The Best Players in Baseball Since 1901 (Part 1)

OK, I’ve been playing around with this project for a while, and I finally got it where I wanted. I’m putting together my list of the best players in baseball, chronologically, since 1901.

This is Part 1 of 2. Part 2 is coming next week.

Before getting into the list, let me offer a couple of introductory thoughts. By “Best Player In Baseball,” I’m talking about more than the player being the best in baseball that year. For example, I think you could argue for Alex Bregman or Cody Bellinger or even Anthony Rendon, Christian Yelich or Marcus Semien as the best player of 2019. But I don’t think that gives them the title of “Best Player In Baseball, with capital letters. For me, that title goes to someone with more of a history of greatness.

To get at that larger idea of BPIB, I put together a little point system that looks at the player over a three-run span:

Year 1: Most emphasis
Year 2: Less emphasis
Year 3: Even less emphasis

So, for example, in 2019, though I think all five of those players listed above had an argument for Player of the Year, my top 5 for Best Player In Baseball were, in order:

1. Mike Trout

2. Mookie Betts

3. Marcus Semien

4. Jacob deGrom

5. Justin Verlander

I’m not going to go over my point system for all the reasons I never go over such things: (1) It’s dumb and certainly mathematically unsound; (2) I did not go strictly by the point system. There were times I chose a different player than the one my formula spit out. The idea here is for me to pick the player I believe deserved The Best Player In Baseball title at the end of that year, and not be beholden to my bad math.

By my count, there have been 48 different players since 1901 who I would say were Best Player in Baseball. This is a limited list, obviously. I’d love to include the Negro leagues in here—unquestionably, Oscar Charleston and Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige would make the list, maybe also Pop Lloyd and Smokey Joe Williams—but that did not quite fit my mission here. So I stuck with MLB.

Of the 48 I have listed as Best Player in Baseball:

• 35 were elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot (or, in the case of some of the old-time players like Hornsby and DiMaggio, a rough equivalent of the first ballot).

• 4 were not elected first-ballot but were elected on a later ballot.

• 3 have not been elected because of off-the-field issues.

• 4 are still active.

• 1 recently retired and is not yet eligible for the Hall.

• Only 1 was not voted into the Hall of Fame based (mostly) on his playing merits.

With that, away we go: