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.

(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.

Finally started in on the book; waited all year hoping for a price drop, never happened. (The paperback's slated for early next year.)

Not sharable, but an excerpt about last night's game (which I had to miss):

And that’s true, as far as it goes, but what they don’t acknowledge is that it isn’t a fair fight. If you have two great boxers in the ring, say Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, you get the Thrilla in Manilla. But what if in the third round, a manager comes in, takes the gloves from Joe Frazier, and hands them to George Foreman. And in the fourth, the manager calls for Joe Louis. And in the seventh, he calls for Rocky Marciano. And in the eighth, he calls for Mike Tyson, who gets in some trouble, so the manager stops the fight in the middle of the round and immediately brings in Evander Holyfield.

I mean, what chance does even Muhammad Ali have in a scenario like that?

...

I worry that sometimes these sorts of essays come across as me screaming at clouds and wishing to turn back the clock...but that’s not how I mean them. I’m thoroughly aware that you CANNOT turn back the clock. And I love baseball as much today as I ever have.

No, I write them more to point out what’s happening in the game because it can be super easy to miss. There are no announcements.

Did that guy know that baseball and boxing are quite different sports cos I’m worried he doesn’t.

He probably doesn't know that, no.

Sorry for the sarcasm...mounting frustration.

what on earth is he talking about there?

He's talking about how overmatched hitters are today in the middle-late innings, and making a fanciful analogy to boxing to get the point across. I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be taken literally--Posnanski's a great writer before he's anything else, I'd say. And he's observing, not complaining--I made sure to include those last two paragraphs, which appear later in the article, to head off any carping about him clinging to a game that doesn't exist anymore.

("There are no announcements": it helps to read the whole thing, obviously. It begins by contrasting football, where--according to Posnanski; I don't watch football, so I don't know--the league is very aware of what fans want, and tinker with the game to please fans, as opposed to baseball, where things just happen before fans are even aware that it's happening.)

i mean, watching the blue jays, "overmatched" isn't the word i would use for it.
does give off the impression he feels like something is concerningly wrong here tho

I'll quote the end, which reads like John Lennon's "Nobody Told Me":

No, I write them more to point out what’s happening in the game because it can be super easy to miss. There are no announcements.

Nobody told us, “From here on in, starters will pretty much never go seven innings in the World Series.”

Nobody told us, “From here on in, you will see 16 or 17 strikeouts per game rather than the 10 or 11 or 12 that you might have grown used to.”

Nobody told us, “From here on in, teams will carry 13 or 14 or 18 or 200 pitchers, and just about all of them will be unhittable in small bursts.”

No, this stuff just happened gradually and without a vote. The great pitchers of the past — the Mathewsons and Fellers and Gibsons and Koufaxes and Carltons and Fords of history — would probably not think all that much of Framber’s 6 1/3-inning, 4-hit, 3-walk, one-run start in a crucial World Series game.

But these days, that’s about the best a pitcher can do.

I guess that either resonates with you or it doesn't.

(I do think it's a mistake for him to assume that the way things are right now is the way things will be 10 or 15 years from now. Things always change--we could have an even more extreme version of today, or that trend could gradually reverse course. I doubt we'll be at the same place.)

That ignores when managers bring in washed-up Buster Douglas (aka Craig Kimbrel, or postseason Aroldis)

Finished The Baseball 100 today. Might be the longest book I've ever read, not sure. Proust awaits.

I wouldn't say it's replaced Ball Four or The Historical Abstract (or maybe James's HOF book) at the top of my list, it's pretty great. Enough so that I think someone who doesn't know baseball that well could get a lot out of the stories and out of the writing.

I've got a friend who's always telling me he loves the aesthetics of baseball--Clemente's his favourite player, and he collects stuff from the '50s and '60s, from when he was a kid--and that he has no interest in stats. I argue that that's a false distinction: there is an aesthetic beauty to, say, looking at the first 10 years of Frank Thomas or Albert Pujols' career boxes, something I've gravitated to since I bought my first MacMillan Encyclopedia in the mid-'70s. (I like great catches and long home runs, too.) And that's what Posnanski does exceptionally well: balances the stories and the stats. You can tell he's fascinated by metronomic consistency too. Only occasionally do I think he overdoes the aesthetics (e.g., the beginning of the Mays entry--#1, so cut him some slack), which leads to the kind of Natural/Field of Dreams sentimentality I'm not big on.

He doesn't cut slack for any of the villains in the book--Rose, Schilling, Cobb, Speaker, PED guys--and they are in there. He's not an apologist, and sometimes he goes after their apologists. But, as I posted on the Jerry Lee Lewis thread, he tries to present the whole person; as he quotes Buck O'Neil (which he does often in the book), "People ain't one thing."

at the top of my list, but it's pretty great.

I got an e-mail this morning saying I can give three free subscriptions to JoeBlogs away...I've got two friends I want to give two of them to; if you want the other, send me board e-mail with your regular e-mail address.

frogsb was quick on the draw.

hell yeah

One month only, frogbs, but still free.

Another three gift subscriptions to give away. They're only for a month, but you could get a lot read in that time (plus he's doing HOF columns right now). Let me know if you want one.