Baseball Crank: BASEBALL: The Best Players In Baseball 2004

January 11, 2004

BASEBALL: The Best Players In Baseball 2004

Who are the best players in baseball, at any given time? Well, one easy way to frame the question is, what players have been the best over the past few years. As it so happens, Bill James has provided us with two tools ideally suited to measuring this question, although unless I've missed something (I haven't received my 2004 Bill James Handbook from Amazon yet), nobody has yet combined the two: Win Shares (which purport to measure a player's total contribution to a team's bottom line win/loss record) and Established Performance Levels, which take a weighted measurement of a player's accomplishments in a given category over the prior three years, giving the most weight to the most recent (I explain the EPL method in a little more detail in this column).

So, for the past month or so, I've been working up Established Win Shares levels for the game's top players. Although I haven't got to everyone, I'm far enough down the list that I can say with confidence that there are, conveniently enough, 25 players with an EWSL of 25 or greater entering 2004. Here they are, in descending order (I rounded off; players are listed as tied only if they were tied before rounding); listed age, position and team is for 2004:

Rank	Player	EWSL	Pos.	Team	Age
1	Barry Bonds	45	LF	SF	39
2	Albert Pujols	36	LF	STL	"24"
3	Alex Rodriguez	34	SS	TX	28
4	Jason Giambi	32	1B	NYY	33
5	Jim Thome	32	1B	PHI	33
6	Gary Sheffield	31	LF	NYY	35
7	Todd Helton	30	1B	COL	30
8	Bret Boone	29	2B	SEA	35
9	Carlos Delgado	29	1B	TOR	32
10	Chipper Jones	28	LF	ATL	32
11T	Bob Abreu	28	RF	PHI	30
11T	Brian Giles	28	LF	SD	33
13T	Manny Ramirez	28	LF	BOS	32
13T	Lance Berkman	28	LF	HOU	28
15	Miguel Tejada	27	SS	BAL	28
16	Luis Gonzalez	27	LF	AZ	36
17	Scott Rolen	27	3B	STL	29
18	Alfonso Soriano	26	2B	NYY	26
19	Carlos Beltran	26	CF	KC	27
20	Ichiro Suzuki	26	RF	SEA	30
21T	Jim Edmonds	26	CF	STL	34
21T	Shawn Green	26	RF	LA	31
23T	Eric Chavez	25	3B	OAK	26
23T	Jorge Posada	25	C	NYY	32
25	Andruw Jones	25	CF	ATL	27

A few thoughts and observations:

*No pitchers. That says a lot about the volatility of pitchers. By contrast, lots of left fielders and first basemen.

*Much as I can't stand the guy, there's still Barry Bonds, and there's everybody else.

*Most of these guys are in their thirties, which is suggests that at least at the very high end, investing in players in their early 30s may not be a terrible bet.

*I was a little surprised at how high Thome and Boone ranked.

*Chavez is easily the most consistent of the players listed here, with WS totals the last three years of 26, 25 and 25. Of course, at his age, you'd like to see more forward progress.

*The most glaring absence is Vladimir Guerrero, due to the injuries and weakknesses I noted yesterday (I'd still love to have had him, though): his WS totals are a less than spectacular 23, 29 and most recently 18. Oddly, he's never had a 30-WS season.

UPDATE: Turns out that Soriano is 28, not 26.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 11:49 AM | Baseball 2004 | Comments (15) | TrackBack (3)

Comments

Thanks for the analysis, Crank. Nice job. I've posted a link to this from my own website. And I've also created a little more analysis regarding Vlad's Win Shares.

http://www.baseballgraphs.com/blog/comments.php?id=53_0_1_0_C

Posted by: studes at January 11, 2004 07:00 PM

Cool. Yeah, I used the Baseball Graphs charts to do this analysis.

Here's the direct link to your link above

Posted by: The Crank at January 11, 2004 07:58 PM

Do you care to present any reason or proof that makes you think Albert Pujols is older than 24?

Come on.. something substantial please.. not just "He's from the Dominican Republic, so he must be lying".

Posted by: U L at January 11, 2004 09:13 PM

Given that a significant factor in Win Shares is playing time, I'd say that missing 50 games hurt Vlad's WS total this year. And for 2001, it's probably his (relatively) low OBP (.377).

His best OPS season was actually 2000, and it's arguable that his 98-00 is better than his 01-03.

Posted by: Josh Heit at January 11, 2004 09:33 PM

I don't pretend to be an expert on Pujols' age. I know I've seen it called into question in quite a few places, and the main reason to give some credence to those questions is the sense -- reinforced by this analysis -- that Pujols being just 24 is a little too good to be true. I'm not going to over-project Pujols based on his age if there are reasons to think he's not that young.

It's hardly news that ballplayers sometimes lie about their ages - as Rob Neyer's pointed out, it's been going on as long as there's been baseball. These days it mostly happens with Latin ballplayers, since they're the only ones with a credible opportunity to get away with it.

Posted by: The Crank at January 12, 2004 07:04 AM

The reason so many of the top-rated players by your method are in their early thirties is probably a result of the method. Since you use the actual performance of the prior three years, when you look at someone with a 2004 age of 30-32 you're using their age 27-31 season, a.k.a. most player's "peak" years. When you look at a 25 year old, you're looking at their performance at 22-24. I'd actually be surprised if you didn't wind up with the best players around 30 using this method.

Posted by: chanimal at January 12, 2004 04:57 PM

I'm aware of that, but I'd have expected to see more guys around 28-30, i.e., guys whose 3-year peak started at 25 or 26. Of course, some of these guys are a bit past their actual peak, but still better than the competition. What struck me is the guys 33 and up, who are thus ranked for their seasons starting at age 30 or older. There's 8 of those guys in the top 25 and 5 in the top 8, plus four 32-year-olds who are rated on their seasons from age 29-31.

Posted by: The Crank at January 12, 2004 09:10 PM

Crank, using the "established performance" method with the win shares was a cool idea. Incidentally, what was the best EWSL for a pitcher?

Posted by: Chris at January 15, 2004 12:21 PM

If this was a game of "which of these things is not like the other", I would pick Luis Gonzalez. That World Series performance a few years back was awful (how often do you say that about a player with a series clinching walk-off hit?). Seeing him swing the bat in that series made me want to see the film of his 50+ HR'sm, just so I could believe it happened. He just never strikes me as an elite player.

Posted by: Steve at January 15, 2004 05:00 PM

what happen to the name" sammy sosa" in that list. cause he put up the numbers.

Posted by: tony at January 29, 2004 07:51 PM

Will the Win Share formula ever include a factor for steroid use?

Posted by: andrew at February 25, 2004 03:55 PM

this web site should have all of the greatest play

Posted by: Josh at March 9, 2004 12:44 PM

This list is crap!!!!

You don't even have Vlad Guerrero in the top 25?
Do you even watch baseball?

Vlad is easily in the top 5, because he can hit anything, is fast, and has the best arm in the league

Posted by: ryan at March 28, 2004 09:36 PM

This list really does suck! You don't even have Sammy Sosa or ken Griffey jr. in the top 25. When Ken griffey jr. is healthy he is a top 5 player in baseball. What about Ivan Rodriguez? He is a way better player than Jorge Posada.

Posted by: bret mcgaughey at May 12, 2004 11:16 PM

thats a very nice lookin list there but theres one little tiny problem.........bary bonds is a ****** ****** any man who takes performer enhancing drugs should not be aloud to be put in the hall of fame or the record books cuz its cheating. im in highschool and if i were caught cheating on a test or something id be kicked out and my name would be tarnished forever and thats wat i think should happen to barry.....if he can come back clean and still perform to the best of his ability then and only then will i consider him as one of the greatest but at this moment i can truly honestly say he is ****** ***.

Posted by: tilly willy at November 30, 2004 04:05 PM