Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Player Rankings

With only a rudimentary level of understanding of how to properly evaluate players, I have decided that I can rank the 100 greatest players at each position in baseball history.  Well, technically I am going to 250 on pitchers but 100 on every other position.  To get the players, I took Bill James' list from The New Bill James Historical Abstract.  I also added in players that were either not active for that book or did not have a long enough career to be in that book. 
Notes about the rankings:
1. All active players are ranked based on their performances through the 2010 season.
2. All players are ranked solely on what they accomplished in their major league careers.
3. I did not project how the player would have done in the seasons that they were not able to play based on conditions that were beyond their control.  I will, however, address those issues in each of the player's rankings.
Methodology: This is based on WAR, my apologies to those who do not believe that WAR is a good tool for evaluating players. 
WAR is calculated by averaging the two between Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, when available.
Each player receives 0.5 points for each season of 5-5.99 WAR, .0.75 for each season of 6-6.49, 1.0 for 6.5-6.99, 1.25 for 7-7.49, 1.5 for 7.5-7.99, 1.75 for 8-8.49, 2 for 8.5-8.99, 2.25 for 9-9.49, 2.5 for 9.5-9.99, 2.75 for 10-10.49, 3 for 10.5-10.99, 3.25 for 11-11.49, 3.50 for 11.50-11.99, and 3.75 for each season of 12+ WAR or higher.
(if you're asking why start at 5 WAR, it is largely to give extra points for those players who had all-star seasons, these typically start at 5 WAR)
These points are added to the formula: .20(Career WAR total)+.20(Average WAR per season)+.20(WAR for five consecutive seasons)+ .20(WAR for highest three seasons)+.20(WAR for highest ten seasons)
The resulting total from all this will give a number that I then ranked in order.
A score of 34 or higher is to be considered a hall of fame career, by me. This is because a player who produces a career of only ten 5 WAR seasons will be scored at 34.  I am considering that a hall of famer.  I'll explain more in the write-ups by position, but this is to give you a basic idea of how I am ranking them.

No comments:

Post a Comment