Historical player rankings

[TruffleShuffle]

OK, so I had this idea driving home today. I'm very interested in the history of baseball, and maybe some others are as well. The idea I had was to rank the top players of all time, based on position. I'd do about one per week, and people could submit their top 5 or 10 (depending on how deep people wanted to go per position), say, first basemen of all time. I have the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, and could provide a lengthy list of options at each position, along with a link to each player's stats on baseball-reference.com.

 

It would take a fair amount of work on your part - i.e., I don't want to see Mark Grace or Steve Garvey on people's lists ahead of Jimmie Foxx. I'd take everyone's votes and assign point values to each, then ati the end of position, post the consensus ranking for each position. Then after running through every position (the nine positions, plus starting pitcher and relief pitcher) we can do a top 10 or 20 players of all time, regardless of position. I think it would be fun and spark some interesting debate.

 

Anyway, let me know whether this idea interests you by voting in my poll. If it does, I'll start this up next week.

[Marco4]

It would be nice to see it unfold, and read people's opinions of different players - and reasoning - but I don't think I could participate because my knowledge of baseball, while growing, is probably still too sketchy to be of any worth here.

[Andy]

Given career stats I could probably give this a go.

[adamb0719]

It would be nice to see it unfold, and read people's opinions of different players - and reasoning - but I don't think I could participate because my knowledge of baseball, while growing, is probably still too sketchy to be of any worth here.

 

I am pretty much the same, but this would probably be a great way to learn about some players that I don't know a whole lot about. Though I will not fully participate, I will avidly read the threads.

[Rob]

I'd be all over this, but only if we make sure to push it pretty deep.

 

In other words, I don't want to top off with a top 10 list for everybody. Maybe top 25 or so for each position?

[TruffleShuffle]

I'd be all over this, but only if we make sure to push it pretty deep.

 

In other words, I don't want to top off with a top 10 list for everybody. Maybe top 25 or so for each position?

 

I don't know that *I* have time to do something like that. I want to do a thorough job in my rankings and feel good about what I came up with. I can sit down and look through about the top 20-25 guys at one position and narrow that down to 10, and then rank those guys, but I don't think I have time to sit and look at guys 26-50 and consider whether they squeeze into a list of 25 players.

 

I'm not against doing a top 25 or 30 overall, but for each position, that just seems a bit much to me. I will do all the outfield positions - LF, CF and RF - individually, and will break pitchers up into starting and relief. I also think we can go a bit deeper - maybe 20 or 25 deep - for starting pitchers.

 

Given the number of positive responses, I think this idea is a go. I'll start it off with catchers at some point in the next few days. I'll use the Bill James rankings as a guide to put down about 30 names for people to consider, although everyone is free to go off the board. I'll make sure the players are listed randomly, not in the order that James ranks them.

[TruffleShuffle]

One other thing. In James' book, he ranks 12 Negro League players in his top 100 players of all time, but does not include them in his position-by-position rankings because he uses Win Shares for those, and Negro League stats simply weren't kept well enough to evaluate players by some sort of Win Shares system.

 

With all due respect to players like Josh Gibson, who was probably the best catcher to ever play the game, I'm inclined to omit Negro League players from the lists. There aren't the stats to rate them fairly, and I don't have access to nearly enough anecdotal evidence to come close to achieving an accurate ranking. So, I plan on just having players from the American and National Leagues in my rankings. Players like Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston and Satchel Paige are surely among the greatest baseball players of all-time, and the omission of them from my lists is certainly not meant in disrespect of their legacies.

[goonys evil twin]

I know I'm in the minority, but I don't care about this stuff. I don't care about the hall of fame either. I don't care who was better than whom, or which pitcher was best or who is the best of which era. It's not that I have no interest in the history of the game, I just have no interest in the arbitrary ranking of players, and especially the sentimental "those were the days" talk that always comes up in these debates.

[SouthSideRyan]

I know I'm in the minority, but I don't care about this stuff. I don't care about the hall of fame either. I don't care who was better than whom, or which pitcher was best or who is the best of which era. It's not that I have no interest in the history of the game, I just have no interest in the arbitrary ranking of players, and especially the sentimental "those were the days" talk that always comes up in these debates.

 

If we were ranking the best chicken wings you'd care.