36 thoughts on “The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All-Time”

1. 

   Bonds is a steroid cheat so is Clemens and others in that era ? Get them off the list foo

2. 

   PEDs are NOT factored in. Here’s why:

   https://www.the100greatest.com/2021/02/10/making-the-cut-baseball/#PEDs

3. 

   How is George Brett, cal ripken, and Nolan Ryan so far down on list?

4. 

   Hey Patrick!

   I appreciate the question. I guess it’s a matter of perspective but I don’t consider them low on the list. All three are in the top 70 or in the 99.65 percentile of players to ever suit up for a MLB team. However, to address why they aren’t rated higher than they are, I’ll go one at a time…

   George Brett

   Brett at #49 is pretty lofty. The next 3b I have ahead of him is Chipper Jones. Chipper has a pretty substantial advantage in OPS+ which is fueled by his superiority in getting on base and hitting for power. Chipper also gets the advantage in degree of difficulty as he played in a league that was experiencing an influx of international talent. There are a few players ranked ahead of Brett who I could make an argument for moving Brett ahead of on the strength of era (Cy Young, Tris Speaker, and Honus Wagner to name a few) but there aren’t many.

   Nolan Ryan

   Nolan was one of a kind, for better or worse. Nobody was more unhittable, but nobody walked more batters. In fact, Nolan led the league in walks eight times. In 27 years, he won zero Cy Youngs and finished second just once. There are just too many great pitchers with much better command and substantially better resumes for Ryan to rate higher on the list.

   Cal Ripken Jr.

   Cal deserves major kudos for showing up to play for 2,632 consecutive games. That’s bananas. Still, it’s important to recognize that Cal’s greatest achievement doesn’t really have anything to do with on-field performance. When we examine what he did on the field, it starts to become evident why it’s more appropriate to rate him outside of the top 50. Ripken, of course, started his career with 10 consecutive 20 home runs seasons which was unheard of for a shortstop. While he proved that shortstops could hit home runs, his career OPS+ is a pedestrian 112 which represents one of the lowest marks in the top 100. His .340 OBP also leaves a lot to be desired.

5. 

   Where is Brian Downing?

6. 

   Also, John Kruk

7. 

   Hi Laura!

   I love me some Kruk but he only had 1,100 career hits. That’s not gonna fly in the top 100 let alone the top 500.
   Downing has a stronger case but he falls well short of the top 100 as well. Consider that his score on the Gray-Ink Test (which measures the number of times a player finished in the top 10 in a significant category) is 25. The average score for a Hall of Famer is 144.

8. 

   I’m not a big baseball guy, but why aren’t Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, or any other current player not on the list?

   P.S. I’m not sure why, but I still see the 1890-2011 Cy Young typo (I’m using iOS and Safari)

   1. 

      Hey Nic,

      Ohtani and Judge are unique cases. Ohtani had 878 career hits following the 2024 seasons. Judge had 1026. Those would be, by far, the lowest totals of anyone on the list. Instead of rushing them onto the list after last season, I decided to wait for more balance in peak vs. longevity. Ohtani and Judge are set for massive debuts. It’ll happen after this year if both stay healthy.

      The Cy Young typo should be fixed permanently. I had to copy and paste an old spreadsheet where the typo wasn’t fixed, which is why it came back.

9. 

   Hi Jake,
   This is a great list and I respect your brave call to put Bonds at No. 1. I think if you don’t consider PEDS, that it the right call. I also understand the position on PEDS – very tough to penalize those that got caught in an era when a lot of guys were at it. My issue in the case of Bonds is that it’s quite easy to see when the PEDs kicked in and the inflationary impact it had on his career. He was 35, in decline, then starts juicing, resulting in the best 3-4 year stretch anyone has ever had. I tend to take the approach to discount these seasons, at least by a bit, so that his decline phase looks a bit more typical. He still lands at No. 2 by my count, but I don’t think he’d have an argument for surpassing Ruth without the drugs.
   There’s a lot to unpack on your list, but I’m particularly interested in Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams. To me the numbers are pretty clear – Williams was the better hitter: better average, more home runs, better OPS+, more offensive WAR. Williams’ defense wasn’t great, but it’s hard to give Gehrig any big edge there given that he played first base, and was no better than average. Yes Gehrig was a great guy struck by a tragic illness and of course he had the games streak, but I don’t see that that’s enough to counter balance Ball Game’s clearly superior hitting. Worth remembering also that Williams lost three seasons at his absolute peak to the War, and parts of two others to Korea. He also played at least part of his career post-segregation, which Lou did not. Gehrig obviously won more, but he had some rather good teammates! Anyway, interested in your rationale.

   1. 

      Hey Stirlo, great questions!

      First, your take on Bonds is exactly what I’m hoping for with the decision to not factor PEDs. By the numbers, it’s Bonds. So Bonds is #1. However, I want each individual to make the determination on suspected PEDs users on their own. If you want to discount Bonds, then Ruth is #1. You’ll have to decide how much to discount and who else to discount, but you can adjust the list based on those determinations as you see fit. I understand that we have a pretty good idea of when it might have started, but even then, I don’t want to determine what Bonds would have done without help vs. how much the help inflated his statistics. There’s also the fact that the entire league was taking steroids. If Bonds did what he did in a league where everyone else was doing the same, then his accomplishments (leading the league in categories and MVPs) can still be taken at face value relative to the rest of the league. I don’t want to get into policing all of that.

      The Ted Williams/Lou Gehrig question is a great one, and I won’t begrudge anyone who has Williams over Gehrig. There is a lot of ammunition on each side. First, even though Williams was active when desegregation hit, the influx of black players was a slow trickle, so there wasn’t much of a difference in league demographics from the league that Gehrig played in to what Williams saw during his prime. The size of the league was the same and the general makeup of the league was the same. This is all to say that when I’m comparing Williams and Gehrig, there is no degree of difficulty factored in. It’s a straight statistical comparison. I’ll also point out that this may have been all moot had either Williams not missed three seasons in his prime due to military service, or had Gehrig not had his career tragically cut short. I do not factor in what a player might have done during missed seasons. It sucks, but I don’t know what would’ve happened, and I don’t want to get into projections. They may have gotten injured. They may have had a down year. We have an idea of what might have happened, but I don’t feel comfortable going beyond that.

      As for what put Gehrig over Williams for me:

      1). Playoff performance. You are correct that Gehrig played for better teams. However, this factor isn’t just about championships–it’s about how much of an impact Gehrig had on those championships. His playoff stat line over seven World Series is out of this world. Williams had an abysmal showing in his only World Series appearance. Obviously, Williams only had one shot at it, but the advantage for Gehrig when the games mattered the most is about as big of an advantage one player can have over another in any comparison.

      2). High-end production. Gehrig’s high-end seasons were astronomical. He drove in over 170 RBIs three times. Gehrig had seven seasons with 150+ RBIs. Williams had one. Gehrig had three seasons with at least 45 HRs. Williams had none. Gehrig had 5 seasons with 40+ HRs. Williams had one. I’m including a list of the high-end accomplishments on Gehrig’s ledger below.

      3). Gehrig’s availability. Gehrig played more than 150 games in a season 12 times. Williams did it twice. This can be shown with plate appearances, too.

      4). Gehrig’s lead leading instances came with Babe Ruth in the league. That is something that Ted Williams didn’t have to contend with when it came to leading the league in a category. The fact that Gehrig was able to lead the league in so many categories with Ruth in the league is a degree of difficulty advantage.

      Gehrig’s Remarkable List of Achievements

      It would be easy to lose sight of the Iron Horse’s significance given he played in the shadow of Babe Ruth, but the difference between the two is much smaller than the historical narrative indicates. Gehrig was eight years younger than Ruth. Ruth’s numbers were astronomical, no doubt, but it took some time for major league pitchers to adjust to hitters looking to hit home runs. By the time Gehrig reached his peak, pitchers had more tools to combat the changing game. We can only wonder what Gehrig’s numbers would’ve looked like had he arrived at the same time as Ruth and been able to feast on overmatched pitching. Although that’s fun speculation, the numbers Gehrig did put up are still almost too silly to believe. He had 13 consecutive seasons of 100 RBIs and 100 runs which is the all-time record. He had 11 seasons of at least 120 RBIs which is tied with Ruth for the all-time record. He had nine seasons of at least 140 RBIs which is the all-time record and two more than any other player. He had seven seasons of at least 150 RBIs and four seasons of at least 160 RBIs; both are the all-time records. There have only been seven seasons in history that yielded 170 RBIs and Gehrig has three of them. Unsurprisingly, that is also the all-time record. He drove in 185 RBIs in 1931 which is the second-highest single-season total of all time. Gehrig had nine seasons of at least 135 runs which are tied with Ruth for the all-time record. He had 12 consecutive seasons with at least 125 runs which is a ludicrous streak on its own but even more so considering the second-longest streak in history is four! Gehrig’s eight seasons of at least 135 runs and 135 RBIs are the most all-time. Babe Ruth is the only other player with more than two. Gehrig produced five seasons of at least 400 total bases which is the most in history and two more than any other player. He had seven seasons of at least 200 hits and 150 RBIs. Nobody else has more than three. He had four seasons of at least 200 hits and 165 RBIs. Nobody else has more than one. There have only been two seasons ever with at least 218 hits and 173 RBIs. Gehrig has both. Gehrig had seven seasons of at least 200 hits and a 1.100 OPS. Nobody else has more than four. His three seasons with at least 200 hits and an OPS+ of 200 is tied for the most ever. He had nine seasons with at least 80 extra-base hits and fewer than 80 strikeouts which is the most all-time, and he had seven seasons with at least 85 extra-base hits and fewer than 70 strikeouts which is also the most all-time. There have only been four seasons in history where a player had more home runs than strikeouts with at least 49 home runs. Gehrig has two of them. His 117 extra-base hits in 1927 are the second-highest single-season total of all-time. Gehrig is third all-time in slugging percentage, 4th in OPS+, and 5th in on-base percentage. He won two MVPs, finished runner-up twice, and had 8 top-5 finishes. Although Gehrig had one of the greatest regular-season careers in history, his production actually improved in the postseason. Among players with at least 150 postseason plate appearances, Gehrig’s .483 on-base percentage and .361 batting average are #1 in baseball history, and he’s tied for first with an otherworldly OPS of 1.214. He led the Yankees to six World Series titles in seven appearances. Of course, Gehrig’s career was tragically cut short while he was still firmly entrenched in his prime by the disease that would become synonymous with his name. Gehrig almost certainly would’ve blown past 2,000 runs, 2,000 RBIs, 3,000 hits, 600 home runs, and 600 doubles which would’ve put him in a club that would have made even the Babe envious.

10. 

    I’m struggling by with this one, I’m afraid I just don’t see it with Genrig. I’m a pretty big convert to WAR, at least on the offensive side – I think it does a nice job compiling everything positive and negative a player does in context of his surroundings. Between them, Gehrig had the best single year, the next three belonged to Williams. Williams lead the league in OPS+ 9 times to Gehrig’s 3. Williams had 4 full seasons of over 200 OPS+, Gehrig 3. I just don’t see the argument that Gehrig had better peak seasons once you factor in context. The post season argument is valid, but it’s tough with MLB. Gehrig, for all his success played 34 post season games. That’s an awful small sample side. I don’t doubt Gehrig’s next Myers would have been even more impressive if he hadn’t got sick. But he was 36 and his best years were likely behind him. Williams’ missing years were smack bang in the middle of his prime. Bill James had an interesting stance on years’ lost. He didn’t give credit for time lost to injury or a career curtailed by illness and death, but he did give credit to war time years. His argument was that you don’t have speculate about Williams in say 1943 – he WAS a great player, he just didn’t happen to be playing. I’m not sure I completely buy that argument, but I’m certainly more confident is predicting Williams would have hit 100 more homers than I am in speculating what Gehrig would have done with a few more years.
    Anyway, if to a close call I agree, but I feel pretty good that I’m on the right side of this one. One final thing that bothers me a little. Ruth and Gehrig, purportedly two of the best few players ever played 12 or more seasons together and won the WS (in an era of few teams) just 3 times. I’m not certain that’s a great return.

    1. 

       Hey Stirlo,

       I’m familiar with James’s stance on missed seasons, and I don’t favor that approach. Players have down seasons. There are no guarantees. Gehrig led the league in OPS+ the year before he started showing symptoms. It would stand to reason that he was set to have another fantastic year. However, nobody knows what would’ve happened. Same for Williams. Even the great players have down years and get injured. I don’t feel comfortable giving Williams or anybody else credit for seasons that didn’t happen.

       WAR is great, but it’s a single interpretation of performance. Even then, you’re using it selectively. Gehrig had 9 seasons with 8+ WAR. Williams had 7. Gehrig had 11 seasons with 7+ WAR. Williams had 9. They both had five seasons of 9.5+, and Gehrig had the top season by 1.3 WAR which is a significant difference. Their 162-game averages for WAR are 8.6 to 8.5 which is a virtual wash. I view WAR as a metric, not the metric, but even then, Gehrig is not outclassed in a WAR comparison.

       As for OPS+, Gehrig led the league in OPS+ only three times because he played in a league with Babe Ruth. He finished second to Ruth four times. Had Williams played with Ruth, and Gehrig not, we would see the opposite occur. William’s OPS numbers rely significantly on his insane walk totals. Walks are great, but while Williams was walking, Gehrig was driving in runs by hitting more XBHs.

       Gehrig’s 162-game averages: 141 runs 204 hits 89 XBH 149 RBIs 8.5 WAR
       Williams’s 162-game averages: 127 runs 188 hits 79 XBH 130 RBIs 8.6 WAR

       I’ll take the guy who was more productive and who was the greatest post-season performer in the history of baseball. In every sport, legacies are forged in the playoffs. Baseball is no different. Pick a different sport and do the same comparison (Player A was an all-time great in the regular season and the GOAT of the playoffs, and Player B was an all-time great in the regular season and terrible in the playoffs). That’s like Michael Jordan or Shaq vs. James Harden. Williams had one chance and didn’t capitalize. Gehrig had several chances, and became arguably the greatest postseason player of all-time. Gehrig’s postseason performance should be a significant factor. The playoffs are the whole reason for playing. It’s worth noting that Gehrig led the Yankees to a threepeat right after Ruth left NY.

       I am happy with Gehrig where I have him. The argument that I can make for Gehrig is stronger than the one I can make for Williams. However, I won’t begrudge anyone who has Williams ahead.

11. 

    Why not Shohei?

    1. 

       Hey Anon,

       Shohei and Judge could’ve entered after last season, but Judge barely had 1,000 career hits and Shohei was below 900. I decided to wait for one more season of data before placing them. Both are due for massive debuts. I’m looking forward to the final reveal after the season, especially if they maintain even a semblance of their current pace.

12. 

    Barry Bonds is only good because he was on steroids

    1. 

       Hey George,

       I don’t factor in PEDs. That’s up to the reader to determine. However, Bonds led position players in WAR 7 times before he ever took steroids. That’s the most since 1948. We’ll never be able to definitively say the exact impact of PEDs, but Bonds was an all-time great before they entered the equation.

13. 

    Good list but here are some things I don’t agree with
    Barry Bonds is not the best player of all time
    Ken Griffey Jr should be higher than #33
    Why are stars like Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken Jr, Roberto Clemente, Cy Young, and Honus Wagner so low
    Why is Joey Votto Higher than Ichiro

    I do love that you put Mike Shmidt at #11 though

    1. 

       Thanks for the comments, George! I’ll do my best to hit on your questions…

       I don’t make adjustments for PED use. Bonds is definitely the greatest baseball player of all-time without discounting for PED use.

       Griffey– I love Griffey, but injuries really derailed his chance to rate higher.

       Cy Young and Honus Wagner–the competition level of their era was way too low to rate them higher.

       Nolan Ryan–Zero Cy Young Awards limits his ceiling.

       Cal Ripken–112 OPS+ would be very low for someone inside the top 50.

       Clemente–led the league in WAR for position players just once, and was not a huge run producer. Just three seasons with 100+ runs, and 2 with 100+ RBIs.

       Votto over Ichiro– Votto career OBP is .409. Ichiro’s is .355. Votto’s career slugging % is .511. Ichiro’s is .402.

14. 

    Great job on the list but I have a big problem with you putting Stan Musial lower than A-Rod, Schmidt, Pujols and Trout. Musial is easily in the top 10 of all time!!! I understand your rationale for giving modern players more credit due to the increased size of the talent pool but Stan Musial was exceptional throughout his career and his rankings on baseball reference bear that out. At age 36 he was 2nd in MVP voting, behind only Hank Aaron and ahead of Willie Mays. He even had an impressive age 41 season which he received MVP votes for. Pujols numbers are bolstered due to DH status, Schmidt was great defensively but his offensive numbers pale in comparison to Musial’s. Though A-Rod was a great player, his admitted use of PED’s should be included in determining ranking. They obviously helped him some. Trout is very talented but his career is probably close to over and he most likely won’t get to even 100 WAR, (Compared to Musial’s 128.6). Though Musial played before expansion, he did play d after desegregation and held his own alongside Aaron, Mays, Clemente and Robinson. Also, Having Bond’s as the greatest of all time is just plain wrong. I do think he deserves to be in the hall, but you shouldn’t completely dismiss his use of PED’s. It obviously contributed to his remarkable 2001-2004 seasons stretch in which he achieved his 3 highest WAR totals. We will never know how much it contributed to his success but it obviously did.

    1. 

       Hey Howard! I appreciate the comments, and the love for Musial. He was a great player, for sure.

       Before I start, I’ll just reiterate that PED use is not a consideration for this list. If you want to ding players on that, go for it. Bonds, A-Rod etc. were not only competing against PED users for MVP awards, but they were facing pitchers who were also on PEDs. I don’t doubt there was inflation in statistics, but inflation across the board wouldn’t have much of an impact on leading the league in categories and winning awards. Bonds led the league and won more MVP awards than anyone and he did it in a large, fully integrated league.

       Musial was great, but, as you mentioned, he played in a time where it was much, much easier to succeed. The fact that Mike Trout led the league in WAR and OPS+ more times than Musial and Mike Schmidt led the league in WAR and OPS+ as many times as Musial and both did it in a league that was double the size and fully integrated is game, set, match for those two over Musial, IMO. It’s also worth noting that Musial dominated one of the weakest stretches in MLB history when several dozen Hall of Famers were serving in WWII. Clearly, he had great non-war time seasons, but two of the times he led the league in WAR and OPS+ came with several of the game’s best players in the war.

       RE: WAR. I like WAR as a metric, not the metric, and I like it less when comparing players from very different eras. There’s a reason 16 of the top 20 players on the all-time WAR list began their careers by 1954 and it’s not because baseball players were better back then. Even using WAR to compare contemporary players needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Geraldo Perdomo has nearly an identical offensive WAR to Shohei Ohtani in 2025. Ohtani is +100 in total bases, +35 in OPS+, +33 in home runs, +44 in runs, and +.158 in slugging % (!!!). This is all to say that we need to be careful with weighing Musial’s career WAR total too heavily when trying to find the right place for him.

15. 

    How is barry bonds the goat when he had a career playoff batting average of .240 and had no rings? to me the goat has to be albert pujols, as crazy as that sounds he is the best batter in the playoffs of all time and has 2 rings. also greatest longevity.

    1. 

       Hey Roman! Pujols was a great player, no doubt. He led the league in WAR six times, won three MVPs, and is one of only three players in history with 1,400+ extra base hits. He also finished 2nd in the MVP voting four times for a really impressive 7 top-2 finishes. The reason why I can’t make a strong argument for Pujols in the top 5-10 is despite his longevity he was a borderline terrible baseball player over the last 10 years of his career. He was a poor defender, wasn’t a threat on the base paths in any way (all-time leader in grounding into double plays), and his milestones (3000 hits, 700 home runs, 2000 RBIs etc.) were only reached because he and his bloated contract hung around for seven years too long. He had a negative WAR over the last seven years of his contract which means he was worse than a minor leaguer. Again, really strong resume, but I think he maxes out just outside of the top 10.

       It’s true that Bonds didn’t get a ring. However, his regular season resume is so far ahead of every other player in baseball history that not having a ring doesn’t move him off the throne. He led the league in WAR 11 times. Nobody born in the last 95 years has done it more than 6 times. In fact, Bonds’s 162.8 WAR is more than Pujols and Bryce Harper combined. Bonds was an elite baserunner, an elite defensive outfielder, and his 7 MVPs are more than any two players combined (until Shohei wins his 4th in a couple weeks and then it’ll be as many as any two players combined). It’s also worth noting that focusing on his .245 postseason batting average is missing the forest for the trees. He had the single greatest postseason run in the history of baseball when he led the Giants to game seven of the 2002 World Series. He hit 8 home runs and had 27 walks in just 17 games!

16. 

    hey, i’ve got a question for you here! i absolutely understand having so few relievers on this list, as they usually have less impact on a game than a starter or a position player, and the exceptions of mariano and eckersley, pretty much inarguably the two greatest closers of all time who were extremely influential to the success of their teams, make a ton of sense, too.

    my question is, who do you believe are the greatest multi-inning relievers of all time? are there any even remotely close to the top 100 (maybe rollie fingers or goose gossage)? is there even really value to the multi-inning reliever, who kind of sits in no-man’s-land between a starter and a setup/closer duo or trio, and therefore is “greatest multi-inning reliever” even a discussion worth having or would it by necessity just be filled with pre-modern-closer relievers? (even eckersley, a former starter who clearly wouldn’t have lacked in stamina, averaged right around one inning per appearance once he settled into his role with the athletics.)

    1. 

       Great question on multi-inning relievers. I do think they’re a relic of the past. There are two reasons for this, IMO.

       1). Nobody wants that role. The money is in wins and saves. The multi-inning guys don’t get those. The agents won’t let their players be useD as workhorses like that, IMO.

       2). Teams carry so many pitchers that burning a pitcher every inning is sustainable. Those guys get to empty the gas tank in a way a multi-inning guy can’t. The one inning model works, too. Strikeouts and MPH are way up across the board.

       So, I absolutely agree with you that players in this category are from a very specific time and place in MLB history. Gossage, Fingers and Bruce Sutter are definitely in the conversation for multi-inning, middle relief GOAT, and darkhorses in that conversation are Mike Marshall and Hoyt Wilhelm. Most, if not all of them, would land in the top 200, in all likelihood.

       What would that look like now? Honestly, I think Troy Melton’s role with the Tigers in the latter half of the season did a good job of recreating it. However, that role only existed because of the transitional nature of Melton’s season. The Tigers had him on a pitch count because he’d never thrown more than 101 innings. Melton, for his part, was just happy to be a part of the show. Very quickly–starting next year–the Tigers will maximize Melton’s value by moving him into the rotation and that’ll be it for his role as an ace long-reliever. Melton’s multi-inning role for Detroit was a vital one. The Tigers, I’m sure, would love to have a guy in that role as effective as Melton. I just don’t think it’ll ever be a permanent spot for someone for the reasons I mentioned above.

17. 

    Reading the list one of the first things that caught my eye is the wide gap you have between Willie Mays and Hank Erin, considering that most list have them group together what stands out to you to cause such a big divide? I tried to undergo this list many times and think baseball is the hardest of any sport to put together, so commend your effort.

    1. 

       Thanks, Mike. I appreciate the comments. Great question on Mays and Aaron. Both are up there, obviously, but the gap you see comes largely from the fact that Mays led the league in WAR 10 times and Aaron did it once. There are other differences (base-running, defense etc.), but the WAR comparison is the easiest way to make the distinction between the two.

18. 

    General thoughts on this list:

    I respect the move to account for degree of difficulty of era. Not sure if you’re aware but there’s a project that attempted to do something similar by correction WAR for population talent pool https://ecklab.github.io/.

    Some other thoughts I have regarding your MLB and NBA lists:

    1) Griffey Jr is too low. I think he does tend to be overrated by some 90s era fans who overestimate his bat a bit, but he definitely produced enough value in his injury-shortened career that I think a 17 position gap between him and Trout is steep. I can respect him being 5 spots lower, but I think you’re underselling his peak a bit. Of course, there’s also the “he was a clean player in a steroid era” argument, but given that this list omits steroid consideration completely (a fair concession I think), its not relevant other than to say his wRC+/OPS+ type stats are a bit depressed in part due to this effect. The glove was good enough that I think he should still be within the top 25 at least, with a case for a few slots higher despite injuries cutting off the tail half of his career. He was the best or second best player in baseball for a large portion of the 90s after all.
    2) I think this list systematically undervalues defense, as does the NBA list (I’ll elaborate that separately). I understand its harder to measure, but Manny Ramirez at 30 I think is the biggest example of this. If you want to argue he was a top 30 all time bat, I think I can get behind that. He mashed at an elite rate for a long time, especially in the playoffs. But he was just such an abysmal defender that I think you cant just say it caps his ceiling, it actively has to drag him down when he’s bleeding 10-15 runs out into the field every year. Similarly, I think Clemente is too low – arguably greatest RF defender ever, 95 bWAR/80 fWAR, 3000 hits, elite at 38 before his premature death – to me this merits top 50 consideration, he’s the same tier as a Carl Yastrmezki to me, maybe a little lower but not by much.
    3) Your longevity stance seems inconsistent at times, with a tilt towards possibly undervaluing it – I get that counting benchmarks like 3000 hits shouldn’t be auto-valued if they came at the expensive of awful at-bats year in and out at the tail end of a prime, but stacking productive seasons should matter a bit more in my opinion. I don’t really understand Koufax over Gibson and Seaver unless your claim is just that you’re indexing specifically to iconic playoff moments, but they also had iconic playoff moments and signficantly longer careers. Steve Carlton might be undervalued by that logic too (though I love that you give Johan Santana his love, his HOF omission is a travesty). And if playoffs matter that much – I don’t think Kershaw can be 14th, despite playing in a much tougher era. It seems you’d have to ding him a bit more for that than you did. I think most of these positions are defensible in theory, but I think you might be overvaluing playoff performance a little bit in these rankings – it mattering is important of course, but a 40 spot gap between Ortiz/Cabrera and a contemporary like Beltre seems extreme to me, especially since its very easy to claim Beltre was the better player. Though, this could be tied to undervaluing defense I suppose, which is the point I made above.
    4) You made a comment about WAR above comparing Ohtani and Perdomo this year. I think WAR has its flaws and should not be used as an end-all-be-all to compare players, especially for defensive spectrum comparisons, and there’s definitely some debate about pitching evaluation (RA/9 and FIP are both imperfect, SIERA WAR calculations are promising but noisy), but your comment shows a misunderstanding of how WAR is calculated. Perdomo’s position WAR when you break down his stats gives him +32 runs batting, +4 baserunning, +9 fielding (+3 defensive runs above average shorstops and then the shortstop positional adjustment). Ohtani’s position WAR was +62 runs batting, +4 baserunning, and then the -17 positional penalty for being a DH. And on the year, a per-162 game player was assigned about 25-26 runs above replacement for being league average, leading to the final calculation. (10 runs is approximately 1 win). WAR didn’t think the offensive output was close to equivalent, it judged Ohtani as the significantly superior bat as it should have – I think baseball-references’s page displays OWAR vs DWAR in a weird way so that’s confusing since they’re not always consistent about where they show the position adjustments, but the reason their position WAR was similar is because of the position adjustment, not the bats being calculated as similar quality.

    NBA related – could have commented separately but will quickly mention here. I think you should care a bit more about modern analytics like the advancement of EPM/non box-only metrics than you do, because I think you systematically overvalue the “point” position and undervalue auxiliary positions, particularly help defenders. At the end of the day, the goal is to increase the probability of your average team winning a ring, and guys who can score and playmake at high volume but not provide auxiliary support (how do they scale as the #2 option) get overvalued by your philosophy. Bradley Beal is not a top 100 player all time just because he produced some 30 ppg seasons for an awful team. Dantley might be underrated, but 42 is too high for a player who compressed his teams playbook, stopped the ball, and played limited defense (the elite efficiency relative to era is still enough he’d be ranked around 60 for me fwiw, but I think you overestimate him a bit). Gasol is overvalued by metrics like Win Shares that overindex defensive contributions to the rebounders (top 100 is probably fair, top 50 is extreme). I’d also move Luka down a bit due to his inability to scale with teammates.

    Other misc thoughts:
    1) Russell is too low, defensive data is limited from his era but what we can cobble together with contemporary tracking and film is enough to tell us that his impact was far and away the best defense we’ve ever seen relative to his era. Those celtics teams for all their “hall of fame talent”, were consistently the worst offense in the NBA carried by Russell leading the best defense of all time era-relative. Its not replicable today, I cannot imagine he’d be better than Kevin Garnett if he had to play in today’s game for example (KG is super underrated in my opinion so this is far from a ding), but there has to be something said for the man who came up with modern concepts of defensive efficiency, popularized pick and roll coverages we see today, and changed verticality and defensive positioning forever. I personally consider him 3rd all time if you don’t adjust for competition, and when you do, he slides down to the 10-12 range, still ahead of Wilt for instance.
    2) VORP and DWS understates the scale of defense with players who aren’t as obvious in the box score – Rodman and Draymond are the two in particular. Models like EPM paint Draymond as a top 5-10 player throughout his 5-year peak, and for my money I’d rank him within the top 75 all time. He has a DPOY, and arguably should have 2 more (2015 he got the most first-place votes but a lot of voters didn’t understand modern defense and left him off the ballot, 2022 he was the runaway favorite before he got injured).
    3) You should probably care more about era adjusted efficiency (TS+ and the like). While its true competition level is higher now than the past, its also true that more effective modern offenses and spacing help the efficiency of star players, so you can’t match TS band for band with the past. To me, what I think the compromise here is, is you should use TS+ to compare players offense era relative, than curve downward for degree of difficulty (so maybe TS+ of 110 today is as impressive as TS+ of 112 in 1995 or something).

    1. 

       Hey MM!

       Great stuff. These are the types of discussions that improve lists like these. I appreciate the depth of thought and the advanced statistics slant to your analysis. I was not familiar with the Eck Lab. Thanks for sharing. That’s quite an operation they have there.

       Here are some thoughts:

       1). On Griffey. I have a hard time making the argument for Griffey being materially higher than 32. If you want to put him above Manny, Miggy, and a couple pitchers from the roarin’ 20s, that’s not something I’d go to the mats for. However, I think there’s a considerable difference between Trout’s resume vis a vis Griffey’s. Trout has 9 six-WAR seasons to Griffey’s 6, 7 seven-WAR seasons to Griffey’s 4, 5 eight-WAR seasons to Griffey’s 3, 4 nine-WAR seasons to Griffey’s two, and 2 ten-WAR seasons to Griffey’s zero. Those numbers skew Trout, but they’re pretty close to skewing even more in favor of Trout given he has 6.9, 7.9, 8.9, and 9.9 WAR seasons, respectively. Trout’s ledger is also littered with league-leading achievements while Griffey’s is pretty light in that regard and then there’s the massive difference in OPS+. Throw in the three MVPs and four runner-ups to Griffey’s one MVP and one runner-up and I think there’s more than enough in a resume comparison to justify a healthy gap on the all-time list.

       2). I see what you’re saying with respect to defense and it’s likely that we differ on how much to weigh it (the pool of players across all levels of professional baseball who are capable of playing average defense in MLB is magnitudes larger than the pool who are capable of producing offensively at the MLB average). However, in some of the cases you reference players who weren’t great defenders are rated highly despite that deficiency because of other factors. Manny is a great example, as you pointed out. Baseball fans/historians/list-makers etc. have a habit of largely ignoring postseason performance in a way that doesn’t happen in basketball, football, and hockey. This is, of course, due to the regular season being so long that people tend to think that there is enough data from the regular season alone to make conclusions. The long regular season also makes it easy to raise sample-size concerns about the playoffs. I disagree with this pretty strongly. There’s no reason MLB playoffs should be viewed any differently. The MLB baseball playoffs are ultra intense and arguably the most difficult to sustain regular season numbers in all of team sports. Manny is rated as highly as he is not just because of the regular season offensive stats on the back of his baseball card, but because he is arguably one of the 5 greatest postseason batters of all-time. Ortiz is similar. I’ll take a closer look at Clemente for the next update. RE: Beltre–I think we differ on how much defense should be weighted. Beltre was a fabulous defensive 3B, but I don’t think it’s enough to carry his 116 OPS+ into the tier that includes Ortiz and Cabrera. Beltre had just three seasons over a 140 OPS+. Ortiz and Cabrera averaged that. Longevity is an important piece, but extraordinary peaks are arguably more important, IMO. I’ll take another look at Beltre’s placement in the next update to see if a move makes sense.

       3). Koufax-Gibson is a toss-up. No qualms with Gibson over Koufax. I’ve gone back and forth more times than I’d like to admit, and that’ll probably continue to happen. However, Koufax is the only player in MLB history to win three Cy Young Awards and two World Series MVPs. He is the only player in MLB history to lead the league in ERA five consecutive seasons. Koufax is the only pitcher since 1908 to lead the league in FIP for six consecutive seasons. Koufax also led the league in WHIP four consecutive seasons which is the record. Koufax’s resume is filled with things that nobody else has done. Those are multipliers on a list like this, at least for me anyway. It’s a peak vs. longevity comparison, for sure. Koufax’s resume is more unique and he was a better pitcher in both the regular season and the playoffs. At least for today, that’s enough to offset Gibson’s longevity advantage.

       4). I appreciate the breakdown. I just took a look at Fangraphs and that was much easier to see where the inputs are coming from with respect to the final WAR tally. Any statistic, IMO, that purports to show Perdomo’s offensive value in 2025 to be equal to or better than Ohtani’s even when it’s goal is to equalize for positional value has a bug. I can’t imagine that given a random sample of baseball GMs or informed fans that you’d find even a handful who would rather have Perdomo’s 2025 offensive output from the shortstop position over Ohtani’s output from the DH position, and that’s what bWAR is suggesting (6.8-6.7). I could be wrong, but my prediction is that it would be a blowout in favor of Ohtani. WAR is a great tool, but my point in the previous comment was that it shouldn’t be the only metric.

       5). There are 100 players who could reasonably hold a place in the last 10-15 spots on the NBA list. Beal is certainly not a must-include. However, a .509% on twos and a .376% on threes with his volume is a rarity. Back-to-back 30-point seasons with that sort of efficiency on a low tier franchise is unique among player resumes. There have been a lot of chuckers on bad teams who didn’t come close to scoring the way Beal did. I mentioned it earlier, but accomplishing something that few (or nobody) have accomplished is a multiplier. Beal has 5 50-point games. Every player to accomplish that feat is either in the Hall of Fame, or a sure-fire future Hall of Famer. He hasn’t been a great defender, sure, but his resume is unique enough to be a back-end candidate. Of all of the lists, the basketball list is the one with the weakest back end. That’s changing pretty quickly, though, and will probably cease to be the case in the next 10 years.

       6). I agree on Draymond.

       7). The difference in our view on Russell comes down to how we view the competitiveness of the league at the time. Given the demographic make-up of the league with respect to the best players that existed in the world at the time, my view of the competition level in the 50s and 60s is very, very low. Russell was clearly a dominant player. He was an elite defender. Given his athletic superiority and how bereft of talent the league was at the time, he should’ve dominated the league offensively more akin to Chamberlain. That he didn’t is a very important data point, IMO. It was a league where being tall was, by far, the most important attribute. Now, it’s merely a prerequisite. Anyone who rates Russell within the top 10 or 15 simply doesn’t view that era as competitively compromised as I do. It’s all defensible, IMO.

       8). Agree on TS+. I have relied largely on judging players by the expectations of their era. That’s how Kobe lands in the top-ten. It’s also how Adrian Dantley lands where he does. His 116 TS+ is astronomical for a player with his shot and scoring volume. It’s the highest mark in history among players with a career average of at least 20 ppg. However, I do appreciate the nudge to use it more in discussions.

       Thanks again for the time and effort you put into your analysis, MM. Getting that sort of perspective is always appreciated and incredibly valuable to the project as a whole.

19. 

    New Baseball fan here. I was just reading about Babe Ruth’s accomplishments and how does he only have 2 all-star appearances?

    1. 

       Ruth’s career started in 1914 and the first all-star game wasn’t until 1933. Had the game existed throughout his career, he would’ve had ~18 all-star selections.

20. 

    Hey Jake, just saw your response. Not sure how to reply directly so I’ll leave my reply here:

    1) I thought about your Griffey comments and I think this is fair. I guess in my mind I tend to bias in favor of giving Griffey, say, like 10% more slack for being a clean player in the steroid era (basically adjusting his runs created to a non-steroid era wOBA), but if I refuse to factor steroids in at all its hard to argue with your conclusion. Still, its an adjustment I’d prefer to make rather than not, but if you don’t want to give him that on the 1% chance he was a user, I think its a reasonable position to take.

    2) Re: Ortiz/Cabrera/Beltre: I get wanting to weight postseason accomplishments, there’s definitely too little emphasis on them in baseball. However, I feel like the way you do it might be over-counting the good runs relative to the bad ones. Ramirez and Ortiz had some iconic, monster runs that helped win titles. They also had some awful ones – in 95 and 97 for instance, Ramirez hit very poorly. All in all, their career OPS+/WRC+ are roughly the same in the regular season and playoffs. They were good postseason hitters because they maintained their high level of play vs bigger competition. But because baseball is so streaky / variance heavy by nature compared to basketball/football, I’m not totally comfortable just over-highlighting the monster runs as some intrinsic playoff riser moments when there are also some massive dud moments. For Manny, of course, its notable that 95 and 97 were at the very beginning of his career, so if you want to discount them for that reason, sure – but Ortiz would hit 200 OPS one year and then like 70 the very next in the playoffs.

    3. Re: beltre / cabrera offense: the one thing I think you’re undercounting was how bad Ortiz and Cabrera were on the basepaths. I think that cuts into their offense a bit more – for example, a 170 OPS+ season from Cabrera is actually the offensive equivalent of a 160 OPS+ season from a neutral baserunner like Beltre. Combined with the significantly better defense (I think peak Beltre probably was 10-15 runs better than an average 3B if not more, and Cabrera was 8-10 runs worse than the average 3B) and its enough for me to put them in the same tier. Of course, there’s no perfect way to resolve differing value and no metric for this is perfect, but that’s how I generally view this comparison.

    4. Fair enough re: Koufax/Gibson – I do think you might be underrating some of Gibson’s iconic playoff moments though, like his 17K record-setting game 1 of the 68 world series. I can certainly appreciate the argument that Koufax had the better 3-5 year peak though. Personally the longevity still puts Gibson over for me but its definitely the same tier of player.

    5. Every GM would take Ohtani DH hitting over Perdomo shortstop hitting, yes, but not for the reason you think. Perdomo’s peripherals are the real problem here – he has elite plate discipline marks but bad physical marks – low bat speed, low hard hit, etc. He improved from “among league worst” to “1 standard deviation below the mean” in the physical metrics last year, but its very hard for GMs to think those marks are reproducible – most models believe he got lucky and will regress to a 110-115 OPS+ player unless he adds more power / bat speed and consistently proves his discipline can carry him. The other consideration is, of course health – DHs have lower injury risk than shortstops (though of course Ohtani pitches so it doesn’t necessarily apply here). However, if Perdomo was actually producing 130-140 OPS+ offense as a shortstop over 3-4 seasons with good peripherals vs a 170 OPS+ DH – yes, I do think GMs would view them as a similar caliber of offensive output, maybe Ohtani slightly higher, with the main caveat being injury risk considerations. The DH penalty to WAR being as extreme as it is might seem unfair on first glance, but its a real roster constraint with a lot of opportunity cost. To put it another way – if Corey Seager (136 wRC+ career) with no health risks and DH-only Shohei were both free agents, they would be seen as equally valuable.

    6. Gonna put my thoughts on Beal/Dantley/NBA offense in one place – the point I’m making about offense is slightly different from what I think you’re getting at. My argument is that measuring offense cannot be done solely through offensive creation (points/assists/efficiency) since offense has way more moving parts in basketball than baseball . Those things aren’t irrelevant, but I think box-only metrics only get like, 70-75 percent of the way there – there’s a reason optimizing on/off metrics and developing off-ball signals are finding more and more weight in modern models. There’s a lot of things off-ball that matter: how well do you scale with elite teammates, how well do you create spacing gravity, what offensive sets are available to the team when you’re on the court, do you move and cut, how does the defense react, etc. If a player can only score with their back to the basket and can’t set screens and doesn’t space, and can’t find open teammates, then sure when they catch the ball on the low block there’s a lot of easy buckets, but a lot of possessions also end with him passing the ball out of a help situation where he didn’t identify the best pass, the defense recovering quickly, and a teammate being forced to chuck up a brick. So their ppg / TS will look great and their usage isn’t over-bloated, but they aren’t systematically as valuable to their offense as you’d think.

    This is the core of my Dantley argument – I think as good of a pure scorer as he was, he didn’t really do the little things off ball that are hard, but not impossible to quantify, to elevate him to 42 – though I would still consider him something like the 60th best player ever. I feel somewhat similarly about Beal – he does theoretically have more off-ball value with his 3 point shooting, but a combination of bad defense and declining off-ball movement after he became “the guy” cut into the value of those high scoring games more in my opinion.

    7. Re: Russell – there’s no argument that his offense was lacking. I just think his defense was more than enough to elevate him. The best way I can put it is how I did before – his teams offenses were awful, bottom of the league. Many of those hall of fame teammates got in off being in the right place at the right time. They won 55-60 games and the title every year because his defense was just that good. He may not have had offensive impact but he was nearly the defensive player Chamberlain was. Combined with my lower opinion of Wilt’s true offensive value (related to 6 above – I think his stat-chasing was to the detriment of the offense, imo Oscar Robertson was the best offensive weapon of the 1960’s) – its enough for me to have Russell > Wilt. I don’t necessarily disagree with your premise that the 60s were weak and need to be scaled down, its just the name I consider worthy of that 10-15 tier is a different one from you.

    Thanks for responding, nice talking to you. Always fun to have these debates

    1. 

       I appreciate the conversation, MM. Thanks for stopping by!

21. 

    Quick correction to my Ohtani / Perdomo thing – when I say offensive output, I mean relative to replacement. Shohei produced way more offense than Perdomo, but oWAR in baseball-reference is a measure of “how much better than a replacement player at your position are you”. In other words, it’s saying the difference between Perdomo and a replacement shortstop on offense is similar to Ohtani vs a replacement DH since the expectation for DH offense is that much higher when adjusted for position, because opportunity cost to taking the DH slot is high.

22. 

    This is a very well thought out list, probably better than the espn list.

    I know I won’t change your mind, but you gotta have Ruth #1. Putting Bonds ahead of Ruth is like putting LeBron ahead of Jordan. Sure there’s arguments in favor but Ruth/Jordan changed their game in a manner that will probably never be repeated. That being said, of course I’d want Bonds on my team, he was phenomenal! But if I have the 1st pick in an all time hypothetical draft, I’m still taking Ruth (or Jordan) ahead of Bonds (or LeBron) no questions asked.

    Also, the race argument isn’t as strong as you think. Nowadays, baseball has to compete with other sports for talent. Back in the 20’s baseball had no such competition. Yes segregation was a travesty, but the lack of competition for talent with other sports evens it out. The most talented athletes at the time played baseball. John Elway, Brett Favre etc in the 1920’s would have been training his while life to be an MLB pitcher.

    1. 

       Hey Mitch!

       I appreciate the compliment and the take. I can get onboard with Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan being the most influential baseball and basketball players of all time, respectively. It’s pretty hard to argue otherwise. That’s not this list, though. This list ranks the greatest players of all time based on their resumes, which emphasizes performance with respect to peers within the context of league strength. Ruth played in the weakest era in the history of baseball. Baseball players hadn’t even figured out the value of the home run, yet. Jordan played without a meaningful international presence. Both played in very weak eras. You make a good point about baseball monopolizing the best athletes in the early part of the 20th century. However, segregation meant that Ruth didn’t have to face the best baseball players in the world. He didn’t have to battle Josh Gibson for the home run crown or attempt to hit home runs off Satchel Paige. The MLB competition level prior to 1947 was artificially watered down as a result and Ruth and the rest of the league benefited. Bonds had no such luck. He competed against all of the best baseball players in the world. I’ve written and sourced extensively why Bonds and L. James hold the top spots on these lists, so you know where I stand. However, there is nothing unreasonable about putting Ruth and Jordan on top. There is plenty of ammunition to do so, especially if your list emphasizes “influence.”