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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 Rightfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value At All Positions
Right 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 Rightfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value As A Rightfielder
Ruth drops due to time in LF and as a utility outfielder, but still easily claims the top spot. Aaron also drops due to time in LF and CF. Robinson drops due to time in LF, at 1B, and as DH. Sheffield drops due to time in LF and at 3B. Reggie Smith drops out of the top 25 due to providing nearly half of his value at CF. Slaughter also dropped out of the top 25 due to his time in LF. Top 25 Rightfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Batting Value At All Positions
Top 25 Rightfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Fielding Value At All Positions
Top 10 Rightfielders From 1912-2021, Based On Baserunning Value At All Positions
We think of Hank Aaron's bat primarily, but he also ranks as one of the greatest fielding and base stealing rightfielders in history. He was well-rounded, just not quite to the level of Willie Mays. Even though Ichiro's total Player Value isn't as impressive due to his poor Batting Value, ranking as the greatest fielding and base stealing rightfielder in history certainly helps his case. From the span of 1912-2021, I have just 428 players that contributed most of their value as rightfielders. 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 992 rightfielders in this span. This makes sense, as any rightfielders 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 9-10 rightfielders 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 11-12 rightfielders during this span. There are currently 27 rightfielders in the Hall of Fame, but that includes the mainly pre-1912 players Sam Thompson, Sam Crawford, King Kelly, Elmer Flick, Willie Keeler, and Tommy McCarthy, whom we don't really have Player Value for. Casey Stengel, Billy Southworth, and Whitey Herzog were primarily rightfielders during their playing careers, but were inducted as managers. Clark Griffith was primarily a rightfielder (by games played) during his playing career, but was inducted as a pioneer. Also note that these 27 Hall of Famers do not include Stan Musial or Andre Dawson, but do include Harold Baines. So if we want to actually match the Hall of Fame numbers, that leaves us with 21 rightfielders to work with after removing the mainly pre-1912 players. If we look at the top 21 rightfielders according to Player Value, 15 of them are in Cooperstown. The exceptions are Kiki Cuyler (24), Harry Hooper (35), Sam Rice (36), Tony Oliva (40), Ross Youngs (63), and Harold Baines. (82). All six of these Hall of Famers were voted in by a Veterans Committee after being rejected by the BBWAA ballot process. Baines drew particular outrage recently, but as I noted above he lost considerable value just because he kept playing when he was old. However, continuing to play allowed him to accumulate traditional stats like RBI and hits that drove his Hall of Fame case; Baines is currently 34th all-time in RBI, and at the time of his induction every player with more RBI was either in the Hall, still active, or used steroids. That fact is still true, as Pujols, Cabrera, and Beltre will all surely be Hall of Famers. Similarly, Baines currently ranks 47th all-time in hits, and again at the time of his induction every player with more hits was either in the Hall, still active, still on the BBWAA ballot, or used steroids (well, besides Pete Rose). This is still true, as Pujols/Cabrera/Beltre/Ichiro will surely get in, and Vizquel is still on the ballot. Though I don't think he would have reached 3000 hits, Baines' case was also helped by the fact that he played in strike-shortened seasons in 1981 and 1994. Lastly, Baines offensive numbers probably helped his Hall case more so than Player Value does; since he played offensively demanding positions like RF and DH, when compared to his peers Baines' offensive stats are less impressive. Oliva was more a recent induction that I didn't really agree with. Presumably his was a peak case, as he was an 8 time All-Star, but Player Value thinks his peak wasn't enough. It actually thinks he was only the 1st or 2nd best rightfielder in his league for 5 seasons. Harry Hooper actually played 3 seasons prior to our span here, from 1909-1911. He put up 7.6 WAR in those seasons; for reference, his best WAR season was 1920 with 5.2, which was also his best Player Value season at 45.56. If we assume that same ratio, then Hooper would have added about 66.59 in value from his pre-1912 years, which would move him up to 20th. I mentioned earlier that Sam Rice lost 27.4 in Player Value from his last 4 seasons because he played until he was 44. If we add that value back, Rice would rank 30th. Still not quite there, but remember that some of the guys ahead of him used steroids or are still active or on the ballot. Cuyler ranks the best of the bunch at 24th, so given the steroid users and active guys it's reasonable to understand why he is in. The true egregious case (outside of Baines) is Ross Youngs. To be fair, Youngs only played for 10 seasons until he was 29 because his career was cut short due to kidney disease; he died at age 30. However, other players have had short careers and had better peaks and thus more Player Value; Albert Belle (326.27), Ralph Kiner (350.85), Josh Hamilton (212.92), Roy Campanella (418.25), and Kirby Puckett (362.90) all have notably higher Player Value than Youngs' 139.30. As I said, the real reason Youngs got in is the same reason guys like Freddie Lindstrom and Chick Hafey got in: they played with Frankie Frisch, who was the head of the Veterans Committees in the 1970s and exercised extreme cronyism. Dwight Evans, Gary Sheffield, Reggie Smith, Mookie Betts, Sammy Sosa, and Bobby Abreu should presumably be in Cooperstown as they are the six top 21 rightfielders not in the Hall of Fame. If you want to throw out Betts since he's still active, as well as throw out Abreu and Sheffield since they're still on the BBWAA ballot, and throw out Sheffield and Sosa for their steroid usage, then the next 4 would be Bobby Bonds, Tim Salmon, actual Hall of Famer Cuyler, and another active player in Nelson Cruz. Next up is Giancarlo Stanton, also still active. Next from there is Bill Nicholson. So it appears that around 15-17 of the 21 Hall of Famers are justified by Player Value (the actual 15 in the top 21, Cuyler, and Hooper). It would be funny if Bobby Bonds got inducted before his son, though I don't see it happening. Of the 992 rightfielders in my dataset based off of games played, 23 are in the Hall of Fame. That's 2.3%, 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, but higher than catchers, second basemen, third basemen, shortstops, leftfielders, and centerfielders. The Hall loves to induct the big boppers. Based on this, there should either be less right fielders in Cooperstown if we think 2.3% is too lenient (which I don't think it is), or there should be more players inducted at other positions so that this 1.85% rate holds across all positions. Below you can graphically see how all of our rightfielders 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 with the most Fielding Value to the far right is Ichiro Suzuki, likely a future Hall of Famer. The notable non-Hall of Famers above the gold Hall of Fame line are Gary Sheffield, Reggie Smith, and Dwight Evans (in order from left to right). Jesus Alou is the worst non-Hall of Famer here. Below you can graphically see how the top 25 rightfielders compare in terms of Player Value. The Great Bambino, The King of Swing, The Sultan of Swat, The Colossus of Clout, The Maharajah of Mash, The Wizard of Wallop, or my personal favorite, The Titan of Thump, was just an other worldly player. He is just so substantially above the rest of the greatest rightfielders of all-time in terms of Player Value. The difference between him and Hank Aaron (375) would still rank 11th among rightfielders, and the difference between him and Mel Ott (526) would rank 5th. Absurdity. Below is the dataset of primarily rightfielders from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player provided the most Player Value at. There are 428 players in this dataset.
Below is the dataset of primarily rightfielders from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player played the most games at. There are 992 players in this dataset.
Thanks for checking out this rightfield 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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