ESPN posted their top 100 Baseball Players this week.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...s-all-nos-25-1
Their top 10:
1) Ruth
2) Mays
3) Aaron
4) Cobb
5) Ted Williams
6) Gehrig
7) Mantle
8) Bonds
9) Walter Johnson
10) Stan Musial
Rounding out the top 25: 11) Pedro 12) Wagner 13) K Griffey Jr. 14) Maddux 15) Trout 16) DiMaggio 17) Clemens 18) Schmidt 19) F Robinson 20) Hornsby 21) Cy Young 22) Seaver 23) Rickey Henderson 24) Randy Johnson 25) Christy Mathewson
I think its a pretty defensible list, with a decent balance of old-timers and recent guys. Maybe pitchers could have done better on the list (Carlton was 58, Grover Cleveland Alexander 57, Kershaw 52, Feller 50, Spahn was 47, Satchel Paige 41, WaJo could be top 5). But I think they did a decent job of balancing peak vs. overall WAR with maybe a higher emphasis on peak. They had some peak guys pretty high with Koufax at 32, and Bob Gibson at 33.
I think Cap Anson was the only 19th Century player. No Kid Nichols, Dan Brouthers, etc.
I do think Jeter was probably ranked too high at 28. I don't think he is better than every catcher to ever play the game (Bench was the highest ranked catcher at 29) or a lot of players ranked lower than him.
I would have liked to see Sam Crawford, Al Simmons, Goose Goslin, and Carl Hubbell make the list, but they didn't. Ed Walsh and Dizzy didn't make it either.