Who are Your Top 10 Position Players Ever?

ChiTownPhilly

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Okay- it's coming into focus now. Your list:​
Babe Ruth
Barry Bonds
Willie Mays
Ty Cobb
Rogers Hornsby
Ted Williams
Hank Aaron
Honus Wagner
Tris Speaker
Stan Musial
The career Offensive WAR list:
Babe Ruth
Ty Cobb
Barry Bonds
Willie Mays
Hank Aaron
Ted Williams
Stan Musial
Tris Speaker
Honus Wagner
Rogers Hornsby

Setting aside the clear derivative elements-- I'm glad you weighed in, because now I see that the case for Speaker over Gehrig is a career-value/longevity argument. It's one path of analysis- but if it's used as the only road, then where it leads, I cannot follow. That path pushes Ted Williams out of the Top-5: foolish guy served in the Armed Forces for a couple of stints, rather than the National Pastime.:sarcasm: And bad luck Lou Gehrig was victimized by the disease that's now named for him.
 
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Double A RON

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Dec 27, 2019
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Just doing a list with non-pitchers.....................

Ruth
Cobb
Bonds
Mays
Williams
Gehrig
Aaron
Musial
Hornsby
Wagner

HM: Good chance Trout is here someday. Guys like A-Rod and Pujols come to mind as well, and while I like Mantle from a peak point, he was done by the time he was 33 and that hurts him on this list. Dimaggio would be a top 20 guy in my opinion, not top 10.

Pitchers:
Walter Johnson
Clemens
Grove
Maddux
Koufax (just incredible peak, hard to ignore)
Randy Johnson
Matthewson (why does everyone forget about him?)
Carlton
Seaver
Pedro

You could put a guy like Walter Johnson on an overall top 10 list for players and he doesn't stand out negatively. Maybe Clemens too.

By the way, to the people saying there are too many players who weren't born in the last century, the truth is if there is a sport out of the major 4 in North America that has stayed pretty much the same in the last 100 years it is baseball. I don't doubt Ty Cobb wins batting titles in 2020 today as well.
No love for Nolan Ryan?
 

ChiTownPhilly

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You were wrong about me using WAR to make my list, but upon further research and reflection Gehrig is better. He's taking Speaker's place. Speaker is no slouch though. He's the all time leader with 792 doubles and his OPS+ is only 2 points lower than Musial's as you can see there >
.345.428.500.928157
[TFOOT] [/TFOOT]
That's the nice thing about talking this out. Discussion refines our perspectives. Hey, sometimes even a dialog with ourselves helps- as it did with me when I contemplated the place of Josh Gibson on my personal tableau.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be pointed out, for honesty's sake, that this thread began as "top 10 hitters and pitchers ever," briefly morphed to "top 10 position players and pitchers ever," but now has returned to "top 10 players or top 10 hitters/top 10 pitchers." On reflection, we should keep in mind that the position-player lists heretofore presented were constructed from the perspective of hitting, only. If we bring fielding into the equation, the ground shifts a little bit, no?

What would change on our lists if we shifted from hitting to all-around-play? Well, Honus Wagner would get an obvious bump, since he's a big defensive asset. Hank Aaron gets back in-the-mix in a comparison with Musial. It's not like Musial was a bad fielder-- it's just that Aaron was known for being quite a good one. Ted Williams would suffer somewhat, as he was an infamously indifferent fielder.

The player most harmed by fielding consideration- by far- is Rogers Hornsby. Hornsby completely loses his case for top-10 consideration once fielding is taken into account. His fielding cost far more runs than Ted Williams' fielding. As a Second Baseman, he was Jake Wood-grade bad as a defensive middle-infielder.
 
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Big Phil

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No love for Nolan Ryan?

Tough list to crack, I think. I love him, but even his Cy Young voting record isn't quite up to par with what you might expect. Baseball has been played for a long time and there are many who fit the bill of top 10 guys. I just don't see him there.
 
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ChiTownPhilly

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No love for Nolan Ryan?
Tough list to crack, I think. I love him, but even his Cy Young voting record isn't quite up to par with what you might expect. Baseball has been played for a long time and there are many who fit the bill of top 10 guys. I just don't see him there.
Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Greg Maddux, Sandy Koufax and Bob Feller were all agonizing late-cuts from my list of top-10 pitchers- and I wouldn't strenuously quibble with any of them on a top-10 list (so long as my five non-negotiables are there[!]) That said, those five have better credentials for inclusion than Nolan Ryan-- who would struggle to make a 20-deep list.

Still in all, Nolan Ryan is far from the silliest name to be mentioned amongst the pitchers cited here.
 

Big Phil

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Nov 2, 2003
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Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Greg Maddux, Sandy Koufax and Bob Feller were all agonizing late-cuts from my list of top-10 pitchers- and I wouldn't strenuously quibble with any of them on a top-10 list (so long as my five non-negotiables are there[!]) That said, those five have better credentials for inclusion than Nolan Ryan-- who would struggle to make a 20-deep list.

Still in all, Nolan Ryan is far from the silliest name to be mentioned amongst the pitchers cited here.

Even Christy Mathewson comes to mind. Often forgotten over time. Well, not forgotten, but let's face it we all think of Walter Johnson from that time frame first. But Mathewson died young, in his 40s, so he can get overlooked. Was the first guy who brought attention to the Black Sox scandal in 1919 I believe when he was watching the World Series games and thought something was amiss.

Koufax, is a guy who had that 5-6 year span that was better than anyone, and has the aura behind it, but dang it, he was done by 31 years old and yet won 27 games that year along with the Cy Young. His only crime is he doesn't quite have the longevity. But I don't know if any pitcher was better on a per game basis.
 

Voight

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Feb 8, 2012
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The OP position players are unchanged. I only had 6 SPs in the OP, but I have 12 now.

Regular season in no order:


Clayton Kershaw
Pedro Martinez
Lefty Grove
Walter Johnson
Ed Walsh
Smoky Joe Wood
Roger Clemens
Chris Sale
Kid Nichols
Tie: Mordecai Brown/Cy Young/Christy Mathewson

Chris Sale........ ?

:huh: :eyeroll:

wtf mate
 
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Maestro84

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Considering baseball has such a long and rich history dating back to the 1870s (?), so it's pretty much impossible to make a list of all players across 140 ish years. To make things easier, I'll just list the best players in my lifetime (1987-present).

Hitters/Position Players:
- Barry Bonds (steroids or no steroids, he was a once in a lifetime player)
- Mike Trout (best player in the league rn by a landslide)
- Albert Pujols (best player in the 2000s)
- Ken Griffey Jr. (my fav player growing up and one of the best in the 90s)
- Alex Rodriguez (one of my least fav players growing up but I can't lie, this dude was a monster)
- Miguel Cabrera (mastered the hybrid of hitting for power and contact)
- Ichiro (one of the best pure hitters out there)
- Tony Gwynn (ditto Ichiro)
- Frank Thomas (incredibly high peak, probably the third best player in the 90s behind Bonds and the Kid)

HM: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa for saving baseball in the late 90s

Pitchers:
- Randy Johnson (once in a lifetime pitcher)
- Roger Clemens (same as what I said about Bonds above)
- Pedro Martinez (disliked him strongly as a young Jays fan but Pedro was as dominant as it gets)
- Greg Maddux (prob the best pitcher of the 90s, another once in a lifetime talent)
- Clayton Kershaw (put up video game numbers but man he's gotta do better in the playoffs)
- Roy Halladay (one of my fav pitchers growing up, was the model of consistency for over a decade. RIP Doc)
- Justin Verlander (Mr. Kate Upton has been a dominant pitcher for over a decade now; he was honestly robbed of 2 more Cy Young awards in both 2012 and 2016)
- Max Scherzer (bit a late bloomer but he's been one of the best in the league for years now)
- Johan Santana (such a shame injuries ruined his career the way it did; was arguably the best pitcher in the world in his prime)
- MadBum (postseason god)

HM: Curt Schilling for being MadBum before MadBum, Mariano Rivera for being the GOAT closer, and Jacob DeGrom seems to be in the making to becoming a legend in the future
 
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ChiTownPhilly

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Still in all, Nolan Ryan is far from the silliest name to be mentioned amongst the pitchers cited here.
Chris Sale........ ?
:huh: :eyeroll:
wtf mate
Yeah, for instance...
... Christy Mathewson comes to mind. Often forgotten over time. Well, not forgotten, but let's face it we all think of Walter Johnson from that time frame first. But Mathewson died young, in his 40s, so he can get overlooked.
I have Christy Mathewson on my list, in the "negotiable" portion, at position #7. It's not difficult to construct a statistical case for Tom Seaver over Mathewson- hence 'negotiable.'

Grover Cleveland Alexander, though- HE's the forgotten man. Very, very tough to read the numbers and find a case for Mathewson being on a different/higher tier than Alexander. If anything, a strong presentation may be made that it's actually the other way 'round. Even though Alexander started in the Bigs later than Mathewson [Mathewson was a full-timer by age 20; Pete began at age 24], Alexander pips Mathewson on career-value [116 WAR vs. 106- 477 Career Win Shares vs. 426]. He pips him on Prime [180 Win Shares in Best 5 Seasons vs. 161] and also on Peak [44, 43, 40 Win Shares vs. 39, 39, 37]. (For the record, seasonal WAR figures run quite parallel to the Win Share stats here.)

Basically, the only way you can place Mathewson on a higher plane than Alexander is if you give strong weight to outside-the-lines factors. I'm not saying that those factors don't have a place in our assessment. In fact, they're part of why Mathewson's on my list.

Still, to have Mathewson on a top-10 list and have Alexander off of it- and behind the likes of Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, and Miner Brown... well, I guess you could get there if you're a fan of the old Temperance League, I suppose.
 

Cas

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A couple years ago, I began a project to try and create a statistical-based ranking of Hall of Fame worthy or notable players, and I just kept expanding it to include more and more players. I'm up to around 50 players from every position and more than 100 pitchers.

My top ten list, when separated into position players and pitchers, would look something like this:

Babe Ruth
Barry Bonds
Willie Mays
Ted Williams
Ty Cobb
Rogers Hornsby
Honus Wagner
Josh Gibson
Lou Gehrig
Stan Musial

The next ten would include Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Collins, Nap Lajoie, Joe Morgan, Mike Schmidt, Alex Rodriguez, Rickey Henderson, Mickey Mantle, Tris Speaker, and Hank Aaron. There is not a huge gap between any of these players and the lower half of the players listed above and depending on further refinements I could see any of these players move up (along with players from the next tier like Bench, Pujols, Charleston, Ripken, Mathews, Ott, Frank Robinson, Pop Lloyd, Yastrzemski, DiMaggio, Trout, Clemente, Boggs, and a few others).

Walter Johnson
Roger Clemens
Cy Young
Pete Alexander
Greg Maddux
Randy Johnson
Greg Maddux
Randy Johnson
Lefty Grove
Tom Seaver
Pedro Martinez
Satchel Paige

The next ten would be Christy Mathewson, Kid Nichols, Smokey Joe Williams, Bob Gibson, Bob Feller, Bullet Joe Rogan, Steve Carlton, John Clarkson, Warren Spahn, and Robin Roberts. The gap between Paige and Gibson is about as large as the gap between Gibson and Feller.

Pitcher ratings include hitting and baserunning (this provides significant boosts for Walter Johnson, Mathewson, Spahn, Gibson, Carlton, Rogan, and Williams - it also provides significant boosts for a number of pitchers who wouldn't make the top 20). Pitcher ratings are also normalized to try and account for changing usage patterns for starting pitchers.

Neither of these lists includes credit for postseason performance (I don't know how to weight it yet). It does provide credit for military service and shortened seasons (including an adjustment for the 154-game season or other shorter regular seasons). I do demerit for weakened leagues (the American Association, Union Association, Federal League, and the 1943-1945 AL and NL). Some players receive minor league credit (where they were major league quality players, in my estimation, but were prevented from playing major league baseball because of factors outside their control - the best example is Lefty Grove, trapped in Baltimore because Baltimore's owner refused to sell the rights to his contract after having sold Babe Ruth to the Red Sox the decade before). I do not award injury credit and I do not timeline. I will eventually award 2020 credit for similar reasons (Mike Trout is a great baseball player right now, he's just prevented from playing baseball due to circumstances totally beyond his control).

All ratings are based on Baseball Reference WAR, except for players who were prevented from playing because of segregation (for whom I use the major league equivalency translations performed by the pair at the Hall of Miller and Eric, whose translations heavily punish strong peaks but which are the best available statistical tools).

These are, of course, statistical rankings and baseball statistics, while generally very accurate and generally capturing the run value of events on the field very well, still have a fair amount of room for discussion and debate, especially over the distribution of credit among pitchers and fielders, the value of catchers at calling games, and so on, and rankings based on statistics come with philosophical and methodological choices that may or may not be universally agreed-upon (for example, my decision to normalize players to a 162-game season or to award credit for seasons spend in uniform, as well as my choice to place a player at a single position but evaluate all of their career value, no matter where it was gained - Ruth's pitching or putting Stan Musial and Pete Rose on the left fielders list, for instance).
 

ryan callahan

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Including any player before 1970 is a joke. The number of youth baseball players has ballooned and there is much more competition these days than there was before. Any sports in it's infancy is bound to have ridiculous numbers (i.e hockey, baseball, etc.) because some guys figured out some loopholes and some others straight up didn't care. lmao at people thinking anyone that isn't Bonds isn't top 15 after 1960. Trout would hit ,600/,800/1.200 minimum against the garbage Ruth and old timers had to face.
 

Perennial

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I'll list my top fifteen 1987-present in no order and bold the ones you don't have.

Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
A-Rod
Greg Maddux
Randy Johnson
Albert Pujols
Adrian Beltre
Chipper Jones

Pedro Martinez
Ken Griffey Jr.
Mike Mussina
Tom Glavine
Jeff Bagwell

Curt Schilling
Mariano

My top ten players who debuted after 1945 in no order:

Barry Bonds
Willie Mays
Roger Clemens
Hank Aaron
A-Rod
Rickey Henderson
Mickey Mantle
Tom Seaver
Frank Robinson
Mike Schmidt

There's a guy playing in Anaheim you might want to check out...
 

Cas

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Including any player before 1970 is a joke. The number of youth baseball players has ballooned and there is much more competition these days than there was before. Any sports in it's infancy is bound to have ridiculous numbers (i.e hockey, baseball, etc.) because some guys figured out some loopholes and some others straight up didn't care. lmao at people thinking anyone that isn't Bonds isn't top 15 after 1960. Trout would hit ,600/,800/1.200 minimum against the garbage Ruth and old timers had to face.

I fundamentally disagree with this approach, because it focuses entirely on environmental factors (humans have not changed in the last 150 years except insofar as their environment has changed them) and because it produces an incredibly boring conversation. Any argument that essentially results in the conclusion that Tim Tebow is a better baseball player than Babe Ruth (which is probably true if you abduct Babe Ruth in 1919 and force him to play in 2019 the next day, but which is emphatically false if you take Babe Ruth and give him the same advantages any athlete has had growing up in the last thirty years) is just pointless.

If the answer to the question "who are the 100 greatest baseball players of all time" includes players like Kirby Puckett or Frank Viola, and not Babe Ruth or Walter Johnson, you're answering the question in the wrong way and against the spirit of the question.
 
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