Top Baseball Players-Top Baseball Players 2020

-Top Baseball Players-
Ah, the crack of the bat. The smell of fresh-cut grass. Munching on Cracker Jack while trying to avoid being splashed by the huge beer barely clung onto by the inebriated fan sitting behind you. Nothing to says summer quite like baseball and the American national pastime. Baseball’s place within the American zeitgeist comes, a minimum of partially, from its long history and therefore the general consistency of the sport over decades—it’s quite likely that your great-great-grandfather would be ready to easily follow a contemporary game if he were magically plopped into the stands. This history and consistency make it a touch easier to match players from many different eras than it's to try to so for other sports, which is what I’ll be attempting here. Let’s see how it goes!
-Top Baseball Players 2020-
MLB was gifted by fans an unprecedented crop of young stars capable of etching their names among baseball royalty. Perhaps history will at some point prop these burgeoning studs alongside the game's all-time greats. Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, Corey Seager, Kris Bryant, Madison Bumgarner, and Noah Syndergaard all have the potential to write down Hall of Fame legacies with another 10-15 years of dominance. If Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw continue along their current trajectories, they're going to eventually merit prominent billing among the simplest ever to play the sport.
For now, none of those young pups have accomplished enough to hitch iconic names like Ruth, Mays, Aaron, and Cobb. They even have an extended road ahead before catching up to underappreciated superstars from the first 20th century, who substituted fence-clearing pop with elite contact, plate discipline, baserunning, gap power, and defense.
Of course, boiling down a full catalog of baseball folklore to 25 players will never yield a perfect agreement. Everyone has their personal preferences and ranging standards of greatness. This list, however, cares more about results than reputation. Before diving into the rankings, let's take a glance at the thought process wont to select baseball's best.
Counting numbers are nice, but popular benchmarks for evaluating greatness (3,000 hits, 500 home runs, 300 wins) are only a part of the puzzle. Advanced stats like weighted on-base average (wOBA) weighted runs created plus (wRC ), adjusted OPS (OPS ), adjusted ERA (ERA ), and fielding independent pitching (FIP) matter the maximum amount if less.
WAR from FanGraphs (fWAR) and Baseball-Reference.com (rWAR) were both heavily considered, but not as a definitive gauge. Both sites particularly differ on grading pitchers, with the previous preferring superior strikeout and walk rates and therefore the latter that specialize in run prevention.
Beyond MLB
The "Best baseball players" label, a search wasn't limited to MLB talent. Negro League legends Paige and Josh Gibson were seriously considered, but both fell short thanks to an inability to properly compare the leagues' talent levels.
Since no international league is deemed an equal competitor to MLB, other foreign stars—most notably Japanese slugger Sadaharu Oh—also fell in need of inclusion.
Are Steroid-Era Stars Eligible?
If their numbers merited inclusion, players with ties to performance-enhancing drugs were included. Otherwise, the procedure would subside a rabbit burrow of older generations using amphetamines and even older players participating during a segregated league.
Peak vs. Longevity.
Both matter and it took an elite blend to form the highest 25. Players with transcendent but shorter primes (Ken Griffey Jr., Pedro Martinez, Sandy Koufax, Hank Greenberg, and Joe Jackson) missed the cut alongside durable studs (Pud Galvin, Phil Niekro, Cal Ripken Jr., Pete Rose, and Carl Yastrzemski) whose rate stats don't quite pop enough.
Those who missed time to serve with the military were typically given a bigger pass than players derailed by injuries.