Doug’s doing all the heavy lifting around here this spring, and acquitting himself admirably, but I thought I’d lend a hand. I don’t have much of substance to offer, but here’s a frivolity I adapted from my own site.
Who are the greatest active players in Major League Baseball? Are they the guys with the most career WAR? The guys who have never turned in a bad season? The guys who had the highest peaks? I think we’d all agree the answer is a combination of those three things, perhaps weighted toward the former. I developed a simple formula using fangraphs WAR to combine accumulated value, consistency, and peak:
Career WAR/10
plus
Career WAR/150 games played (30 starts for starting pitchers)
plus
Peak WAR season/2
In theory, the “greatness score” generated by this formula includes an accumulated value factor weighted slightly more than anything else (since it represents more than a year’s WAR for anyone who’s played more than 10 seasons), about one season’s WAR (assuming the average player plays 150 games per season) for average value throughout a player’s career, and a half season’s WAR for peak value (narrowly defined). All WAR values are as of the end of the 2014 season.
I’ll leave relief pitcher evaluation to someone else, since I’m not convinced WAR is a strong measure of their greatness, particularly in a single season, when usage may vary tremendously. Starting pitchers who accumulated value as relievers get an extra boost here, since those games aren’t included in the denominator of their “per 30 starts” calc. I don’t think any of the results below are skewed by this, though, as most of the game’s best active starters have been starters their whole careers.
Here are the results, by position:
Greatest Active Catcher
Joe Mauer
[table id=243 /]
If you want an actual active catcher, you can’t go wrong with Posey, who’s likely to pass Mauer by this metric in the next year or two, assuming he stays healthy. Mauer, though, has played catcher in 83% of his career innings fielded, so he belongs here, and I think it’s fair to assume a big-league rookie would be more in awe of Mauer’s greatness than Posey’s.
Greatest Active First Baseman
Albert Pujols
[table id=244 /]
Pujols is second overall in greatness score, so it should come as no surprise that he would top this list, but the margins by which he destroys Cabrera in every category are impressive. We’re watching an all-time great at first base for the Tigers, but peak Pujols was in another league. In fact, Cabrera’s personal-best 7.4-WAR season would rank as the weakest season in Pujols’s seven-year prime (2003-2009).
Ortiz is counted here because I limited the field to players with at least three seasons played and eight career WAR, and no other qualifier has played more than half of his games at designated hitter. As brilliant as Ortiz’s career has been- and his postseason numbers may boost him ahead of Teixeira in perceived greatness- if I’m picking a DH for my all-greatness team, it’s Miguel Cabrera. If we’re looking strictly at first basemen, Adrian Gonzalez would be fifth at 9.97.
Greatest Active Second Baseman
Chase Utley
[table id=245 /]
Utley’s far ahead of the field, but it’s interesting to see how closely the next four guys, who are all between 31 and 33, are bunched. Would you have guessed that Pedroia and Zobrist would both rank ahead of Cano?
Greatest Active Shortstop
Alex Rodriguez
[table id=246 /]
It’s looking more and more certain that Rodriguez will retire with more games played as a shortstop than as a third baseman. At either position, he laps the field, easily the greatest active player by this measure, or simply by accumulated WAR. Like Rodriguez, Hanley Ramirez looks like he’ll be a designated hitter before too long, but he should retire with more games played at short than anywhere else, and he’s likely to assume the top spot on this list upon ARod’s retirement.
This is morbid, but Tulowitzki may finish his career with more than 5 WAR/150 games played (better than Ripken’s 4.6 or Jeter’s 3.9) and fewer than 40 WAR (Jim Fregosi had 44). Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
Greatest Active Third Baseman
Adrian Beltre
[table id=247 /]
My initial analysis had ARod at third, which gave third base four of the top ten greatness scores among all players. We’ve come a long way, from a time when Pie Traynor was considered by some to be the greatest third baseman ever to an era when Schmidt, Brett, and Boggs can give way to Chipper, Rolen, and Beltre, who are in turn replaced with Longoria, Donaldson, and Machado.
Greatest Active Outfield
Mike Trout
Carlos Beltran
Andrew McCutchen
[table id=248 /]
That’s right- the greatest active outfielder, by this measure, was two years old when the greatest active player made his MLB debut in July of 1994. In three (almost) full seasons, Trout accumulated enough career value (29.4 WAR) to place him tenth among outfielders, .2 wins behind 13-year veteran Coco Crisp for ninth. Not only is his 10.5-WAR season in 2013 the best by any active player, but his 139-game call-up in 2012 is also more valuable than any season recorded by any active player. Among actives with at least 8 career WAR, Trout’s 8.95 WAR per 150 games played is 37% more than Rodriguez’s second-place figure and 53% better than any other outfielder’s count. If it feels like Trout hasn’t been around long-enough to hold the title, consider this: if Trout regresses to a league-average level (2 WAR in 150 games) for the next three seasons, at 26, he’ll still have been worth 5.93 WAR per 150, more than any other active outfielder.
McCutchen’s presence ahead of Ichiro and Holliday may speak to my overweighting of per-150 and peak values, but he’s been remarkably good in his relatively young career and is likely to overtake Beltran for second by this measure this year or next.
For the record, Bryce Harper’s 7.50 greatness score ranks 27th among outfielders, but his 39-game start to 2015 would be enough to move him up five spots if I updated the data through today. Here’s guessing he’ll be close to the top fifteen by the end of this season (cracking 15th place would take between 8 and 9 WAR and subpar seasons from a few guys in his way).
Greatest Active Starting Rotation
CC Sabathia
Clayton Kershaw
Cliff Lee
Justin Verlander
Felix Hernandez
[table id=249 /]
Pitching is a fickle profession. The first, third, and fourth guys on this list appear to be shadows of their former selves, while the second and fifth guys are the best pitchers in their respective leagues today. When I ran these numbers in August of 2010, Tim Lincecum ranked seventh (though I included a current year component then). Does his fall to 13th suggest that maybe we shouldn’t expect Felix to jump to second in a few years? Is Chris Sale, who ranks 16th, .08 greatness points behind Price, and has the highest WAR/30 starts among active pitchers, not a lock to pass the Weavers and Buehrles the way we know Harper will leapfrog the Hunters and Kemps?
Is Sabathia really the greatest active pitcher in the game? He’s got the most career fWAR, almost nine wins ahead of Hudson. On a rate basis, he’s ninth among qualifiers. Four pitchers have had a single season better than his best. Meanwhile, RA9 WAR doesn’t like him as much as FIP WAR (B-R has him worth 53.8 WAR coming into this season, behind Buehrle and Hudson. If pitchers held up better, I would feel more confident calling Kershaw and Felix “greater” pitchers based on what they have done, are doing, and will do, but it’s a dicey preposition to risk one’s reputation on a human elbow.
Five years ago, the top three pitchers on this list were Roy Halladay, Andy Pettitte, and Johan Santana. These guys are all retired or inactive now, and none is a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame (though each has a case). In the interim, it appeared that Verlander was ticketed for the top of the list, but he saw his ERA jump about a run a year between 2012 and 2014 and hasn’t pitched yet in ’15. Kershaw looks like the Trout of pitching and Hernandez may be the hurler’s equivalent of Pujols. Time will tell whether they go Verlander’s route or Greg Maddux’s.
Enough from me. How does this compare to your all-greatest-active team?
It’s been widely noted especially since the arrival of Trout and Harper in the big leagues back in 2012, but we really do seem to be in an era of transition w/r/t great players in the major leagues right now. The only sure-fire Hall of Famers currently in the league are Pujols, Ichiro, and Cabrera – Beltre obviously should be a no-doubter but I won’t be surprised if he spends way too long on the ballot, and obviously A-Rod is never going to get voted in by the writers.
Besides those 5, you’ve got Mauer, Utley, Wright and Beltran all as borderline cases who almost certainly wouldn’t get in on their first ballots if they were to retire today, and I don’t think any pitcher is a sure bet. Certainly King Felix and Kershaw seem likely to get to that 65/70 WAR plateau eventually, as do Trout, McCutchen, and maybe Longoria, Cano and Posey, health permitting. But does anyone else with at least 30 WAR right now seem like the type of player who will one day be in Cooperstown?
Right. History says there are many eventual HOFers in the game today, but the transition going on right now between the old and the new guard makes it less clear.
This is a great observation. I think Adrian Gonzalez is probably a future Hall of Famer, and McCutchen’s certainly on that track. Pedroia will be an interesting case. He’s got the RoY, MVP, and 2 World Series, but his value is increasingly driven by defense, as he’s not the hitter he was a few years ago. If he hits the ballot with Utley, Grich, and Whitaker still on the outside, his induction might be hard to justify.
Among Greinke, Wainwright, and maybe Weaver, I could see one of them staying healthy enough to get to 60+ WAR, though I probably wouldn’t bet on any of them individually. The next generation has Price, Sale, and Kluber, so again, one of those guys will probably stick around long enough.
Hmmm…I have a hard time seeing Adrian Gonzalez as “probably” a future HOFer. His 37.8 career WAR through age 32 hardly makes him stand out among first basemen.
Here’s a list of non-HOF first basemen with more career WAR than Gonzalez through age 32:
Hernandez: 55.4
Helton: 50.0
Olerud: 48.6
Teixera: 47.8
Will Clark: 44.3
Mattingly: 40.1
McGriff: 39.6
I left Palmiero and McGwire off the list for obvious reasons. And granted, Helton and/or Teixera could make the HOF though it seems unlikely.
Throw in having played for 4 franchises so far, no WS, and no MVP finish higher than 4th and I have a hard time seeing how Gonzalez is on a HOF path.
As for Pedroia, he has 43.2 WAR through age 30. The only non-HOF second basemen ahead of him in WAR through age 30 are Grich (46.8) and Knoblauch (44.1), with Whitaker, Randolph, and Utley slightly behind. (I’m assuming Cano will make the HOF).
Throw in the MVP, the two WS, and playing his whole career for a high profile franchise and I’d say that Pedroia is probably a HOFer (though with more work to do).
That’s fair, David. I guess I thought Gonzalez had a little more black ink than he does, and I didn’t realize the extent to which a series of punishing home parks has suppressed his homer total (271). He may not even hit 400. He’s got a great defensive reputation, and 56 Rfield back that up, but most of the guys you named above had strong defensive reputations too.
Maybe I should have said “if Gonzalez keeps up this year’s .355/.430/.674 or a few more years, he’s probably a future Hall of Famer.” If he ages predictably, he finishes between 50 and 55 WAR and hopes to reach a second ballot.
@6;
I agree with David P in #6 that Adrian Gonazalez doesn’t seem like a good HOF candidate to me right now.
I think that Keith Hernandez, Will Clark, John Olerud and Carlos Delgado all had clearly better careers than Gonzalez has had so far, and all of them were off the HOF ballot in one/two years. Fred McGriff has pretty impressive numbers, better than at least a few HOF first basemen, and he hasn’t exceeded 25% after six years on the ballot.
Bottom line – first baseman really have to be dominant hitters over a long career to get even serious consideration. Look at his “Similar Batters through 32” – all excellent players, but no serious HOF candidates, except for Palmeiro, and that’s for off-field reasons He could have a late-career resurgence (as he’s had the first quarter this yr) and/or he could play forever and put up great career totals, but I don’t think that’s very likely.
The first baseman I wonder about is Joey Votto. Through age 30, he leads Gonzalez in WAR 35.8 to 30.2. He also has an MVP, has only played for one franchise and has better name recognition (yeah that shouldn’t matter but those are HOF voters we’re talking about).
On the other hand, he’s had some injury problems and he gets the Ted Williams criticism (i.e, draws too many walks).
Speaking of Votto, I’m not sure how I missed him in the 1B table above. I updated the table, but it doesn’t seem to have taken effect. He’s 3rd among 1B with 12.64.
I really enjoy how 3 very borderline first baseman who had very good careers but not quite hall of fame careers were 3 consecutive Blue Jay first baseman.
McGriff, Olerud, Delgado. Maybe Encarnacion will join that group eventually.
David Ortiz is an absolute lock for the Hall of Fame.
Some may think it is undeserved, but I think his post season heroics make him a deserved shoe in.
Jimbo, I could argue on the basis of WAR that Ortiz not only isn’t a lock, but doesn’t merit HOF. But I really wonder where we are going to be in terms of rationalizing PED use by the time Ortiz is eligible. Whatever the intrinsic merits of his case might be, putting him in before McGwire, who was a superior slugger and could actually play the field, seems wrong, as does choosing him over a number of other players who are effectively barred (Sosa, Palmiero, Bonds, and eventually A-Rod) seems unjust. Ortiz may get in anyway, because he seems to benefit from a different set of standards with regard to this issue. But he shouldn’t be.
Ortiz’s regular season numbers, right now, are extremely similar to Carlos Delgado’s.
Delgado, who was a beast in October (in the one opportunity he had), was one and done on the HOF ballot this past year.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/ortizda01.shtml#batting_standard::none
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/delgaca01.shtml#batting_standard::none
1281
1241
2193
2038
554 / 18 / 472
483 / 18 / 473
1550
1512
1183 / 1597
1109 / 1745
.284 / .379 / .544 / .923 / 139 / 4199
.280 / .383 / .546 / .929 / 138 / 3976
I think playing his career mostly in Toronto hurt Delgado HOF chances whereas there is no question Ortiz benefits from playing in Boston.
Delgado looked to be on his way to being a shoe in when his career ended abruptly and much earlier than expected based on his previous performances.
I said this on the other thread but I’m only a few months away from calling Trout a hall of famer already. He doesn’t have much left to prove in the majors. If he continues out this year like he has that’s 4 straight years of peak excellence you have to be one of the top 10 position players in history to match. I’m sold.
Considering what he’s done the past three seasons (and so far this one), and the fact he’s still only 23, an age when many eventual HOFer’s were just arriving in the Majors, it would be surprising if he doesn’t make the HOF. That said, I thought Cesar Cedeno was a lock for the HOF after his first four seasons. If Trout gets injured, or for whatever reason takes a step down in greatness, but plays for many more years, his true greatness at the start of his career will fade. Tony Oliva, a slightly different case, might have a word or two on this also. Neither Cedeno or Oliva are quite in Trout’s class, but both are reminders than even now nothing is guaranteed for Trout.
Cedeno may be the best example of a young superstar who didn’t live up to the promise, and he had 59% of Trout’s WAR through age 22. Nobody’s a guarantee, but nobody’s ever been Mike Trout either.
@4;
One area where Trout has a large advantage over Cedeno and Oliva (and everyone else) is that no other MLB player has started off so well in the MVP voting their first three full years – 2nd, 2nd, 1st. …And a lot of people think he should’ve been first all _three_ years.
By contrast (MVP voting a player’s first three years):
Tony Oliva: 4th/ 2nd/ 6th
Ceaser Cedeno: (off-ballot)/6th/11th
The best I could come up to before Trout:
Albert Pujols: 4th/ 2nd/ 4th
ALSO of NOTE:
Stan Musial: 12-1-4
Ted Williams: 4-14-2
Joe DiMaggio: 8-2-6
Trout actually has the most career WAR ever through age 22 (28.2 vs 25.2 for Ty Cobb).
Staying ahead of Cobb through age 23 will be tough…he’ll need about 8.0 WAR this year. Hardly impossible but neither is it a guarantee.
I’d say the biggest concern going forward for Trout are injuries, particularly as a Centerfielder. What if the rest of his career looks like Fred Lynn? He’s end up with about 70-80 career WAR. More than enough to warrant HOF consideration but he’d but hurt by a decade or more of failed expectations.
It’s not like Trout isn’t full of talent and I disagree that serious injury would cost some serious value accumulation over the coming years. It’s that I disagree he hasn’t already made nearly a HOF worth accumulation of value. He’s on pace for 8.7 WAR in 2015 so far. Not like that’s unexpected, he’s averaged 9.3 WAR/year the past 3 combined. Assuming he gets 8.7 WAR he’d be up to 37.3 WAR career and a WAA over 28. That’s a Koufax like historic peak and if that’s all he EVER did, I’d vote for him.
I agree with this in principle, mosc. Trout has accomplished so much already that it’s hard to imagine a Hall of Fame without him. If there’s a precedent for someone offering this much value by Trout’s age and being basically done at 23, it happened 140 years ago, when pitchers threw 500 innings a year, underhand, from somewhere in a box roughly 53 feet from the batter.
Tommy Bond was worth 61.4 WAR through age 23, but just 1.3 WAR thereafter. Bond was ancient history by the time the Hall of Fame was established, so I’m not sure he’s ever been given serious consideration. I don’t think it would be unreasonable for Bond to represent his era in the Hall of Fame, even if there’s no way to compare what he did to what Joe McGinnity did 25 years later, let alone what Greg Maddux did 120 years later. Like Trout, he was absolutely the best at what he did for a few years.
I think there are two separate questions. Should Trout be elected to the HOF based on what he’s done so far (including the rest of this year)? And could he? Granted, it’s doubtful that we’ll ever need to answer these questions. But what’s baseball without speculation. 🙂
I have no idea if Trout should be elected. But I have serious doubts that he could be. For one thing, he’d be nowhere near the 10 years necessary for election. For the HOF to waive that rule would be a serious change in policy, particularly since he’d be nowhere near 10 years. The only exception made so far is Addie Joss (the argument made for Joss is that he played in a 10th spring training before he died).
Mosc made the comparison to Koufax but Koufax had a 6 year peak, not a 4 year. Plus some other seasons that might have added some value to his case. Plus the World Series. And he had enough seasons to be eligible without an exception being made.
Obviously if Trout’s career ended after this year, we’d be dealing with something 100% unprecedented. So it’s hard to know how the HOF would react. At the very least, they’d probably move very, very slowly.
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.”
Think Addie Joss. Think George Sisler. Think Dwight Gooden. Think Ray Chapman. Think Lyman Bostock. Think Fred Lynn, or even Steve Blass.
The exceptional level of Trout’s play thus far does not exempt him from the vicissitudes of life. He may—as some of the comments here seem to hint—possibly even be translated to heaven for his god-like capabilities, though I doubt it. It’s far more likely that he’ll run into some problems, real problems, maybe soon, maybe later, and the question in my mind is, how will a person so favored with talent, to whom things come so easily and upon whom so much acclaim has been showered—how will he handle adversity?
All right. Think Tiger Woods.
I was talking about Trout with a friend of mine the other day (a big college baseball fan, but a more casual MLB fan), and he was talking about who he thought were some of the great young MLB players. He started talking about McCutchen alongside Trout and Harper, and I mentioned that McCutchen was a little bit older (more in the prime of his career, at least by typical age measures). Then he started talking about what happens when Trout gets to his prime years …
At that point I mentioned that if Trout gets BETTER during the “typical” prime ages, he may very well be the greatest player in history. He would have to put up 10 and 11 WAR seasons – regularly – to get better.
If he put up Bonds numbers from age 24-33 (1989-1998, pre-Hulk Bonds), he would have 84.1 WAR (tacked on to his 30+ that he already has). And Bonds had NO 10 WAR seasons.
If he put up Mays numbers from 24-33 he would have 93.2 WAR + 30+ WAR he currently has. Mays had 4 10 WAR seasons in those years, and never below 7.6.
If he put up Ruth numbers from 24-33 he would have 103.7 WAR + 30+ WAR he currently has. Ruth had 7 10 WAR seasons in those years, capped by 14.1 in 1923, though he did have two “duds” – 6.3 in 1922 and 3.5 in 1925.
And that’s at age 33. If people think it’s not sustainable, if he puts up Mantle numbers he still get 79.5 WAR + what he has now, which would put him around 15th overall (and Mantle had a 1.8 WAR season in there).
Right now if I look at the career batting WAR leaders on baseball-reference Trout is 492nd. That doesn’t seem like much, but he’s in the middle of really solid MLB players. If I put Trout in the center of the page vertically he has essentially the same career WAR as Dom DiMaggio, Ross Youngs, Johnny Pesky, Marty Marion, Andres Galarraga, Eddie Joost, Hal Trosky, Bobby Bonilla, Chick Hafey … While these players really aren’t HOFers (unless they are Friends of Frisch), they are really good MLB players. And he’s already in that group — everyone else on the page has played at least 11 years except Bill Joyce (8 years) and Alex Gordon (9 and counting). If Trout gets 5 more WAR this year he will be in the Jay Bell, Dick Groat, Mazeroski, Eric Davis, Cecil Cooper range.
Trout’s biggest issue as far as long-term fame is complacency … of the fans. Not those on this website, but casual fans. Trout is about 5 months older than Kris Bryant, yet Trout has already done so much that nobody talks about him. He’s going to have to win a Triple Crown or go 40/40 or 50/50 for casual fans to pay attention.
Not to change the subject but Beltre on the list above prompts me to ask if he is the third baseman on the All-Time Team of Players Never to Win the World Series. (the outfield is great, of course, Bonds, Cobb, T. Williams). The infield isn’t quite as good. Lajoie is a good choice at 2nd (or Carew if Napoleon is too long ago). At First Base, you could cheat and put Yaz on the team. The shortstop would be Yount or Vaughan? The catcher would be Carlton Fisk? The pitchers wouldn’t be as good as the lineup. By WAR, the best choices would be Perry or Niekro or maybe down to Roberts or Jenkins.
I took Santo when I wrote this a year ago: https://replacementlevel.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/the-all-never-won-a-world-series-team/
Beltre’s Hall Rating is up to 149, ahead of Santo’s 140, so I think you’ve got it right.
I agree with everything you’ve got above, but I had Bagwell at first (Yaz in right, Bonds in left, Williams at DH). And don’t forget about Mike Mussina.
Great post, Bryan, and great to see you return and give Doug some company.
Your metric’s an interesting one. It tries to do two things at once: compare “great” careers alongside “on track to be great” careers. (Of course, with an outlier like Trout, these merge.)
By themselves, the charts seem misleading for that reason, but as prompts for your comments and the discussion here (and, I imagine, on your own website), they are much more intriguing than a simple, static ranking. Very engaging stuff, and I hope you’ll keep adding to the mix here.
Interesting approach, Bryan.
I like where you have Ichiro positioned just ahead of Holliday and Ellsbury, both of whom (I’m assuming) will likely pass Suzuki before they’re done. While I agree Ichiro is likely a shoo-in for the HOF, unfortunately that won’t be the case for the other two.
It’s unfortunate that Holliday didn’t get an earlier shot. As it is, his age 24 start means that, in all likelihood, he’ll fall short of the 60 career WAR that’s probably needed for even an outside shot at HOF consideration. Still, he’s been remarkably consistent with 9 straight qualifying seasons, all with 125 OPS+, 20 HR, 30 doubles, 80 runs and 75 RBI.
Interesting that Torii Hunter doesn’t show up, even with 50 career WAR. Evidently 5.7 peak WAR and 3.4 WAR per 150 games just doesn’t cut it.
I saw T.Hunter at #15 on the list.
Interesting Torii Hunter stat I noticed.
He’s turning 40 this year, and working on his 10th consecutive season with an OPS+ equal or higher than his career OPS+
That’s gotta be a pretty rare and odd thing to acheive.
SO while his fielding has consistently declined, his hitting hasn’t really shown any decline as of yet.
Good find, Jimbo.
But I found someone who had a better streak to end his career: Roberto Clemente. Clemente’s seasonal OPS+ exceeded his career mark the last 15 years of his career. That’s got to be the record.
The thing for Hunter is that his OPS has stayed relatively constant while league averages have continued to drop.
He might end his career with 2600+ hits I would’ve never expected that earlier in his career.
Both Clemente and Hunter had relatively low values of OPS+ in their first few years in the majors.
It looks like Hunter would’ve fared much better if I’d used Baseball Reference. Coming into this year, B-R had given him 50.9 WAR; fangraphs 40.9. The difference is in the defense, where B-R has him 34 runs above average for his career despite losing 35 the last three years, while fangraphs saw the beginning of his decline (2006-8) as a little more drastic, and has him 14 runs *below* average for his career.
Oddly, fangraphs thinks he’s been worth a full run this year, while B-R has him right at replacement level.
Actually Clementes streak to end his career was only 10 seasons, which Hunter could tie this year.
I was doing his seasonal OPS+ vs. his career OPS+ at that point in his career.