Who is the greatest player of all time by position?

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by G1911

Yogi's consistency is why I pick him too. Bench was incredible, every other year or so. Wins the MVP in 1970, in 1971 he has an OBP under .300. Wins the MVP in 1972, slashes .253/.345/.429 the next year, which isn't terrible but not that impressive. 1974 and 1975 he's excellent, super star seasons, and in 1976 he's just a hair over the league average. Bench has huge up and down spikes through his prime years, which the Bench argument tends to simply ignore instead of arguing that centralizing performance in certain years is more valuable to winning championships. Berra was consistently excellent, picking Berra you know what you are getting. Bench, he might be better but he might be worse too. Campanella had a similar trajectory, a lot of catchers have.

Bench and Berra have very similar career statistics in pretty much every hitting category. There are two main reasons why Bench is better. Berra literally never led the league in anything--no black ink (although, considering DiMaggio and Mantle were his teammates, this is not terribly surprising). Bench had some of the best years of any catcher ever, leading the league in multiple categories. Yes this also means that he had some comparatively down years, but even in those years he hit 25+ homers and managed to have a WAR of 4 or better for 12 straight years.

But the main reason Bench is better than Berra is fielding. Berra's career dWar is under 10, and Bench was close to 20. Bench was better at pretty much every facet of catching.