Did you see the movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt? Did you know that the movie was based on the book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis? Did you know that the book and movie were illustrating the early days of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) analysis as applied to baseball players? To grossly oversimplify, which is always fun, the then newfangled approach, allowed the 2002 Oakland Athletics, with a payroll of about 41 million dollars, to level the playing field with the 2002 New York Yankees and their approximate 125 million dollar payroll. “Sabermetrics”, as it has come to be known, utilizes many statistical formulas and approaches in an attempt to better quantify a player’s value.
Chief among Sabermetric Stats is “WAR” or Wins Above Replacement. As defined by leading Sabermetrician web site FANGRAPHS.com, WAR is roughly defined as, “an attempt by the Sabermetric baseball community to summarize a player’s total contribution to their team in one statistic. Expressed in wins format, for example, player X is worth 6.3 wins per year to their team while player Y is only worth 3.5 wins per year”. That said, following is a list of the top 25 baseball players of all time ranked according to their lifetime accumulated Wins Above Replacement (WAR), as provided by FANGRAPHS.com. The results, to me, are somewhat surprising.
PLAYER WAR PLAYER
1)Babe Ruth 178 14)Frank Robinson 116
2)Barry Bonds 168 15)Mel Ott 116
3)Ty Cobb 164 16)Alex Rodriguez 114
4)Willie Mays 163 17)Rickey Henderson 114
5)Hank Aaron 150 18)Jimmie Foxx 112
6)Honus Wagner 150 19)Mike Schmidt 111
7)Tris Speaker 143 20)C. Yastrzemski 109
8)Ted Williams 140 21)Nap Lajoie 108
9)Stan Musial 139 22)Joe Morgan 108
10)Rogers Hornsby 135 23)Eddie Mathews 107
11)Eddie Collins 134 24)Al Kaline 102
12)Lou Gehrig 126 25)Cal Ripken Jr. 100
13)Mickey Mantle 123
Notable players not in the top 25: Joe Dimaggio (#28), Ken Griffey Jr. (#40) and more