Barely OT: ESPN Ranking Greatest Players
 

They are counting down to the top 25, to be posted tomorrow, but there's already 26 to 100 to debate. Interesting that they rank Eddie Collins ahead of Nap Lajoie--while card prices DO NOT. Then there are the eternal then and now contrasts, e.g. Steve Carlton rated ahead of Matty. Enjoy:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/feature/video...st-mlb-players

This list made my head hurt. I had a couple long posts on their facebook page about it. The list reeks of too many people like Mitch Williams and John Kruk adding their input, as opposed to people who have a grasp of baseball history before the 60's

Well, presume they will name the Babe #1--since he would have likely made the Hall strictly as a pitcher if he'd never switched to OF.

Dennis Eckersley? Really?

Tim Raines ahead of Ed Delahanty, and by A LOT?

Fergie Jenkins WAY ahead of Rube Waddell?

I got from number 100 to number 60 and just quit, waste of everyones time.

Rhys

Obviously, they favor the modern day players over the old timers......

Yeah but my sense is that most folks here do exactly the opposite and underrate modern players.

From memory Bill James ranks Collins well ahead of Lajoie too.

One big joke: Drysdale ranked so high. 209-156 pitching mainly with good teams, in pitcher's park.

He was only 32 when he retired though, so that's a little deceptive.

And he was on Beverly Hillbillies.:D:D:D

Anyone who ranks Lefty Grove at 47 is no "expert".

I believe the reason for the modern players favoritism is so that they can show highlight footage of that player's career during the broadcast, how would they do that for Ed Delahanty or Cap Anson?

Barry Larkin well ahead of Al Simmons? Come on now, did they take a look at some of Simmons batting averages?

drysdale on the brady bunch too.

Collins over lajoie?? Not even close.....forget collin's length of play, he can't compare to nap......

Always thought Larkin was comically overrated, and was shocked to see him in the top 100 at all, let alone ahead of guys like Simmons, Gehringer, Anson, and Biggio.

He does rate ahead of Lajoie according to the newest win share metric featured on baseball reference. And as mentioned Bill James rates Collins well ahead of Lajoie. It isn't crazy even if you disagree.

Tops 100 list anything is an intellectually deficient idea from the start. With ESPN, it's strictly done as a ratings/page hits thing. That's how they make their money.

Seriously, ESPN and their ilk will make a few bad picks just for the controversy/eyeballs.

"Top 100 novelists"-- How you the Hell do objectively pick novelist #34?

Top 100 lists, Rock 'n Roll Museum-- you're getting an idea what offends my intellect.

P.s., I believe Don Drysdale appeared on Leave it to Beaver too. Steve Carleton hit Al Bundy in the head with a baseball on Married With Children. Don't know how that was factored into his ranking.

P.s.s. Why isn't Don Drysdale in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame? Discuss.

P.s.s.s. I just realized there was a Mr. Drysdale on Beverly Hillbillies. This is getting eerie. On 12/12/12 too. Discuss.

P.s.s.s.s. I know a woman who is of Mayan ancestry. Very cute. I rank her at least a #49.

I stopped looking through when I saw Pedro Martinez ahead of Lefty Grove & Grover Alexander.

I thought the same thing about Nolan Ryan ahead of those two.

Don Drysdale did appear on an episode of Leave it to Beaver. I guess it was easy for him to do TV since the studios were in or around Los Angeles.

+1

If your talking about the greatest pitcher and longevity is not a BIG part of the equation, Pedro Martinez is the greatest pitcher of all time.

He had the best 5 year period of any pitcher ever and that includes Grove, Koufax, ect.........

These questions are not a waste of time. Discussing subjects like this is what make sports great. Not as great as Pedro but great just the same.

These lists have about as much merit as the NCAA Football Coaches Poll

Pedro Martinez is the greatest pitcher of all-time?

I needed that laugh this morning. Thank you :)
(No offense, Red Sawk fans. I do admire your passion though!)


Now, if we are talking about most cowardly hurlers of all-time.....Mr. Martinez, come get your major award.

Still laughing at Shoeless Joe being an honorable mention, but Gwynn being over 30 spots higher than him. Jackson had the 3rd highest batting avg and gwynn was a 1 trick pony with batting avg too. Neither were fast or had great arms so having Gwynn noticably over Jackson is a joke.

But Gwynn did has 56 steals one year :)

Not saying he's better than Joe though

Why because Pedro was more dominant?

They got to the top ten today and no shock, the Babe took the crown, but in a bit of a surprise (though perhaps deserved) Willie Mays finished 2nd. Then, in some kind of order, Ted, Hank, Barry, Ty, Clemens (they had said out front that cheating was allowed).

But check out the other picks from there, you'll find plenty to argue with--for example, Randy Johnson finishing well ahead of Matty, and so on.

+1

Ok that ranking is ridiculous, in my opinion. Just to cite a few glaring issues: Mariano Rivera is so far superior to any other reliever that ranking him 67 is an embarassment, Clemens at 7 no way, not even in the top 20 in my opinion, lastly Morgan at 19 way overrated here (can you tell me Morgan should be ahead of Bench?).

Im a bonds fan, but i never knew this stat:

In 2004, this guy reached base 376 times, walked 232 times and was intentionally walked 120 times. In one year. And here's my all-time favorite Bonds stat: Even if he'd gotten no hits that year, he still would have had a higher OBP than the player who led the league in hits. --Jayson Stark

Joe Morgan's better than Dimaggio? Amazing.

Pedro at his peak was as good as or better than anyone. His career stats of course fall short of some of the pitchers with more longevity.

I dont get the hype either over Joe Morgan, come on, are you kidding me?

Outside of Hornsby's 1920-1925, Joe Morgan's 1972-1977 is probably the best stretch by a second baseman in the history of baseball. He could hit for average and power, stole 50+ bases, walked 100+ times a year, and was a gold glove fielder.

His announcing career hasn't helped his image, as people tend to be annoyed by him, and that opinion seems to bleed over to the image of him as a player. I wouldn't have ranked him as highly as ESPN, but a spot around number 30 seems about right.

He was one of the best for a certain number of seasons, (12 great seasons) 11 in a row (also 3 of them his ERA was mid to Hi 3's)- BUT some of the grates pitched great for longer.

I think thats the point of this ranking, not who had the best career, but who was the best player taking into account "prime" years. I agree Pedro was insane those few years, but I stil can't see him ranked that high... I think Koufax would be way higher, but he is taxed because he didnt play long enough

When I saw they included all the "roid & HGH" players, I dismissed the whole project.

John

To me if this list is based on pure ability and talent Ken Griffey Jr. is the second best baseball player of all time behind Ruth.

I'm very surprised that Rube Waddell and Dazzy Vance were both excluded from the Top 50. When Waddell played he was the most dominating pitcher to ever play Major League baseball. And Vance was just as dominating. How many guys lead the league in strikeouts 7 years in a row?

Griffey at 34 is a joke, he should be way closer to the top 20

+1

The problem with that thinking on the "roid" players is who can you positively confirm never did anything that is now against MLB rules? The answer is 100% absolutely no one that has played since the 70's and then before that, we all have heard the stories about how easy it was to get pills. Basically, if you could walk into the clubhouse, you could get amphetamines in the 60's. So unless you want to do a list of only pre-1950 players, then you're going to have to include everyone who has played. Just because someone like Jeter or Larkin didn't get caught, doesn't mean they didn't do it, so don't pretend like 10-15 people are guilty and everyone else was clean during an era with no rules in place against it.

Thinking that way, I have no problem seeing a list of the top 100 players pre-1950, definitely would be more interesting than this list.

i don't agree, I love Griffey but his batting average was never that good, his walks were so-so, and as great as he was in the 90s he only won one MVP. Not a top 20 of all time by any means in my view. Maybe the 6th best CF of all time behind Cobb Mays Speaker Dimaggio and Mantle.

Steroids or no steroids I think Cobb should be ranked number three (if not higher). Remember, the people who saw both Cobb and Ruth gave Cobb more HOF votes (and it wasn't like Cobb was loved). I think Bonds is rated way too high, Clemens too high(and I have always been a huge Roger Clemens fan), Mantle too high, Hornsby way too low. My order would be:

Ruth, Cobb, Mays, Aaron, Hornsby, Johnson, Gehrig, Wagner, Williams, Henderson, .........

Top ten nonpitchers, taking roid stats at face value: Ruth, Cobb, Mays, Williams, Bonds, Musial, Aaron, Gehrig, Wagner, Dimaggio.

"I never saw anyone like Ty Cobb. No one even close to him. He was the greatest all time ballplayer. That guy was superhuman, amazing." - Casey Stengel

.

+1...love him or hate him, he was absolutely incredible.

Totally agree. What's the point of such a list with the juicers? Some of their descriptions don't even mention the steroids (eg. Mark Steroid McGwire, Manny Suspended for Steroids Ramirez)Really?

Chipper Jones is better than Jackie Robinson? Really?

Bagwell was better than Frank Thomas? Really?

Biggio is the 90th best ballplayer in history? Really?

How can anyone take this list seriously?

Frank Thomas is a guy I think is criminally overlooked. He was incredible in his peak years.

Yes

Chipper Jones was a heck of a hitter for a very long time - after his rookie season, he drove in 100 runs or more the next 8 years in a row. As the capsule on the list says, he is one of only 14 players to ever have a career .300 Avg/.400 Obp/.500 Slg - he's right there with Eddie Murray as the best switch hitter not named Mickey Mantle.

As a met fan - and someone who hated chipper his whole career, he was an awesome ball player and a 1st ballot HOF, and IMO better than jackie

This may be the first list I have ever seen that did not rank Johnson as the best pitcher. As great as Mantle was I would not put him as high as 9th, ahead of Gehrig and well ahead of DiMaggio.

Nolan Ryan better than Bob Gibson??? Steve Carlton, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux better than Christy Mathewson??? Phil Niekro better than Eddie Plank, Carl Hubbell and Rube Waddell??? Roger Clemens the greatest pitcher of all time???
What a joke....

Not to belabor the point on the "roids & HGH" players but when comparing the effect of amphetamines to roids and HGH there is no comparison. Amphetamines are antifatigue agents but do not enhance strength, promote tissue growth, or accelerate healing. HGH especially can increase the amount of fast twitch muscle fiber which in turn would translate into faster bat speed. It's a serious step up in artificially boosting your performance.

Agree on almost every count - Ryan couldn't carry Gibson's jock. If my life was riding on a baseball game, I'd probably choose Gibson in his prime to pitch it - he was a money pitcher of the highest order.

I would argue the Maddux point though - he was pretty much the modern day Matty in that he played for a relatively dominant team of his time and was noted as much for pitching with his brain as much as his stuff. The difference is that Maddux pitched a large part of his career in an era that was a hitter's paradise, making his numbers even more impressive.

What a baffling list. Clemens over Cy Young? I will defend the Pedro Martinez ranking, though. I saw him in his prime and he was absolutely sensational. It was fireworks. Pretty much all the guys in Boston who've seen him will defend him. There will never be another one in our lifetime like that.

Doesn't matter, they're all against the rules. If those players from the 60's had the same rules in place as they do now, the numbers would've diminished. If they had HGH available, you can guarantee the numbers would've went up. They had amphetamines, and they used them freely from what we have heard. You want to hold the players from the "steroid" era to high standards when no rules were in place, then you have to hold the older players to the same standards because both groups were breaking later rules.

What you have to do is be able to compare the players to their own generation, and that is how you figure out who is the best. Steroids don't make you an all-time great, in some cases they can hurt. Rondell White, Ruben Sierra and Carlos Baerga all bulked up a lot over one off-season and all of them slumped badly because they were too bulky.

No one here knows who was actually clean during the steroid era, so how do you rate any of them high? If you want to eliminate a few, aka the usual suspects, then you have to eliminate them all.

Since I can't positively name one clean person from the 60's on, and unless there is a clean baseball player on this board we don't know about, no one else here can either. So I go back to the method of weighing the players against players from their own time period. The early 2000's had big stats all around, so a 50 home run season doesn't hold as much weight as a 50 homer season from the 1930's, etc

It's amazing that in hindsight, the steroid era was actually 4-5 bad guys beating up on all the clean guys, or at least that is what the story has been changed to... :rolleyes:

One thing to remember about Pedro, Maddux and Randy Johnson is that they were going up against all those juicers. The league ERA's were astronomical, and they were still putting up incredible numbers.

Agreed - that same kind of context also makes Lefty Grove and Carl Hubbell look even better than they were at first glance. Pitching in an era where a .300 batting average wasn't particularly impressive can put a big hurting on a pitcher's numbers.

You make a good case. I guess I was looking more broadly at what Jackie did for baseball and the country.

From his Wikipedia page...

"In 1999, he was named by Time on its list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Also in 1999, he ranked number 44 on the Sporting News list of Baseball's 100 Greatest Players and was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team as the top vote-getter among second basemen. Baseball writer Bill James, in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, ranked Robinson as the 32nd greatest player of all time strictly on the basis of his performance on the field, noting that he was one of the top players in the league throughout his career"

That is where people usually differ when it comes to Robinson's place on these kind of lists - some want to give him extra points for historical impact while others like myself will ignore it. To me, his legacy is best seen by looking at the list itself, and seeing Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Frank Robinson, etc - players who may not have been on there if not for Jackie Robinson's courage.

I don't know enough about the exact methods James uses to rebut him in an informed way, but if I'm making the list Robinson probably comes in fifth at his position and likely between 60 and 70 overall. Hornsby, Collins, Joe Morgan, and Lajoie would be ahead of him in that order, with Robinson next just ahead of Gehringer and Biggio. Longevity was really Robinson's huge issue, through no fault of his own as he got started late, but he only had a five year stretch where you could call him great.

I have not seen list yet my top 10
 

10 Mike Schmidt
9 Hank Aaron
8 Lou Gehrig
7 Stan Musial
6 Ted Williams
5 Honus Wagner
4 Willie Mays
3 Ty Cobb
2 Barry Bonds
1 Babe Ruth


I made list based on how they were against contemporaries in my opinion. I dont know what the espn criteria was. If it was who would be thebest in todays game list would be different and i filed to include a single pitcher.PS I actually hated Schmidt growing up but he was a true force for a decade+. And an amazing defensive player as well.

Before Griffey got traded to Cincinnati, Sports Illustrated did a similar type thing and Griffey was ranked number 3 best player EVER (around 2000 so not a rookie year thing) and I dont think anyone at that time disagreed. He was as much of a Baseball phenomenon as anyone since Willie Mays and his impact on the game is the reason half the guys my age started to collect Baseball Cards etc. I think he should still be in the top 10 for sure. He gets hammered because his numbers were constantly overshadowed by the roid guys because he was putting up 56-58 home runs when guys like Bonds, McGwire and Sosa were jacking 70. His name has never been linked to roids ever and he gets the shaft (in my opinion).

Rhys

I would agree, I think the years/partial seasons he lost to injuries hurt his legacy quite a bit. The only offensive player who was anywhere near him in the 90's was Griffey.

Even with lots of extra points for being a third baseman, I can't see Schmidt -- a .267 lifetime hitter -- in the top ten of all time. Our lists are very similar other than my having Dimaggio at 10 though.

soooo u dont think Johnson was on the juice??? or hgh?? come on man - piazza was too, so were most of them, its all good

My point was that Maddux, Pedro, and Randy Johnson look more impressive given that they pitched in an era that favored hitters, in the same way that Hubbell and Grove did. Pitching under those circumstances was harder than it was to pitch in the early 1900s or the 1960s, and should be taken into account when ranking them.

I have no idea whether Randy Johnson was on steroids/HGH or not - I did see him pitch against the Cubs when he just came up with the Expos, and he had great stuff right from the start, it was just a matter of him learning how to pitch rather than trying to overpower everyone. No doubts at all that Piazza was on it though.