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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 Leftfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value At All Positions
Left field has less nuance than catchers and first basemen when it comes to Player Value, especially on the fielding end, so I have less need for commentary on justifying the rankings you see above. I think they are pretty believable, but I will make the following notes:
Top 25 Leftfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value As A Leftfielder
Henderson had over 135 in value at CF but still remains 3rd due to just how high the top 3 players are over the rest. Yaz drops due to having about 131 value at 1B, Simmons drops due to having about 157 value at CF, Manny drops due to having about 201 value at RF, and Stargell drops due to having about 131 value at 1B. Rose drops out of the top 25 entirely due to having about 93 value at 2B, 102 value at 3B, 81 value at RF, and 25 value at 1B; Charlie Hustle could play almost anywhere! Top 25 Leftfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Batting Value At All Positions
There is a massive gap in Batting Value between Williams & Bonds and everyone else. Can you imagine what Williams' Batting Value would have been had he not missed his prime age 24-26 seasons from 1943-1945 due to WWII? Led the league in OPS the 2 seasons before that break, and then returned and led the league in OPS for 4 straight seasons... Top 25 Leftfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Fielding Value At All Positions
Top 10 Leftfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Baserunning Value At All Positions
I will note that Vince Coleman played most of his games at LF, but doesn't show up here since he had a negative total Player Value (-115.97) over the course of his career. In fact, among players who played most of their games at LF, Coleman actually has the lowest total Player Value all-time. However, his Baserunning Value of 38.53 would rank 5th among these players. Henderson (1406) , Brock (938), Raines (808), and Coleman (752) rank 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 6th in career stolen bases, respectively. Wilson also ranks 12th with 668. All players were great baserunners and added value in that manner, as we see here. However, while Henderson and Raines also provided solid value with their bat and glove, Brock and Coleman were more one dimensional. This is not a new concept; Henderson's WAR is 111.1 and Raines' is 69.4, while Brock's is 44.4 and Coleman's 12.5. You may think that Brock was a good hitter given his 3,023 hits and .293 career batting average. But we're above just relying on counting stats and batting average. Brock's OPS+ is just 109, while Raines and Henderson sit at 123 and 127. Brock is 4th all-time in at-bats by a leftfielder, allowing him to accumulate hits over the years. As Player Value shows us, you'd have rather had any 'ole Major League LF at the plate or in the field than Brock; it was not until the player was on base where we'd want The Rocket to take over. Brock basically didn't hit for enough power or walk enough to make up for his contact hitting tendencies and his proclivity to strike out. He's 7th among LF in career strikeouts and has less homers and walks than most of the other guys up there. Just compare him to Henderson - similar hits and strikeouts, but still far fewer home runs and walks. From the span of 1912-2021, I have just 445 players that contributed most of their value as leftfielders. 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 1,101 leftfielders in this span. This makes sense, as any leftfielders 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 11 leftfielders 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 13 leftfielders during this span. There are currently 22 leftfielders in the Hall of Fame, but that includes the mainly pre-1912 players Ed Delahanty, Fred Clarke, Jesse Burkett, Joe Kelley, and Jim O'Rourke, whom we don't really have Player Value for. Dick Williams was primarily a leftfielder (by games played) during his playing career, but was inducted as a manager. So if we want to actually match the Hall of Fame numbers, that leaves us with 17 leftfielders to work with. If we look at the top 17 leftfielders according to Player Value, just 9 of them are in Cooperstown. The exceptions are Billy Williams (20), Jim Rice (22), Joe Medwick (26), Minnie Minoso (31), Chick Hafey (35), Heinie Manush (44), Monte Irvin (59), and Lou Brock (140). Irvin missed one year due to WWII and also spent his first 10 professional baseball years in the Negro Leagues, not playing in Major League Baseball until 1949 when he was 30. Minoso also missed his first 3 professional baseball years in the Negro Leagues, and was recently inducted by a Veteran's Committee rather than through the BBWAA ballot. Hafey and Manush also had to be inducted via a Veteran's Committee. Hafey in particular played with Frankie Frisch for 5 years, who is infamous for his cronyism on the Veteran's Committees in the 1970s. Bill James doesn't think Hafey should have been inducted either. Rice and Williams rate pretty close to our cutoff mark, and it did take Rice 15 years on the BBWAA ballot to be inducted. Medwick rates pretty fair as well, and won an MVP and went to 10 All-Star games, but it did take him 9 years on the BBWAA ballot to be inducted. Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Pete Rose, Bob Johnson, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Albert Belle, Ken Williams, and Brian Downing should presumably be in Cooperstown as they are the eight top 17 leftfielders not in the Hall of Fame. Of course, Rose and Jackson technically can't be in the Hall of Fame since they are currently banned from baseball. Bonds and Ramirez are also marred by PED usage. The next 4 players would be Brian Giles, Bobby Veach, actual Hall of Famer Billy Williams, and Ryan Braun, though Braun was also suspended for using PEDs. Next up would be actual Hall of Famer Rice. So bannings and PEDs aside, it appears that actually 11 of the 17 Hall of Famers are justified by Player Value. Of the 1,101 leftfielders in my dataset based off of games played, 18 are in the Hall of Fame. That's 1.63%, 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. This is a lower induction rate than first basemen, second basemen, and shortstops, but higher than catchers and third basemen. Based on this, there should either be less left fielders in Cooperstown if we think 1.6% is too lenient (which I don't think it is), or there should be more players inducted at other positions so that this 2% rate holds across all positions. Below you can graphically see how all of our leftfielders 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: The non-Hall of Famer on the far left with the worst career Fielding Value among leftfielders is Greg Luzinski. Joining him among the worst are Gary Matthews (1972-1987), Ryan Klesko, and Moises Alou. The non-Hall of Famer on the far right with the best career Fielding Value among leftfielders is Carl Crawford. Joining him among the best are Garrett Anderson and Alex Gordon. The four notable non-Hall of Famers above the gold line are Bonds, Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Bob Johnson. Below you can graphically see how the top 25 leftfielders compare in terms of Player Value: Even among the top 25 leftfielders of all-time, Rickey Henderson (far right point) was on a different planet. But Barry Bonds and Ted Williams (top two points) were in a different universe. It is ridiculous how great these 3 players were compared to the other positional greats. For catchers, the gap between the best player and the 4th best player was about 145, and the gap between the 3rd and 4th best players was about 13. For first basemen, the 1-4 gap was 321 and the 3-4 gap was 58. For second basemen, the 1-4 gap was 112 and the 3-4 gap was 21. For third basemen, the 1-4 gap was 248 and the 3-4 gap was 71. For shortstops, the 1-4 gap was 196 and the 3-4 gap was 23. But for leftfielders, the 1-4 gap is an astounding 544, and the 3-4 gap is a massive 216. Part of this is just how great these 3 players were, but part of this may also be the position. The 25th best SS had a 331 Player Value. The 25th best 3B had a 320 Player Value. The 25th best 2B had a 337 Player Value. The 25th best 1B had a 352 Player Value. However, the 25th best LF had just a 256 Player Value. The 25th best C had a 238 Player Value, though there are more reasons to justify catchers having lower career value than there are for leftfielders. Below is the dataset of primarily leftfielders from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player provided the most Player Value at. There are 445 players in this dataset.
Below is the dataset of primarily leftfielders from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player played the most games at. There are 1,101 players in this dataset.
Thanks for checking out this left field 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 takeaways for now should be:
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