Joe Posnanski's Top 100 Players in Baseball

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.

http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/no-47-albert-pujols/

at least 25 spots too low, imo

Yeah that does seem low to me too.

He's 40th all time in WAR (27th for position players) so it's a defensible ranking based on career value, but the entire writeup focuses on his peak value, so the ranking makes no sense to me.

maybe he's just protecting the list in case pujols continues to spiral downward for the next 5 years and then retires, but the whole post is about how his only company is guys like ruth, williams, mays, etc, so putting him at 47 is weird

xp yeah

I bet it's a lot of damn pitchers lurking in the wings

I think he's hedging his bets too. If Pujols continues to decline, the ranking won't look that unusual down the road--even though, yes, continued decline won't alter his peak value. Without necessarily saying so, I think Posnanski has factored in career value, which is currently a bit up in the air.

I'd have to go back and look at the rest of the list, but you could probably predict exactly how many pitchers are coming and exactly who they are.

if he was going to punish players for being mid-career, he should have cut off his list at players who retired by 2013

also i can predict the future and have a feeling pujols is going to have a great year this year (i will probably be totally wrong on that but it's a gut feeling i can't deny)

He's been favouring peak over career value for the entire series up until now, so to hedge on Pujols when he was bullish on so many other players (who were nowhere near as dominant as Pujols was) is a bit messed up.

The thing Posnanski just posted on serendipitous timing--Catfish Hunter vs. Jim Kaat--is quite good. Trying to think of which players today might be benefiting from good timing or getting lost because of bad timing. Example: if you're a player with a broad range of skills--good average, medium-range power, good fielding and baserunning--you'll be treated more favorably today by writers and in awards voting than you would have in 1985, when you were more likely to have been overlooked. (As you should.) If you're a guy who knocks in 100 runs and doesn't do much else, you've come along at least 20 years too late.

Well but part of his point around the timing thing is just who is around when you get inducted. It's pretty clear to me that Biggio had retired in 2005 (with 3000 hits of course) he'd probably be in whereas because he's going to get stuck in this glut of dudes he might have to wait another 3 or 4 years to be inducted. Mussina also probably would look at lot better if he retired before this massive glut of pitchers. I mean value of walks (for batters) and strikeouts (for pitchers) and defensive range probably more understood now than well anytime previous, but I don't know that Raines would have been more or less likely to be thought of as a HOFer in 1984 than 2014 because of it...