Past, Present, Future 5 Tool Players...

[Fred]

Just my opinion...

If you start figuring out who the 5 tool players out then you gotta know what the 5 tools are.

The toughest part is the defense and the arm. We can pretty much only rely on stories from the past.

Offensive stats are a bit different, they are related to eras (dead ball/live ball) and can be more easily judged.

If a player led his league in SBs or HRs then you can deduce that the player had that/those tools. If the player was near the top in those categories (they may not have led the league but were close) then that (imo) applies towards deriving at the player having those offensive tools.

If a player only stole 12 bags (at the most) in a year and the league leaders were near that then you could say he had relative speed. If the league leaders were consistently at 30 then I wouldn't be giving him that tool. He could have been an exceptional player with great speed but he didn't really have that SB tool in his arsenal. To me, that player is a 4 tool player (if he truly posseses the tools).

Also, lets look at this realistically, if you want to give credit to a player being a 5 tool player then some people might consider Jose Canseco because he was a 40/40 player (first one) and they may just decide to throw the fielding tools at him because they didn't know any better. I still love that video of that ball bouncing off his head for a homerun! Jose was a tool... but not a 5 tool player.

Now that I've taken the fun out of this, carry on...