a guy who was otherworldly for a few years, and then hung around compiling stats with one or two great seasons mixed in there. He wouldn't be considered a top-50 all time player, IOW.

Interesting. Griffey began to break down after his age 30 season, his first with the Reds (which was far from his peak, and continued a clear and ominous decline, but he did hit 40 home runs and make some more progress towards catching Aaron); Bonds began his science-fiction surge at age 35, the very same year. So there's a five-year age gap when their fortunes cross. At first I was going to try a time-shifting thing, creating two players based strictly on age: 1) Griffey's totals through age 30 + Bonds' totals starting at age 31; 2) Bonds' totals through age 30 + Griffey's starting at age 31. Those numbers are absurd: young Griffey/old Bonds hits 908 home runs. Instead, here's what you get if you ignore the age gap and just switch them starting in the year 2001:

Griffey (1989-2000) + Bonds (2001-2007): retires at age 37 with 706 HR, 8743 AB, 2661 H, 5353 TB, 1852 BB, 1806 R, 1861 RBI, 216 SB, .304/.429/.612

Bonds (1986-2000) + Griffey (2001-2010): retires at age 45 with 686 HR, 10905 AB, 3055 H, 5894 TB, 2018 BB, 2,083 R, 1971 RBI, 482 SB, .280/.393/.540

Perceptions would obviously be changed...have to think about that.

.280/.393/.540 is about what I would have expected from the young Bonds/old Griffey combo, but the counting stats are a lot more impressive that I thought they'd be. You have to figure that the old Bonds would have never have played past 40 since he couldn't stay healthy, but that would still leave him with about 600 HR, 1700 RBI. So maybe it's Jim Thome's career power numbers and slash stats, plus the great baserunning and defense. That *should* make him a top-30 all time player, but I'm not sure people would have seen him that way (although 600 HR would be hard to ignore).

Before I got into baseball, Ken Griffey Jr was one of the 7-8 non-expos names I knew in baseball.

Yes, that makes more sense--add Griffey's totals only for 2001-2007, up to the point where Bonds actually retired (which is what your original post hinted at). Here's what you get: 649 HR, 9930 AB, 2832 H, 5507 TB, 1868 BB, 1966 R, 1836, 482 SB, .285/.399/.555.

Top 30? Just as raw numbers, that's in range of Mays: 660 HR, 338 SB, .302/.384/.557. Mays would move ahead when you start adjusting for era, but young Bonds/old Griffey would still be in the Top 30 with room to spare, I would think.

Something I wrote in 1993 for Radio On:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SjjGanCdBAZ25ya1c2b0FILVk/edit?usp=sharing

I remembered it as being just about Griffey, Thomas, and Gonzalez, but it's also about Bonds and Olerud. I get a little carried away at times--you can tell I'm in full swoon--but I think most of it holds up. I laughed when I read the words "just flipped through the encyclopedia"--a lot of leg work back then. And everyone can be thankful we have WAR instead of "Run Factor."

Not from the top 100 players list, but this is fantastic:

http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/the-dutch-leonard-affair/

Yeah that was great history.