ESPN's 100 Greatest MLB Players
1. Babe Ruth, RF/LHP
Career: 1914-35, Red Sox, Yankees, Braves
Fun fact: 714 homers, two 20-win seasons
There is no doubt that the Babe was the greatest player who ever lived. That doesn't mean he was the greatest person.
Years ago, I was sitting at a picnic table in the Yankees' clubhouse when Pete Sheehy, the ancient clubhouse man, plopped down opposite me. I asked him, "Pete, you knew Ruth -- what was he like?" Pete thought for a moment, and said, "He never flushed the toilet." -- Steve Wulf
2. Willie Mays, CF
Career: 1951-73, Giants, Mets
Fun fact: Played in 24 All-Star Games
Mays, after Babe Ruth, is the greatest player of all time: 660 home runs, 3,283 hits, 1,903 RBIs, 338 stolen bases, 12 Gold Gloves (they weren't awarded before 1957) and he made every All-Star team from 1954-73.
When Mays came to the majors in 1951, no one had ever seen anyone like him. Even now, he remains the greatest combination of power, speed and defense in baseball history. -- Tim Kurkjian
3. Barry Bonds, LF
Career: 1986-2007, Pirates, Giants
Fun fact: Single-season (73) and career (762) home run leader
I don't know for sure what funky vitamins Barry Bonds took or didn't take. I just know the stuff he did on the field still boggles my mind.
In 2004, he reached base 376 times, walked 232 times and was intentionally walked 120 times. In one year. And my favorite Bonds stat: Even with no hits that year, he would've had a higher OBP than the man who led the league in hits. --Jayson Stark
4. Ted Williams, LF
Career: Red Sox, 1939-60
Fun fact: .344 hitter; zero 200-hit seasons
The Splendid Splinter carried a bat to class in high school and once proclaimed, "A man has to have goals … and that was mine, to have people say, 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.'"
He won six batting titles, led his league 12 times in OBP and nine times in slugging percentage. At 41, he hit .316 and slugged .645. That goal just may have come true. --David Schoenfield
5. Hank Aaron, RF
Career: 1954-76, Braves, Brewers
Fun fact: Most career RBIs (2,297)
He dealt with hate mail, oppressive media scrutiny and the ghost of Babe Ruth en route to setting baseball's career home run record of 755. Along the way, Aaron "expressed no more agitation than a man brushing aside a housefly," wrote Sports Illustrated's Ron Fimrite. Amazingly, Aaron never surpassed 47 homers in a season.
He just kept showing up for work each day, quietly wielding that hammer. --Jerry Crasnick
6. Ty Cobb, CF
Career: 1905-28, Tigers, Athletics
Fun fact: Highest career average (.366)
While he won't win any "Good Guy" awards, Cobb was one of baseball's greatest, winning 11 batting titles, stealing 897 bases and finishing with a record .366 average.
He was so respected as a player that Cobb received more Hall of Fame votes than Babe Ruth. And he was so disliked as a person that biographer Al Stump said only three people from baseball showed at his funeral. --Jim Caple
7. Roger Clemens, RHP
Career: 1984-2007, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees, Astros
Fun fact: Record seven Cy Youngs
The images flash through your mind: the 20 strikeouts against Seattle, the TV shot of him nervously watching the end of Game 6 in the '86 World Series, the meltdown in the 1990 playoffs, another 20-strikeout game, the dominance in Toronto, finally getting a ring, Game 7 in 2001.
Seven Cy Youngs and 354 wins … then the end. What will you remember? --David Schoenfield
8. Stan Musial, 1B/OF
Career: 1941-63, Cardinals
Fun fact: 1,815 hits both home and road
The Man led the league in batting seven times, hit 475 home runs, scored nearly as many runs (1,949) as he drove in (1,951), won three MVP awards, and made 20 All-Star Games.
Not bad for a guy who started his career as a pitcher (he was 18-5 with a 2.62 ERA for the Cardinals' Class D team in 1940, his final season on the mound). --Jim Caple
9. Mickey Mantle, CF
Career: 1951-68, Yankees
Fun fact: World Series-record 18 homers
Named after Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, Mantle hit home runs as far as Babe Ruth from both sides of the plate and when young could run like the wind.
He won three MVP Awards and could have won more. He drank too much and his knees went bad, but there's still only one Mick. "All I had was natural ability," he once said. There's no doubt Mantle was born to play ball. --David Schoenfield
10. Honus Wagner, SS
Career: 1897-1917, Pirates
Fun fact: Eight-time batting champion
The Flying Dutchman -- who is the greatest shortstop ever -- was an eight-time batting champion who hit .328 for his career. Wagner was so good that he actually took the Pirates to the World Series. (Really, you can look it up.)
And if you happen to have his T206 baseball card, you're advised to not clip it to the spokes of your bicycle to make a whirring sound. --Jim Caple
11. Lou Gehrig, 1B
Career: 1923-39, Yankees
Fun fact: Record 23 grand slams
The real disconnect between Lou Gehrig and Gary Cooper, the actor who portrayed him in "Pride of the Yankees," was that Cooper didn't act like a native New Yorker.
Raised in Yorkville, educated at Columbia, Gehrig was a true New York Yankee. When people imitate Gehrig's farewell speech, they're really imitating Cooper. Listen to the original clip of the speech. You'll hear his New York accent. --Steve Wulf
12. Walter Johnson, RHP
Career: 1907-27, Senators
Fun fact: 36 wins, 1.14 ERA in 1913
Some say Johnson possessed the fastest fastball of all time. Some say he was the merely the first to throw hard every pitch.
He won 417 games and in 1913 went 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA and 11 shutouts. His greatest moment came when, at age 36, his Senators finally reached the World Series. After losing twice, he entered Game 7 in the ninth and pitched four scoreless innings for the W. -- David Schoenfield
13. Greg Maddux, RHP
Career: 1986-2008, Cubs, Braves, others
Fun fact: Won four consecutive Cy Youngs
Bud Black, who had the good fortune to manage Greg Maddux and David Wells in San Diego, observed that the two pitchers had this in common. "They believe in strikes," Black said, "and they believe in them often."
Combine an encyclopedic knowledge of hitters with a natural fearlessness and a repeatable delivery, and you have a four-time Cy Young recipient and 355-game winner. --Jerry Crasnick
14. Rickey Henderson
Career: 1979-2003, A's, Yankees, 7 others
Fun fact: All-time leader in runs, steals
Rickey once missed a game because of frostbite in August, finished the home run trot that gave him the career record for runs by sliding into home and allegedly didn't cash a $100,000 paycheck so he could frame it instead.
If you did all that and scored more runs and stole more bases than anyone else, you would refer to yourself in the third person, too. --Jim Caple
15. Rogers Hornsby, 2B
Career: 1915-37, Cardinals, Cubs, others
Fun fact: Led NL in BA/OBP/SLG each year from 1920-25
As the Cubs lined up their prospects every spring, Hornsby (a batting instructor) delivered a verdict: "You're not going to make it."
To Billy Williams, he said, "You'll be a major leaguer." Great, thought Ron Santo, I'm next to the guy he likes. Then he told Santo, "You'll be a major leaguer." The Hall of Famer picked out two Hall of Famers. -- Steve Wulf
16. Albert Pujols
Career: 2001-, Cardinals, Angels
Fun fact: He and Miguel Cabrera are only Hall of 100 members to debut this century.
No one has had a first 10 seasons like Pujols, who hit .300 with 30 homers and 100 RBIs in each of those years.
He's close to being among the five greatest hitters ever, passing Lou Gehrig as the greatest first baseman, and hitting 700 homers. One more MVP and he joins Barry Bonds as the only players with more than three.
Hall of 100 methodology
Explaining how we ranked the top 100 players in baseball history
The debate about baseball's Hall of Fame is starting to become a lot more about the voters than the players, so we decided to change the conversation and get away from character clauses, who might have taken PEDs and what impact those PEDs might have had.
Simply put, we asked our panel of experts to rank the top 100 players in history based entirely on performance on the field.
Unlike the Hall of Fame debates, which tend to focus on steroids or players on the fringe, we decided to create a body where the discussion would have nothing to do with drugs and be more about debating Mantle vs. Mays as opposed to Rice vs. Dawson.
Ranking the top 100 players in baseball history is no easy feat, and including active players -- which we did -- adds another layer of complication. In order to figure out which active players to include, we decided to build our ballot based on statistics and asked voters to go from there.
• For this year -- and all years going forward -- we only asked our panelists to vote on active players who ranked in the top 150 as a pitcher or a hitter, and you can see the 17 names who qualified for this year's ballot, as well as the results, by clicking here. Unlike the Hall of Fame, we don't want to judge retired players year after year, so we will only vote on those who are still playing. And yes, the ranking for active players will change from year to year, depending on how they perform.
• We asked our panel of 30-plus experts -- including Jayson Stark, David Schoenfield, Tim Kurkjian and Jerry Crasnick -- to give each player a score of zero to 100.
Grading guideline
0-20: A fine player, but he should not be in the discussion of the top 100 of all time
21-40: Great, but not great enough
41-60: I can live with him being in the top 100, but I don't agree
61-80: Definitely a case for the 100
81-100: This person is definitely in the top 100
• When grading active players, we asked them to grade based on how you would if their career ended today. (We plan to revisit this in years to come yet will keep the body limited to 100. So if someone moves in, everyone gets bumped down and possibly out.)
• We asked them to judge these players based purely on their on-field performance and only consider their performance in MLB. And because we based our ballot purely on stats in the American League or National League, we did not consider players who only played abroad or in the Negro Leagues.
• Reminder: There is no character clause. We do not care if they might have gambled on the game or taken PEDs. Nor do we care if they devoted time and money to charity. Again, this is only about performance on the field.
• Once we had everyone's scores, we tallied them up and ranked players based on their average score.
That's where GAR comes in. What GAR does is put career WAR in a historical context that takes into consideration both a player's career value and peak value. It starts with career WAR and adds a player's five-year peak WAR, multiplied by 1.6 to put peak and career on an equal scale. For a baseline, replacement level doesn't make sense -- typical replacement level is talent that's freely available, which just won't do when trying to separate the great from the greatest. Instead, we've chosen as the baseline the average of the 20th through 30th best at each position, that sweet spot at which you've stopped talking about inner-circle Hall of Famers and started talking about the fictional Hall of Very Good.
GAR is a blunt instrument, and it is not intended to end arguments but simply to add an additional statistical tool to look at when we argue about whether X was a greater ballplayer than Y, which we do endlessly this time of year.
Frustrated by the endless PED debate that has overtaken all Hall of Fame arguments, in 2013 ESPN.com created the Hall of 100, which was designed to recognize the 100 greatest players in baseball history.
Period.
Period.
1. Babe Ruth, RF/LHP
Career: 1914-35, Red Sox, Yankees, Braves
Fun fact: 714 homers, two 20-win seasons
There is no doubt that the Babe was the greatest player who ever lived. That doesn't mean he was the greatest person.
Years ago, I was sitting at a picnic table in the Yankees' clubhouse when Pete Sheehy, the ancient clubhouse man, plopped down opposite me. I asked him, "Pete, you knew Ruth -- what was he like?" Pete thought for a moment, and said, "He never flushed the toilet." -- Steve Wulf
2. Willie Mays, CF
Career: 1951-73, Giants, Mets
Fun fact: Played in 24 All-Star Games
Mays, after Babe Ruth, is the greatest player of all time: 660 home runs, 3,283 hits, 1,903 RBIs, 338 stolen bases, 12 Gold Gloves (they weren't awarded before 1957) and he made every All-Star team from 1954-73.
When Mays came to the majors in 1951, no one had ever seen anyone like him. Even now, he remains the greatest combination of power, speed and defense in baseball history. -- Tim Kurkjian
3. Barry Bonds, LF
Career: 1986-2007, Pirates, Giants
Fun fact: Single-season (73) and career (762) home run leader
I don't know for sure what funky vitamins Barry Bonds took or didn't take. I just know the stuff he did on the field still boggles my mind.
In 2004, he reached base 376 times, walked 232 times and was intentionally walked 120 times. In one year. And my favorite Bonds stat: Even with no hits that year, he would've had a higher OBP than the man who led the league in hits. --Jayson Stark
4. Ted Williams, LF
Career: Red Sox, 1939-60
Fun fact: .344 hitter; zero 200-hit seasons
The Splendid Splinter carried a bat to class in high school and once proclaimed, "A man has to have goals … and that was mine, to have people say, 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.'"
He won six batting titles, led his league 12 times in OBP and nine times in slugging percentage. At 41, he hit .316 and slugged .645. That goal just may have come true. --David Schoenfield
5. Hank Aaron, RF
Career: 1954-76, Braves, Brewers
Fun fact: Most career RBIs (2,297)
He dealt with hate mail, oppressive media scrutiny and the ghost of Babe Ruth en route to setting baseball's career home run record of 755. Along the way, Aaron "expressed no more agitation than a man brushing aside a housefly," wrote Sports Illustrated's Ron Fimrite. Amazingly, Aaron never surpassed 47 homers in a season.
He just kept showing up for work each day, quietly wielding that hammer. --Jerry Crasnick
6. Ty Cobb, CF
Career: 1905-28, Tigers, Athletics
Fun fact: Highest career average (.366)
While he won't win any "Good Guy" awards, Cobb was one of baseball's greatest, winning 11 batting titles, stealing 897 bases and finishing with a record .366 average.
He was so respected as a player that Cobb received more Hall of Fame votes than Babe Ruth. And he was so disliked as a person that biographer Al Stump said only three people from baseball showed at his funeral. --Jim Caple
7. Roger Clemens, RHP
Career: 1984-2007, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees, Astros
Fun fact: Record seven Cy Youngs
The images flash through your mind: the 20 strikeouts against Seattle, the TV shot of him nervously watching the end of Game 6 in the '86 World Series, the meltdown in the 1990 playoffs, another 20-strikeout game, the dominance in Toronto, finally getting a ring, Game 7 in 2001.
Seven Cy Youngs and 354 wins … then the end. What will you remember? --David Schoenfield
8. Stan Musial, 1B/OF
Career: 1941-63, Cardinals
Fun fact: 1,815 hits both home and road
The Man led the league in batting seven times, hit 475 home runs, scored nearly as many runs (1,949) as he drove in (1,951), won three MVP awards, and made 20 All-Star Games.
Not bad for a guy who started his career as a pitcher (he was 18-5 with a 2.62 ERA for the Cardinals' Class D team in 1940, his final season on the mound). --Jim Caple
9. Mickey Mantle, CF
Career: 1951-68, Yankees
Fun fact: World Series-record 18 homers
Named after Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, Mantle hit home runs as far as Babe Ruth from both sides of the plate and when young could run like the wind.
He won three MVP Awards and could have won more. He drank too much and his knees went bad, but there's still only one Mick. "All I had was natural ability," he once said. There's no doubt Mantle was born to play ball. --David Schoenfield
10. Honus Wagner, SS
Career: 1897-1917, Pirates
Fun fact: Eight-time batting champion
The Flying Dutchman -- who is the greatest shortstop ever -- was an eight-time batting champion who hit .328 for his career. Wagner was so good that he actually took the Pirates to the World Series. (Really, you can look it up.)
And if you happen to have his T206 baseball card, you're advised to not clip it to the spokes of your bicycle to make a whirring sound. --Jim Caple
11. Lou Gehrig, 1B
Career: 1923-39, Yankees
Fun fact: Record 23 grand slams
The real disconnect between Lou Gehrig and Gary Cooper, the actor who portrayed him in "Pride of the Yankees," was that Cooper didn't act like a native New Yorker.
Raised in Yorkville, educated at Columbia, Gehrig was a true New York Yankee. When people imitate Gehrig's farewell speech, they're really imitating Cooper. Listen to the original clip of the speech. You'll hear his New York accent. --Steve Wulf
12. Walter Johnson, RHP
Career: 1907-27, Senators
Fun fact: 36 wins, 1.14 ERA in 1913
Some say Johnson possessed the fastest fastball of all time. Some say he was the merely the first to throw hard every pitch.
He won 417 games and in 1913 went 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA and 11 shutouts. His greatest moment came when, at age 36, his Senators finally reached the World Series. After losing twice, he entered Game 7 in the ninth and pitched four scoreless innings for the W. -- David Schoenfield
13. Greg Maddux, RHP
Career: 1986-2008, Cubs, Braves, others
Fun fact: Won four consecutive Cy Youngs
Bud Black, who had the good fortune to manage Greg Maddux and David Wells in San Diego, observed that the two pitchers had this in common. "They believe in strikes," Black said, "and they believe in them often."
Combine an encyclopedic knowledge of hitters with a natural fearlessness and a repeatable delivery, and you have a four-time Cy Young recipient and 355-game winner. --Jerry Crasnick
14. Rickey Henderson
Career: 1979-2003, A's, Yankees, 7 others
Fun fact: All-time leader in runs, steals
Rickey once missed a game because of frostbite in August, finished the home run trot that gave him the career record for runs by sliding into home and allegedly didn't cash a $100,000 paycheck so he could frame it instead.
If you did all that and scored more runs and stole more bases than anyone else, you would refer to yourself in the third person, too. --Jim Caple
15. Rogers Hornsby, 2B
Career: 1915-37, Cardinals, Cubs, others
Fun fact: Led NL in BA/OBP/SLG each year from 1920-25
As the Cubs lined up their prospects every spring, Hornsby (a batting instructor) delivered a verdict: "You're not going to make it."
To Billy Williams, he said, "You'll be a major leaguer." Great, thought Ron Santo, I'm next to the guy he likes. Then he told Santo, "You'll be a major leaguer." The Hall of Famer picked out two Hall of Famers. -- Steve Wulf
16. Albert Pujols
Career: 2001-, Cardinals, Angels
Fun fact: He and Miguel Cabrera are only Hall of 100 members to debut this century.
No one has had a first 10 seasons like Pujols, who hit .300 with 30 homers and 100 RBIs in each of those years.
He's close to being among the five greatest hitters ever, passing Lou Gehrig as the greatest first baseman, and hitting 700 homers. One more MVP and he joins Barry Bonds as the only players with more than three.
Hall of 100 methodology
Explaining how we ranked the top 100 players in baseball history
The debate about baseball's Hall of Fame is starting to become a lot more about the voters than the players, so we decided to change the conversation and get away from character clauses, who might have taken PEDs and what impact those PEDs might have had.
Simply put, we asked our panel of experts to rank the top 100 players in history based entirely on performance on the field.
Unlike the Hall of Fame debates, which tend to focus on steroids or players on the fringe, we decided to create a body where the discussion would have nothing to do with drugs and be more about debating Mantle vs. Mays as opposed to Rice vs. Dawson.
Ranking the top 100 players in baseball history is no easy feat, and including active players -- which we did -- adds another layer of complication. In order to figure out which active players to include, we decided to build our ballot based on statistics and asked voters to go from there.
The voting process
• When we first created the Hall of 100, in 2013, we had our panelists vote on every player in baseball history who met the following criteria: In the Hall of Fame, on the ballot, or among the top 150 hitters or pitchers in greatness above replacement (GAR) -- a combination of career and peak wins above replacement. While the metric is not perfect, a ballot based on Baseball Reference's WAR leaders with more than 300 names that includes every Hall of Famer is not going to leave off anyone in the discussion of the top 100 players of all time. (GAR is a metric developed by Dan Szymborski, and you can read more about it if you scroll to the bottom.)• For this year -- and all years going forward -- we only asked our panelists to vote on active players who ranked in the top 150 as a pitcher or a hitter, and you can see the 17 names who qualified for this year's ballot, as well as the results, by clicking here. Unlike the Hall of Fame, we don't want to judge retired players year after year, so we will only vote on those who are still playing. And yes, the ranking for active players will change from year to year, depending on how they perform.
• We asked our panel of 30-plus experts -- including Jayson Stark, David Schoenfield, Tim Kurkjian and Jerry Crasnick -- to give each player a score of zero to 100.
Grading guideline
0-20: A fine player, but he should not be in the discussion of the top 100 of all time
21-40: Great, but not great enough
41-60: I can live with him being in the top 100, but I don't agree
61-80: Definitely a case for the 100
81-100: This person is definitely in the top 100
• When grading active players, we asked them to grade based on how you would if their career ended today. (We plan to revisit this in years to come yet will keep the body limited to 100. So if someone moves in, everyone gets bumped down and possibly out.)
• We asked them to judge these players based purely on their on-field performance and only consider their performance in MLB. And because we based our ballot purely on stats in the American League or National League, we did not consider players who only played abroad or in the Negro Leagues.
• Reminder: There is no character clause. We do not care if they might have gambled on the game or taken PEDs. Nor do we care if they devoted time and money to charity. Again, this is only about performance on the field.
• Once we had everyone's scores, we tallied them up and ranked players based on their average score.
What is GAR?
Wins above replacement (WAR) is a valuable tool when making an argument, but when arguing which players are the greatest of all time, it only measures career value. Peak value, as coined by Bill James, is a little different, measuring the height of a player's greatness rather than his breadth. Take for example, the case of Sandy Koufax, who ranks 74th in career pitching WAR at FanGraphs. Even the most hard-core stathead alive won't try to claim that Koufax wasn't greater than Frank Tanana, Chuck Finley and Jerry Koosman, all of whom have a higher career WAR.That's where GAR comes in. What GAR does is put career WAR in a historical context that takes into consideration both a player's career value and peak value. It starts with career WAR and adds a player's five-year peak WAR, multiplied by 1.6 to put peak and career on an equal scale. For a baseline, replacement level doesn't make sense -- typical replacement level is talent that's freely available, which just won't do when trying to separate the great from the greatest. Instead, we've chosen as the baseline the average of the 20th through 30th best at each position, that sweet spot at which you've stopped talking about inner-circle Hall of Famers and started talking about the fictional Hall of Very Good.
GAR is a blunt instrument, and it is not intended to end arguments but simply to add an additional statistical tool to look at when we argue about whether X was a greater ballplayer than Y, which we do endlessly this time of year.
