re all time best players in article apr ns cc lehigh edu jsr ns cc lehigh edu john stephen randolph writes in article apr bsu ucs mbstultz leo bsuvc bsu edu writes i ve recently been working on project to determine the greatest players at their respective postions my sources are total baseball james historical abstract the ballplayers biography word of mouth and my own biased opinions feel free to comment suggest flame whatever but i tried to be as objective as possible using statistical data not inlcuded for time convience s sake i judged on rel ba adj ops total average fielding range runs total player rating total baseball stolen bases for curiosity s sake tpr g and years played mvp b mike schmidt ed matthews one t in eddie mathews george brett wade boggs ron santo brooks robinson frank baker darrell evans pie traynor ray dandridge how can brooks be i think he would at least be ahead of ron santo because a small advantage in fielding ability comes nowhere near making up for the large difference in hitting their average seasons using their combined average ab bb per games years ab h r b b hr rbi tb bb avg obp slg ops santo robinson fielding we have per games at third years p a dp e pct santo robinson even if robinson s extra putouts assists and dps are taken to mean he was responsible for more outs in the field that doesn t make up for the extra outs he made at the plate not to mention the fewer total bases the difference of in ops should be decreased by about to account for wrigley but a difference is still considerable the thorn palmer ratings are adjusted adjusted stolen fielding total production batting runs base runs runs rating santo robinson usual disclaimers about t p s fr apply but they really shouldn t be way off the mark in this comparison at least it s better than fielding percentage carney lansford has a th best all time but fr dead last of all time also since this total rating compares players to league average instead of replacement level robinson should be awarded an extra or so for playing more games he had a great career but i would prefer santo s plus years of a replacement level bman but i would knock traynor off the list and replace him by stan hack that s a similar story hack s far better hitting outweighs traynor s superior fielding graig nettles and buddy bell would also be better choices imho of course though some recent net discussion supports this point of view cf andre dawson shouldn t that be right field bob holt rjh allegra att com
