Top 20 Baseball Players of All Time

I recently read a book entitled Who's Better, Who's Best in Baseball? written by a fella by the name of Elliott Kalb, otherwise known as Mr. Stats.  In this book, he ranked what he considered to be the top seventy-five baseball players of all time.  Kalb has worked as an analyst for NBC, often throwing out vague stats that one would never even consider when determining a player's worth.  I expected that I wouldn't necessarily agree with all of his rankings because I had previously read another book of his called Who's Better, Who's Best in Basketball? and I found that his number one player, Shaquille O'Neal, was a bit of a stretch in my mind.

Well, I found myself equally flummoxed by the fact that Mr. Kalb chose Barry Bonds as the greatest baseball player of all time.  What?  I couldn't believe it.  But after I read further, I discovered that he actually made a very cogent argument in support of Barry Bonds and the somewhat-tainted legacy he is leaving behind.  One simply must make up his or her own mind when deciding how big of a factor steroids (you know he took 'em) had on Barry Bonds's success.  I'll discuss this very issue as I compile my own list.

The problem with Elliott Kalb is that he truly lives up to his nickname of Mr. Stats.  Statistics seem to be the only criteria he uses to determine how valuable a player is, as opposed to ascertaining the individual's sheer talent.  Granted, talent can be a pretty subjective matter, and stats often are a reflection of a player's talent.  But no one is going to convince me that Shaquille O'Neal is a "better" basketball player than Michael Jordan simply because his stat line was more impressive.  It just ain't gonna happen. 

When I first decided to embark on compiling this list, I had originally intended to do just that:  a ranking of the top twenty baseball players of all time with no distinction established between pitchers and position players.  This is what Kalb did and I decided to follow suit.

But pretty soon, a pressing issue cropped up.  How do you compare a pitcher and a left fielder?  Or a pitcher and a short stop?  It's impossible.  The pitcher plays a completely different game than any other player on the diamond and it doesn't seem fair to lump them in with everyone else.  Even though pitchers are often presented with opportunities to display their fielding skills (sacrifice bunts, line drives up the middle, etc.), a pitchers true worth should be determined mainly by one thing:  his ability to pitch.  So with that in mind, I decided to make two lists; one detailing the top ten position players of all time, and one detailing the top ten pitchers of all time. 

It's interesting when you begin thinking about these rankings and what each individual player deserves because you also begin saying what if?  What if Ted Williams hadn't lost three seasons of his prime to serving in World War II and then nearly another two fighting in Korea?  What if Lou Gehrig hadn't been struck down by a debilitating disease that eventually bore his name?  What if Ken Griffey, Jr. hadn't spent half of his career on the disabled list?  These questions are all nearly impossible to answer, though I have to say that I firmly believe that Griffey, Jr. would be neck-and-neck with Barry Bonds atop the all-time home run list if it hadn't been for his propensity for injury. 

The reason I feel this way is because if one looks at Griffey's and Bonds's numbers, they are incredibly similar.  Griffey, Jr. played in 2,671 career games, had 9,801 official at-bats, and hit 630 homers.  Bonds, on the other hand, played in 2,986 career games with 9,847 at-bats, and ended up hitting 762 home runs, which gives him the all-time record.  Where this issue gets hazy, though, is when one examines the number of walks each player accumulated.  Officially, a base-on-balls is not listed as an official at-bat.  It's like it never happened in regards to a player's batting average, though it does affect a player's on-base percentage.  When walks are factored into the equation (just looking at the actual, true number of times each player stepped up to the plate), Griffey, Jr. went to bat 11,113 times (because of 1,312 career walks) and Bonds dug in at the plate 12,405 times (with the all-time walks record of 2,558).  This creates a deficit of 1,292 at-bats for Griffey.  This gives Griffey hitting a home run approximately every eighteen at-bats and Bonds hitting one every sixteen at-bats.  It's an interesting situation to consider, though it's impossible to ever known for certain what could've happened given any of these various circumstances.

I would also like to point out the notable omission of many players who starred in the game prior to 1920.  I do this simply because the game became vastly different once Babe Ruth burst onto the scene, and it's very difficult to say how successful any of the players from this era would've been during the era of Ruth and onward.  The pre-Ruth era was known as the "dead-ball era" because scores were generally fairly low.  Players focused more on getting on base and then stealing bases, instead of hitting home runs.  There was a beauty and grace to this style of play, but the power and swagger of Babe Ruth was what put butts in the stadium seats.  And how would a player like Rogers Hornsby have fared with 6'10" Randy Johnson staring him down from the mound?  The fact that so much emphasis is placed on weight training and conditioning these days means that baseball players are going to be bigger and stronger than their earlier counterparts, even without steroids.  To be fair, though, I have included one position player and one pitcher to these lists from pre-Ruthian times because they dominated in their respective era.  They were the best of their time and it seems a travesty to not include them.

So here it is, the top ten position players of all time.  I'm sure many people will disagree with my choices, and that's fine.  There is no definitive answer to the question of who the greatest ever was.  But debating it sure can be fun.  Enjoy!