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Player Value Posts
To avoid spamming the general blog page with the Player Value posts for each season/team, this blog page will serve as a separate listing of all of the Player Value posts for each season/team. These posts will be less detailed, mainly just listing out the top players each season and including the necessary files.
Well, by "all-time", I really mean from 1912-2021, as that is currently the span of years that I have the data for. As the headline suggests, these rankings are according to my Player Value metric as of the date listed above. You can read my initial Player Value post here and its addendum here. Since then I have used Retrosheet play by play data to better fine tune the run value weights of the various events, but haven't been able to write up a post detailing them yet. Rather than listing them out again in this post, you can view them towards the top of my latest Hall of Fame post here. When we're discussing positional rankings, there's a couple of ways we can decide what a player's primary position was. One approach is to do it based on games played, which is the easiest but results in guys like Pete Rose and Ernie Banks being first basemen. I instead elected to take the approach of using the position that a player accumulated the most Player Value at. This way, Rose is a left fielder and Banks is a shortstop. I still list out their main position by games played in the data files below, but that's not what I went off of. There's also the matter of if we should take a player's total Player Value for their career and then just group them by their main position, or should we only use the Player Value that a player accumulated at this specific position. This choice is a little trickier, so I've gone ahead and listed out the top rankings for each option. So, without further adieu: Top 25 First Basemen From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value At All Positions
From a broader definition, Musial was more of an outfielder than a first baseman, but he did play more games and contribute more value at first than either LF or RF individually. Rod Carew played many games at first and second, but slightly more games at first and he added more value at first (284.44 vs 266.22). Killebrew and Cabrera have fairly close value splits between first and third, but first base took the cake for both of them. Ok, so what's the deal with these rankings? How is Helton so high, Perez so low, etc?
Top 25 First Basemen From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value As A First Baseman
You may also be interested in which first basemen were the best at different segments of Player Value, so let's took a look at those too: Top 25 First Basemen From 1912-2021, Based On Batting Value At All Positions
Top 25 First Basemen From 1912-2021, Based On Fielding Value At All Positions
That the supposedly 4th best defensive first baseman of all-time is best known for committing an error is naturally a funny thought. And clearly, the many Gold Gloves between Hernandez and Mattingly do not seem to correlate as nicely for Mattingly as they do for Hernandez. Top 10 First Basemen From 1912-2021, Based On Baserunning Value At All Positions
I'd never heard of Jefferies until now, but my, what a fascinating player! 46 stolen bases in 1993, as primarily a first baseman, while only being caught 9 times! That's the 5th most by a 1B since 1912. From the span of 1912-2021, I have just 393 players that contributed most of their value as first basemen. This is very interesting, considering there are 8,646 total position players in this span. If you go based off of games played, however, there are 894 first basemen in this span. This makes sense, as any first basemen that were negative for their careers would have been assigned to a different position, based on value. So to be in the top 1%, a player would have to be among the top 8-9 first basemen during this span. To be in the top 1.18% (the general Hall of Fame mark), a player would have to be among the top 10-11 first basemen during this span. There are currently 28 first basemen in the Hall of Fame, but that includes Negro League players Buck Leonard, Ben Taylor, and Mule Suttles, as well as the mainly pre-1912 players Cap Anson, Dan Brouthers, Roger Connor, Jake Beckley, and Frank Chance, whom we don't really have Player Value for. That 28 assumes that we exclude Banks and Perez, but include Musial and Carew, as well as Killebrew, Thomas, and Thome. Walter Alston was a first baseman during his playing days, but was inducted as a manger. So if we want to actually match the Hall of Fame numbers, that leaves us with 19 first basemen to work with. If we look at the top 19 first basemen according to Player Value, 14 of them are in Cooperstown. The exceptions are Eddie Murray, Orlando Cepeda, Fred McGriff, Jim Bottomley, and High Pockets Kelly, who rank 21st, 28th, 36th, 39th, and 48th, respectively. Four of those five first basemen were all inducted by a Veteran's Committee as well, rather than through the BBWAA ballot. The exception is Murray, who I mentioned earlier lost value by playing for too long. He has the 2nd most games played by anyone who played at least 50% of their games at first in history, behind only Pujols, who also lost substantial value by sticking around for too long. Todd Helton, Albert Pujols, Joey Votto, Keith Hernandez, and Mark McGwire should presumably take their places, but Helton was close to getting inducted this year and has a real shot next year, while Pujols and Votto have yet to appear on a ballot. McGwire also has his reasons for not being inducted. Next in line are Goldschmidt and Cabrera, who also haven't appeared on a ballot yet. If we grab the 5 highest first basemen that have been rejected by the BBWAA ballot and didn't use steroids, then Keith Hernandez, Lance Berkman, Will Clark, Norm Cash, and Carlos Delgado should be inducted. But it is important to note that first basemen are getting in at a higher rate than all positions in general. Of the 894 first basemen in my dataset based off of games played, 22 are in the Hall of Fame. That's 2.46%, much larger than the "top 1%" idea that many people think of the Hall of Fame as, as well as the top 1.18% that the Hall actually operates at. Based on this, there should either be less first basemen in Cooperstown if we think 2.5% is too lenient (which I don't think it is), or there should be more players inducted at other positions so that this 2.5% rate holds across all positions. Below you can graphically see how all of our first basemen compare in terms of Player Value, along with the black line denoting which players provided positive value, the gold line denoting the Hall of Fame mark, and the blue dots denoting the actual Hall of Fame members: If you were wondering, the extreme batter example on the far left is Johnny Hopp, and the extreme fielder examples on the far right are Keith Hernandez (just below gold line) and Bill Buckner. Below you can graphically see how the top 25 first basemen compare in terms of Player Value. Below is the dataset of primarily first basemen from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player provided the most Player Value at. There are 393 players in this dataset.
Below is the dataset of primarily first basemen from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player played the most games at. There are 894 players in this dataset.
In case those 2 plots above are a little hard for you to read, you can download them below as well:
Thanks for checking out this first base rankings post. I plan to update it whenever I develop new Player Value iterations, and hopefully we'll get closer and closer to some rankings that we can more firmly support. I'd say the main takeaway for now should be that an impressive crop of first basemen including Helton, Pujols, Cabrera, Votto, and Goldschmidt will be coming onto the ballot over the next decade or so and they should be seriously (if not obviously) considered for induction. Additionally, some players like Hernandez, Berkman, and Clark have been underrated and should be reconsidered. Lastly, first basemen seem to be inducted at a higher clip than other positions, so we should contemplate why that is and whether that should be the case. I believe that all positions play important roles in baseball and that they should all be equally represented in the Hall of Fame; I think we allow our obsession with offense to alter our perception of the best players.
Statting Lineup Newsletter Signup Form: If you'd like to receive email updates for each new post that I make, sign up for the Statting Lineup newsletter using the link below: https://weebly.us18.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ab653f474b2ced9091eb248b1&id=3a60f3b85f The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.
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