Joe Posnanski's Top 100 Players in Baseball

I know this article has been written a million times before, but it's a lot more fun when Joe P writes it:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_posnanski/07/21/top.100/index.html

Thoughts? Arguments? Concurrence?

oh man i <3 this guy

i guess the obv quibble would be a-rod - the guy is getting old and is likely deteriorating, and his home run numbers are pretty obv juiced by playing in new yankee stadium - and if this was a "who would you draft" thing i dont know if i would want a guy who is hitting .250 as opposed to like... justin upton even

I thought it was pretty audacious to put the grinkster in the #4 spot, even if his performance has maybe warranted it.

greinke, lincecum & haren are almost interchangeable as the #1 pitcher imo

All the American League 1B at 14-17 seem silly to me.

xp Agree, but I'd still take Lincecum marginally over the other two to pitch a single game cuz of the strikeouts.

ya - greinke's slot was the first headscratcher to jump out at me.

Ibanez at 26 is just a joke.

23. Derek Jeter, SS, Yankees

Would take McCann, or Escobar, or Gallardo, or Phillips, or just about anyone behind Inge, prior to Inge.

McCann at 81 is fucking nuts. He's top 25 probalby.

A-Rod at 6 or whatever and Chipper at 87 is mindblowingly weird.

ibanez kinda makes sense if you follow his criteria of who is the best right now at this very moment

i guess the obv quibble would be a-rod - the guy is getting old and is likely deteriorating, and his home run numbers are pretty obv juiced by playing in new yankee stadium - and if this was a "who would you draft" thing i dont know if i would want a guy who is hitting .250 as opposed to like... justin upton even

― igloo-fifty-four-quart-sports-ice-chest.jpg (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, July 22, 2009 4:39 PM (58 minutes ago)

really dude?
arod - .252/.401/.546
"justin upton" (i know u were just trolling but) - .291/.361/.525

and those arod numbers are including that awful start

i'm like the only dude that doesn't like joe pos :(

upton was probably a bad example because he doesn't walk much, but let's go with... idk matt kemp

a-rod - .252/.401/.546
kemp - 323/.390/.507

or
mccan - .305/.379/.508

or
votto - .345/.430/.592

take any of those four guys and switch them w/ a-rod (who has inflated home run numbers due to new yankee and has a million more rbi chances being on a team like the yankees than say the reds or dbacks) and they are having comparable if not better years

"ibanez kinda makes sense if you follow his criteria of who is the best right now at this very moment"

I guess, but there has to be some forecasting to it too. I mean who'll be the rest for the rest of the season ya know?

I don't really like him either, CAD.

Uh aren't Votto's #s inflated by playing in Bandbox Park?

And it's not like A-Rod's going to stop playing in New Yankee Stadium so really who cares about that.

Agree that McCann and Kemp are seriously underrated though.

upton was probably a bad example because he doesn't walk much, but let's go with... idk matt kemp

a-rod - .252/.401/.546
kemp - 323/.390/.507

or
mccan - .305/.379/.508

or
votto - .345/.430/.592

take any of those four guys and switch them w/ a-rod (who has inflated home run numbers due to new yankee and has a million more rbi chances being on a team like the yankees than say the reds or dbacks) and they are having comparable if not better years

― igloo-fifty-four-quart-sports-ice-chest.jpg (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, July 22, 2009 5:59 PM (15 minutes ago)

okkkkk but 1) who cares about rbis and 2) arod had a horrible start, he's still a better player than those dudes

read some of the comments section re this list and ppl rightfully kind of livid over him missing out on markakis AND adam jones and even brian roberts

nflandrum
Arlington , VA
Brian Roberts leads the AL in doubles not Pedroia, is tied in runs scored with Pedroia, has more RBIs, total bases, and steals and plays on a worse team. He has also grounded into 10 fewer double plays. Glad to see major market teams getting the standard bias. This list is rediculous.

hmmmm.......

tragic that roberts' peak has been wasted on the o's imo

soo many people in the comment are mega butthurt over cole hamels not making the list - the guy has a 5.82 era and a .337 baa ON THE ROAD

lots of lols from "HOW CAN THE MVP FROM WHEN IT MATTERS THE MOST NOT MAKE THIS LIST!"

lots of stl fans getting butthurt over no yadi - dude is an amazing defender but...

what catchers made it? he's no less than the 5th best catcher in baseball right now isn't he?

Jair Jurrjens should be on this list even if he didn't have the best name in the game.

no mccann until fucken 81??? eatadiccup posnanski

i normally love poz but this is DOGSHIT i hope he is brutally murdered

it kinda feels like he just went to his yahoo league, sorted players by their ranking, and copy/pasted it into a SI column

uh this has nothing to do about this article, just a general question and i assume some ppl will open this thread:

how do you have a lower obp than BA, as yuniesky bentancourt has had in his time with the royals?

sacrifices lower your OBP but not your BA

thank u shasta

Finished with the first 10 on his 100-Greatest-Ever list:

100. Curt Schilling
99. Cool Papa Bell
98. Ron Santo
97. Lou Whitaker
96. Ichiro Suzuki
95. Mariano Rivera
94. Paul Waner
93. Craig Biggio
92. Old Hoss Radbourn
91. Robin Roberts

Prediction, based on stray comments he's made here and there: Mays, not Ruth, will be #1.

I know all the arguments against Ryan (#87), they've been widely discussed. But wow at this:

Since Deadball ended — it was a different game in Deadball — who has thrown the most no-hitters?
A: Nolan Ryan. Of course. He threw the seven no-hitters, most ever even if you include Deadball.

OK. Next. Since Deadball, who threw the most one-hitters?
A: Nolan Ryan. He’s tied with Bob Feller with 12 one-hitters.

Since Deadball, who threw the most two-hitters?
A: Nolan Ryan. He threw 18 of them.

Since Deadball, who threw the most three-hitters?
A: Nolan Ryan. He threw 31.

Think about this for a moment. Nolan Ryan threw 69 complete games where he allowed three or fewer hits. That’s more than Roger Clemens...and Pedro Martinez...and Randy Johnson. COMBINED. It’s more than Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale combined, even if you throw Greg Maddux on top.

I have a hunch that it's a lot less impressive that it seems ... i.e. how many walks and runs did he give up in those games? He threw "only" 61 shutouts, so in most of those three hitter or less games he probably gave up runs and maybe didn't win the game.

thats covered pretty well in the remainder of the article

OK, I hadn't read it yet.

Couldn't resist checking, so I went through his game logs. Not nearly as onerous as it might seem. The games in question were easy to spot, so it only took about 45 minutes.

I only came up with 66, so I must have missed three. I kept track of IP, H, ER, and decisions, not walks and strikeouts. I wanted to do it quickly. Some of the walk totals were indeed crazy--8 or 9 sometimes--and the strikeouts were indeed awesome. We already knew that, though--I wanted to see if the walks led to runs, and if the runs led to losses. For the 66 games I found:

IP: 590.2
H: 138
ER: 36
ERA: 0.55
W-L: 62-4

It's hard to know whether those games are less impressive than they seem, because there's nothing to compare them to--no one else threw that many low-hit games. If Greg Maddux had thrown those games, obviously they would have been light-years tidier in terms of walks. He probably would have given up fewer runs, too, although maybe he would have given up more home runs than Ryan (who didn't give up many). Sixty-six games of Pedro doing that would have been more impressive, I'm sure. But that's all hypothetical--they didn't do it. If Johnson or Koufax were in the 40s or thereabouts, maybe that'd form some basis of comparison.

Nice work ... I looked at a few years of game logs ('77 + '78 and '89 and '90) and it was about what I expected -- the first group had games of the 2 H 6 BB 8 K 0 ER variety, and the second group was more like a Justin Verlander special, 2 H 2 BB 12 K (except for the pitch totals ... just ridiculous ... several 140+ pitch games in '89, including a 164 pitch, 8 IP 13 K game). Pos claims that Ryan just wanted to dominate hitters and couldn't care less about the walks, but something obviously changed between the late 70's and late 80's. How much of it was the hitters and how much of it was Ryan learning how to control his pitches?

I think it was the latter. What's kind of amazing is that it coincided with a drop in his strikeout rate (actually that's not amazing) but no real drop in effectiveness (kinda interesting) but then rose like crazy again in the latter part of his career (okay that's bonkers). Also the comparison between Fangraphs and B-R WAR is really striking for Ryan. Like if you just focus on peripherals he looks amazing (esp. at the end) but in terms of actual outcome he's basically more than a win worse for every year played.

w/out looking, he figured out how not to walk ppl when he was about 35, right?

31 (1978) is the last year the walk rate is just bonkers (over 5). It trends down after that (some spikes though). It never goes below 3 a game though (mostly between 3.5 and 4.5).

Ryan's total # of career pitches must be insane

Randy Johnson just got better and better controlling the strike zone:

1988-92: 5.7 BB/9 (range: 2.4-7.9)
1993-98: 3.3 (2.7-3.8)
1999-03: 2.5 (2.1-2.8)
2004-09: 2.1 (1.6-2.9)

His K/9 never dropped below 10.0 from '91-02, peaking in Arizona.

Johnson was definitely amazing. Way better pitcher than Ryan even was.

randy would've had ten consecutive 300k seasons without the strike and injuries.

and w/ryan, his three best WHIP seasons came during his first three seasons in texas (his age 42-44 seasons!)

i mean really if he'd learned to pitch earlier in his career he could have been one of the top five pitchers ever.

and you go "Wow," and then you find out that that's pretty much true of every team

the worst case of this was a few years ago when some HOF voter said he was considering not voting for mariano rivera because he had a really bad ERA in games that he lost. he didn't have any other reasons, he clearly just saw the stat in a tweet or something and didn't look into it. and then constructed an entire narrative that mo was a phony because his ERA was bad in games where he gave up runs.

(Haven't read the article as I don't have a subscription) I would have thought Pos would rank Reuschel higher, I always thought he had a very decent case for the HOF. I'm a sucker for longevity cases, but there is a zone in the 60-70 WAR/3000 + IP/ between 3.00 and 3.50 era/fip in which some players are in (Glavine, Bunning, Palmer, Drysdale) and others aren't (Lolich, Koosman, Friend) and it seems only tea leaves are separating them.

reuschel played for some awfully shitty teams, not least the mid-80s pirates, so he didn't get the wins

but also he barely broke 2k K's, only twice approached a cy, gave up more hits than innings pitched

i love him but he's a hall-of-really-good guy

Now that he's into the Top 30, full essays. The Schilling piece is not what I expected:

https://theathletic.com/2250850/2020/12/11/top-mlb-outside-the-hall-of-fame-curt-schilling/

(Probably paywalled--I can put it on a Google Doc later, Joe always said that was okay ocassionally.)

that's well said and is very close to my own change in thinking about the hall. there was another voter last year - pretty sure it was keith law - who wrote a short diatribe expressing his newfound disillusionment with the institution. i think more and more people might start to think this way (though pos obviously isn't writing off the HOF entirely)

for most of my time as a baseball fan i saw the HOF as nothing more than another argument to win. it was a major battleground in the endless stats vs tradition culture war and another opportunity to feel smug. that's what it is for most dingholes on the internet. and when a player like edgar or blyleven finally gets in, it gives us dingholes a big validating endorphin rush. so you keep campaigning for guys on the outside looking in, because the more you care about the more you stand to win when they win.

last year the players that i would've rooted for the hardest on a statistical basis were a bigot (schilling), 2 wife beaters (bonds and andruw), and a statutory rapist (clemens). (and scott rolen, who i don't believe is caught up in any shit.) it's really hard to continue seeing a HOF win as a win for truth and rightness when that's that cast of characters who stand to actually benefit. like pos, i stopped seeing the Hall as an abstract concept and started seeing it the way that i think most of the players themselves see it - a ceremony meant to honor men, an opportunity for honored men to get up on stage and make a speech about their whole lives and their whole selves, not just the numbers on the back of their baseball card. that's what i see now when i think of HOF elections - not a plaque reeling off achievements, but a man walking up to a podium.

the kicker for me was actually harold baines. after he was voted in, everyone basically agreed that he didn't deserve it but people kept talking about the speech - that he was a great, well liked guy who played for a million years, probably had a lot of stories to tell, and he deserves to get up there and command our attention for x minutes. i honestly never even watched an entire ceremony, i never cared about them. people would say so and so gave a great speech, and i'd think "i should watch that when i have time" and then i never had the time. my feelings about the HOF were about me, not them.

that's how i see the hall now. regardless of what the hall says about itself, it's really just an opportunity for players to stand up there and build their public profiles, add value to their autographs, elevate their eventual biographies a little more into hagiographies. i don't want that to happen for any of these assholes. so i just don't see the value in it anymore.

I want to add that the hockey and basketball hall of fame have women enshrined and I think it’s time for the BBWA writer to take a proper stand on this.

X -- I really like your post, even though I'm not where you are in my own thinking. Which, at this point, is more muddled than ever. I want Schilling in, remain indifferent to Bonds and Clemens, and balk at the idea of Baines (and Vizquel, and other good guys)--is there any consistency there? In my mind there is, but I don't know anymore. I want Dick Allen in; he was considered a bad guy for most of his career, now he's a good guy. I'm fine with Kirby Puckett; good guy (more than just good) when he played, now a villain. I suspect Posnanski's Schilling piece today may be seen as influential down the road. Sean Foreman voted for Tim Hudson, left Schilling off.

tbf i don't think anyone in the world outside of jerry reinsdorf wanted baines in the HOF

Something of an extension to his Schilling post, Joe argues today that both Felipe Alou and Dusty Baker should be in (or, more accurately, that there should be a mechanism in place for the likes of hybrid careers like Felipe Alou's and Dusty Baker's): "Honor great baseball lives." I don't disagree. I used to make more or less the same argument for Leo Durocher, before he was finally inducted in 1994--that he was so integral to so much baseball history, the sum was greater than the parts. (Durocher's managerial career was actually pretty similar to Baker's: good career winning pct., very little to show for it in terms of postseason success.)

Pete Rose, #9 on Posnanski's Outsiders list. I figured out a way to quickly compile the whole list--I'll do that later today.

ooh that wld be great, thanks

100. Juan Alberto González Vázquez
99. Fredric Michael (Fred) Lynn
98. Rocco Domenico (Rocky) Colavito
97. Albert Jojuan Belle
96. Samuel James (Jimmy) Tilden Sheckard
95. Quincy Thomas Trouppe
94. Fernando Valenzuela Anguamea
93. Darrell Wayne Evans
92. Steven Patrick (Steve) Garvey
91. David Gene (Dave) Parker
90. Frank Oliver Howard
89. Albert (Al) Oliver
88. Willie Larry Randolph
87. William Lance Berkman
86. Paul Aloysius Hines
85. Ronald Ames Guidry
84. Walter Anton (Wally) Berger
83. Dwight Eugene (Doc) Gooden
82. Elston Gene Howard
81. Orel Leonard Hershiser IV
80. William Nuschler (Will) Clark Jr.
79. Urbain Jacques (Urban Shocker) Shockcor
78. Jorge Rafael Posada Villeta
77. Louis Rogers (Pete) Browning
76. Bobby Lee Bonds
75. Timothy Adam (Tim) Hudson
74. Francis Joseph (Lefty) O’Doul
73. James Sherman (Jim or Jimmy) Wynn
72. John Garrett Olerud
71. David Gus (Buddy) Bell
70. Howard Ellsworth (Smoky Joe) Wood

T-69. Omar Enrique Vizquel González
David Ismael (Dave) Concepción Benitez
Dagoberto (Bert, Campy) Campaneris Blanco
Mark Henry Belanger

“I basically think all four players have roughly an equal Hall of Fame case to me. If I had to rank them in the order I’d vote them in, I suppose I’d go like this:

1. Bert Campaneris
2. Omar Vizquel
3. Dave Concepción
4. Mark Belanger

But honestly, as players, I’d vote them all in or none of them.”

68. Torii Kedar Hunter
67. Dan Raymond Quisenberry
66. Richard Benjamin (Dick) Lundy
65. Charles Ernest (King Kong) Keller
64. Andrew Eugene (Andy) Pettitte
63. Mark Alan Buehrle
62. John Wesley (Jack) Glasscock
61. Roger Eugene Maris

T-60. Vernon Decatur (Vern) Stephens
Anthony Nomar Garciaparra

59. Walter Williams (Billy) Pierce
58. Stanley Camfield (Stan) Hack
57. Grant U. (Home Run) Johnson
56. Wesley Cheek (Wes) Ferrell
55. Salvatore Leonard (Sal) Bando
54. Maurice Morning (Maury) Wills
53. Donald Arthur (Don) Mattingly
52. William Henry (Willie) Davis
51. Rickey Eugene (Rick) Reuschel
50. William Frederick (Bill) Dahlen
49. William Ashley (Bill) Freehan
48. Bernabé (Bernie) Williams Figueroa Jr.
47. Sherwood Robert (Sherry) Magee
46. James Lee (Jim) Kaat
45. John Christopher Beckwith
44. Vada Edward Pinson
43. Thurman Lee Munson
42. Theodore Roosevelt (Double Duty) Radcliffe
41. Bob Kelly (Bobby) Abreu
40. Thomas Edward (Tommy) John
39. Jeffrey Franklin Kent
38. Alejandro Oms
37. Kenton Lloyd (Ken) Boyer
36. David Andrew (Dave) Stieb
35. Pedro (Tony) Oliva López Hernándes
34. James Kevin Brown
33. Graig Nettles
32. Rafael Palmeiro Corrales
31. Bret William Saberhagen
30. Curt Schilling
29. Reggie Smith
28. Doc Adams
27. Johan Santana
26. David Cone

T-25. Felipe Alou
Dusty Baker

T-24. Sammy Sosa
Gary Sheffield

23. Fred McGriff
22. Keith Hernandez
21. John Donaldson
20. Manny Ramirez
19. Todd Helton
18. Bobby Grich

T-17. Luis Tiant
Billy Wagner

16. Kenny Lofton

T-15. Andruw Jones
Jim Edmonds

14. Mark McGwire
13. Gil Hodges
12. Shoeless Joe Jackson
11. Dale Murphy
10. Dwight Evans
9. Pete Rose

Cutting, pasting, cutting--not that onerous. So really there’s going to be 110-120 players by the time he finishes. (He should have had Rose and Shoeless Joe as a tie.) He stopped with the full names inside of #30--I really liked those. I'll update as he counts down.

terrific, thanks p!

79. Urbain Jacques (Urban Shocker) Shockcor
62. John Wesley (Jack) Glasscock

normal baseball names, nothing to see here

Shockcor was a shocker--never knew that.

Schilling was on his Top 100 list, so he does allow overlap...with that in mind, I'm trying to guess the remaining eight.

Bonds and Clemens. (But not A-Rod--when he began, he put him in a separate list of best 10 players not yet eligible.) Probably a tie at #1.

Lou Whitaker, Scott Rolen, Buck O'Neill...and then I get stuck.

8. Curt Flood

Of course--when I was trying to guess yesterday, I was scanning WAR charts on Baseball Reference, down to about 60 career WAR. I added O'Neil because Posnanski was his friend and has written numerous columns on him. Now that Joe has clearly factored character-counts into his advocacy, Flood is an obvious choice. (Posnanski sits about halfway on that question, I'd say--he's still going to have Bonds and Clemens on his list. He's an inch to the right of wherever Schilling exists on that spectrum.)

I sent this a Hey Bill" into James last summer:

This years Veteran's Committee ("The Golden Era"--ugh) covers Curt Flood's window, 1950-1969. I think Flood should be in the HOF already, but voting him in this year, would, I feel, make a strong statement about the moment we're in. Not sure if you agree--you may not--but if you do, the problem then becomes how do you categorize him? He was a good player who falls short based on his on-field career, with the mitigating circumstance that his career was cut short because of the very thing you'd be inducting him for. But can you call him a builder? That seems weird.

Answered: 8/29/2020
Player and pioneer.

So he didn't say whether or not he agrees that Flood should be inducted.

(I said on some thread the other day that all my posts strategically leave out one word. Except when I strategically add one--get rid of that "this.")

i have been working on leaving out one additional word per post, every year that i'm on ilx. by the end, my posts will just be one or two words, tops, and probably just conjunctions by that point

So he didn't say whether or not he agrees that Flood should be inducted.

didn't say so explicitly, but any true "pioneer" of the game (like Flood) is HOF-worthy, imo.

I'm a month late with this, but a category for "hybrid" HOF careers is sorely needed.

7. Dick Allen

I must have assumed he'd already been listed.

That leaves Bonds, Clemens, O'Neil, and Whitaker for sure, I think; Rolen probably (doesn't make sense to me that he'd be this high, but it makes even less sense that he wouldn't be in the Top 100); plus one more.

O’Neill I wasn’t expecting.

Paul O'Neill at #3 will not make me happy.

(If you go back a few posts, I misspelled his name too!)

I don’t see it at all. He’s nowhere near those other guys.

Buck O'Neil in; Paul O'Neill, no.

(Unless you mean Buck O'Neil shouldn't go in as a player. I don't know enough about his playing career, but I'm basing that on this move in the direction of character, combined with Posnanski's friendship with him.)

6. Lou Whitaker

5. Scott Rolen

4. Roger Clemens

I bet he puts Buck O'Neil at #1 and not Bonds. Still not sure who the third will be.

3. Barry Bonds

I started skimming the Bonds comments, and the thing I've been puzzling over was made clear: Minnie Miñoso will be #2.

2. Buck O'Neil

Minoso at #1? I'm surprised. Posnanski is also obsessed with Duane Kuiper, maybe it'll be him.

1. Du...Minnie Minoso

Also, there’s this: A SABR researcher named Scott Simkus added things up, and he found that when you add together Miñoso’s Major League hits, minor league hits, Cuban League hits, Mexican League hits and Negro Leagues hits, you come the staggering number of 4,073, seventh all-time. Here’s that list of players with more than 4,000 total professional hits:

1. Pete Rose, 4,769
2. Ty Cobb, 4,379
3. Ichiro Suzuki, 4,367
4. Henry Aaron, 4,245
5. Jigger Statz, 4,093
6. Julio Franco, 4,074
7. Minnie Miñoso, 4,073
8. Derek Jeter, 4,059
9. Stan Musial, 4,023

The fifth most hits ever is by a guy named Statz.

i will admit to being ignorant of all things Buck O'Neil. what's the case for him?

former NL player of middling quality but P much invented the NL HOF in Kansas City, was an advocate on behalf of all the NL greats and forgotten greats, beloved Baseball spirit, first black coach in MLB for CHI C

should be in as a builder at the very least

like, if Yawkey is in the HOF buck o'neil should be above him for so many reasons

a guy named Statz

5-foot-7, 150-pound pacific coast league legend

I think a lot of people got to know Buck O'Neil through the Ken Burns film; he's in it a lot, and he's great.

I looked up Statz this morning--four consecutive years of 240+ hits in L.A. of the PCL.

it's amazing how many games the PCL scheduled in those days -- statz played 199 games in 1926!

guess you can do that when the games don't take three hours

I think a lot of people got to know Buck O'Neil through the Ken Burns film; he's in it a lot, and he's great.

― clemenza, Tuesday, January 26, 2021 11:21 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

He's great in Jazz too, especially if you are familiar with Baseball. The way he talks about Henry Aaron and similar to the way he talks about Billie Holiday.

Had no idea. I have Jazz and have been meaning to start it for years.

i can't look at buck o'neil without slowing zooming and panning

"We are living in a moment where Chris Sale — one of the most accomplished pitchers of our time — goes 2 2/3 innings, allows five hits and one run, and he’s getting congratulated in the dugout like he just flew the first trans-Atlantic flight."

(I just noticed Karl's post directly above--perfect!)

In the interest of fairness, Posnanski's column is actually in praise of pitchers today, contrasting the lineup Rodriguez faced last night with a Twins lineup Koufax faced in 1965 when he pitched a two-hit WS shutout--substantially more daunting to be a starting pitcher today.

I had no idea his Top 100 book is 880 pages...I think the longest single volume I've ever read was Tom Jones in university (as opposed to, say, Stephen Ambrose's multi-volume Nixon biography). I will get this at some point when it's (much, hopefully) less than the $50 Amazon is charging right now.