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 actually thought Pedro might sneak into the Top 25, being on the short list of pitchers where there's a reasonable argument he was the most dominant peak-value pitcher ever (let's say three or four best seasons). Who else...Grove, Clemens, both Johnsons*, a few others. (I'll add Koufax, too, though his mystique has taken a hit because of park-era adjustments.)

*not Josh--saw enough of that guy

Digging way back but Christy Matthewson ?

Yes.

There are a bunch of ways you could arrive at such a list. I picked an easy one I could check really fast: four best seasons, all of them 8.0+ WAR, all of them post-1900.

1. Walter Johnson – 51.2
2. Grover Alexander – 42.9
3. Cy Young – 41.7
4. Roger Clemens – 40.8
5. Lefty Grove – 40.3
6. Christy Mathewson – 39.3
7. Randy Johnson – 38.7
8. Pedro Martinez – 38.4
9. Rube Waddell – 38.2
10. Bob Feller – 37.2
11. Robin Roberts – 35.1

Koufax, Maddux, and Gibson just missed, with a fourth season between 7.0-8.0. (Same for Halladay, although he never reached 9.0 in any one season.) Depending upon how many seasons you set the bar at, and what WAR figure you use--three of 10+, five of 7+--you get a different list.

Johnson #1 is way ahead. Truthfully, I'm a little skeptical of all pitching stats pre-Ruth. I know all adjustments are made, but once you eliminate the home run, it's a very different game. And, I have to believe, an easier one for pitchers.

Another point in W. Johnson's favor: although he had lots of 10+ seasons scattered throughout his career, his four best were consecutive (1912-1915).

You can sponsor Walter Johnson's Baseball Reference page for $165. Max Scherzer's will set you back $265, A.J. Burnett's $385. Please tell me at least one of those is a typo.

lol

Love Pedro. Ranking seems about right because while esp. those two years (99-00) are off the chart amazing once you go to 5-7-10 year peaks he has a lot of contemporary company and all of those dudes (he's still slightly ahead of Maddux at 7 year, but he falls behind Johnson and Clemens at 4) were better and for longer.

Yeah, the more you stretch out the concept of peak--or the more heavily you weight career--the more Pedro starts to edge downwards.

Any thoughts on how much you trust the statistical dominance of Johnson/Mathewson/Alexander? Johnson's in his mid-30s when Ruth starts to hit home runs, and while he's still very, very good, he's not dominant anymore. I don't know how much of that is attibutable to age, and how much to a changing, less pitcher-friendly game.

Just to clarify, it's more like early-mid 30s, and it's not a 10 or 20% decline, it's 50-60%.

i think it's really foolish to compare players across eras, period, but especially so pre-ruth. it was just a completely different game then. you can say walter johnson was the best pitcher of his era, but there's just no way to realistically compare him to seaver or clemens or other dominant pitchers

That's my thinking exactly. People always put the 19th century to one side, but they're still more or less playing a 19th century game until Ruth comes along. Clearly Johnson and Mathewson and Young and Alexander were great pitchers; I just have doubts about whether they were as great as their 12/13/14 WARs would have it.

I think WAR is still somewhat useful for comparing pitchers of the pre-Ruth era to each other, just not to players from the modern era. Basic counting and results-based stats show a pitcher like Mathewson to be dominant, contemporaneous accounts describing him say the same, and his WAR also points to the same thing. But comparing him to Pedro Martinez is just pointless

No argument with the idea of comparing them to each other--pretty clearly Johnson was the greatest pitcher of his era.

"Any thoughts on how much you trust the statistical dominance of Johnson/Mathewson/Alexander? Johnson's in his mid-30s when Ruth starts to hit home runs, and while he's still very, very good, he's not dominant anymore. I don't know how much of that is attibutable to age, and how much to a changing, less pitcher-friendly game."

This has been answered, but yeah I trust it against the era. Do I trust it enough to say that those guys were better pitchers than Clemens/Johnson/Maddux/Martinez? Definitely not. I think there is a good chance those four guys (plus Seaver and maybe Carlton at his best) are the best pitchers to have ever pitched by any objective measure.

Really liked this, and yes, I think it definitely matters, or at the very least matters how you handle it:

http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/knowing-arky/#more-2001

I've devoted a good portion of the last 35-40 years to music, films, and baseball. I have lots of gaps in what I know. When one of them comes up, I say so--I wouldn't try to deflect attention away from the gap with derision.

He's really obsessed with a Few Good Men.

And tennis, and soccer, and lots else besides the Top 100 Players in Baseball. He writes well about anything, but I kind of hope his comments continue to dwindle whenever he writes about other things, at least until he finishes that other thing he started. Coming up on one month since he posted #41.

The Top 100 won't be resuming anytime soon--but will, it seems, be completed at some point.

http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/a-joeblogs-update/

In emulation of James's "Hey Bill," the launch of "Yo Joe!":

http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/yo-joe/#more-2313

those are thouroughly entertaining, I hope he keeps doing them

If nothing else, he's at least writing about baseball. He writes very well about tennis--well enough that a barely-casual fan like me will read some of his posts--but I still want him to focus on baseball.

More interesting to me than Bruce's WAR is who would represent replacement level rock and roll. I'm going with Hootie and the Blowfish or Huey Lewis for now, but would love to hear opinions.

Leaving aside my indifference to Springsteen himself, those are actually pretty good choices. There were a whole bunch of mid-'80s roots/heartland/whatever bands that might work. The Replacements do not work; they were well above replacement level.

no way huey is replacement level

I don't see how anything that sold as well as Hootie can be replacement level. Hootie were the ultimate rock and roll compilers, they're more like the Harold Baines of 90's rock. Replacement level would be closer to Cake or Smashmouth -- bands that had multiple platinum albums and minor radio hits even though everybody knew they sucked.

Cake did and does not suck.
you might be onto something with smashmouth tho.

ok but consider someBODY ONCE TOLD ME THE

Replacement level in terms of pop music for me would mean completely generic in terms of the music (I wouldn't bring sales into it). I don't hate Huey or anything, but I don't think I'd be alone in say he practically defines generic. Anyway, once you move over to pop music, you're in the realm of opinion--no objective metrics--and you can argue all day without getting anywhere.

"saying"

I don't hate Huey or anything, but I don't think I'd be alone in say he practically defines generic.

Well, we're going to have to disagree here. Huey look like completely inoffensive and unoriginal bar rock at first glance, like a bunch of nondescript guys who shouldn't have any standout talent, and yet somehow they managed to set themselves apart from all the other aspiring pub bands and overcome a bunch of obvious deficiencies (i.e. they were music video stars in the decade of video megastars even though they looked like your dad's softball buddies). For me they're the prototype of the "scrappy" ballplayer who also happens to be great -- e.g. Dustin Pedroia.

Replacement level scrappy for 80's rock would be more like Ratt or pre-VH Sammy Hagar.

huey's p iconic imo

replacement level should be, technically, a band you can grab at quick notice when a bigger band drops out of a festival

I always plead generational differences when this kind of impasse is reached. (I sense we're about 10-15 years apart.)

(NoTime, I meant--more with zachlyon.)

this is the most embarrassing conversation i've had in weeks

Glad to be of help.

if my hep friends find out i swear

Didn't realize the Top 100 countdown resumed the other day:

http://joeposnanski.com/no-40-eddie-collins/

Posnanski's gone on to a bunch of things at NBC and elsewhere since he put it aside last year. I think there's a lesson somewhere in there about money/status vs. an actual engaged readership. Not that I'm against money or status, I just wonder if he ever gets as much feedback about what he does at NBC as in the Top 100 comments section, where each entry would usually generate 50-100 comments.

Honestly, I didn't think he'd ever return to do the top 40, at least on his site. I figured he was saving 40-1 for his book.

glad the countdown is continuing though!

this is some of my favorite shit, i can't believe it's not a book. what a mad man.

Pretty sure he does plan to publish it all as a book; when he stopped, there was a lot of complaining in the comments about having to pay down the road to read the last 40, but now that no longer applies.

Every single one of these is pure gold:

A quick scan of famous quotes about Gibson:

Dick Allen: “Gibson was so mean, he’d knock you down and then meet you at home plate to see if you wanted to make something of it.”

Don Sutton: “He hated everyone. He even hated Santa Claus.”

Red Schoendienst: “He couldn’t pitch today because they wouldn’t let him. The way he’d throw inside, he’d be kicked out of the game in the first inning.”

Tim McCarver: “I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the plate where I belonged, and that the only thing I knew about pitching was that I couldn’t hit it.”

Dusty Baker: “The only people I ever felt intimidated by in my whole life were Bob Gibson and my Daddy.”

His blog is as erratic is ever these days--NBC links, big gaps between posts--but good piece on the Papelbon trade.

http://joeposnanski.com/the-worst-trade-of-the-season/

Tribute to my favourite baseball stat ever:

http://joeposnanski.com/runs-created-and-mvps/

Good piece; brings together Ken Keltner, Torii Hunter, Lorenzo Cain, the Royals, and the Mets.

http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/world-series-mets-royals-winning-with-depth/

Something Posnanski's been doing this year:

http://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*UERgYBLSiazXk5Iu5f8gfg.png

always thought W/L should just go to the starter regardless of what happens. or just whoever pitched the longest. I support this initiative.

if they really did change the definition, i can imagine some Gossage-like bellowing from retired starters.

(like anyone thinks Don Sutton was a better pitcher than Tom Seaver bcz he has a few more wins)

there'd be a lot of bellowing from current players (and managers and broadcasters and fans) too

after all, that would mean all those times that the starting pitcher was left in for an inning too long just so that they could cross the magical 5-inning line, or pitch long enough so that their team could take the lead, was...completely pointless.

even the thought of it...*shudders*

I just skimmed the post, but it seems like he's reviving this; he's going to start over, and you have to pay this time.

A few readers posted that they'd be happy to do so, but they want to be assured that he'll carry through this time. I wouldn't pay myself. He's a great writer, but he's got so many things on the go, he does disappear for weeks and sometimes months at a time.

He's relaunched this with Zack Greinke. There are two lists now: the Baseball 100 and the Shadow 100, where he'll include Negro League players (I know that sounds awful, not including them in the main list, but he grappled with it and he explains his reasoning very well), personal favourites, and near-misses. At some point, I'm going to pay whatever he's asking for access. I just want to wait until he actually seems committed on following through.

"If you look at (Harold Baines's) Baseball Reference page, you will see that he won two awards in his career: The 1987 and '88 Edgar Martinez Awards as best designated hitter. It’s a strange thing to see, because Edgar Martinez was barely in Major League Baseball yet; he played a total of 27 games those two seasons. Harold Baines winning the Edgar Martinez Award is like Kate Hepburn winning the Meryl Streep award -- it’s time-bending weirdness."

Nice piece today on Elston Howard getting an MVP vote in 1967 while splitting time with the Yankees and the Red Sox (.178/.233/.244, -1.3 WAR). If you know Posnanski, you'll know it wasn't written to ridicule the vote.