The Best 25 Careers at Each Position

This is the first installment of a new series on this blog regarding which major league players had the best careers at each position as determined by the NEWS HOF Gauge. This means that I will list those players at each position who had the best careers during the “20 ^th century +” (1901 to the present).A player has to have played at least ten full seasons through 2007 to be ranked.

It is important to note that the NEWS Gauge attempts to rank players according to their careers (employing a creative use of win shares). The NEWS suggests that to simply look at a player’s total career win shares can be misleading.A better way to determine career value is to first find the number of win shares that a player earned during his ten best seasons (his core value ).Then add to this number 25% of his other win shares.This gives a better balance of “peak” and longevity.(For an explanation of this approach, please see the excerpts from BASEBALL’S BEST: The TRUE Hall of Famers on this site.)

Better Than?

Is comparing two players’ career values (their NEWS scores) the same as saying that one player is/was “better than” the other?Not quite.When a fan says that “ Pedro Martinez is a better pitcher than Tom Glavine.” – we cannot be quite sure what he means.If he means that at his best he would rather have Pedro pitching for his team than Tom, then there are probably few fans of the game who would disagree with this statement.But does that mean that Pedro has had a better career through 2007 than Glavine?That is a very different question.

I believe that the players who belong in the Hall of Fame are those who had the best careers on the field (plus a few other players who deserve to be inducted even though they may not have had the numbers).And that is what the NEWS score attempts to point out – who had the best careers on the field .So, if I say that Tom Glavine, with a NEWS score of 231, has had a better career than Pedro Martinez with a score of 217 (so far), I am not saying that Glavine is/was a better pitcher than Pedro.I am saying that Glavine’s career deserves HOF consideration.It may be that Pedro’s career to date also deserves such consideration because of its moments of brilliance (think Sandy Koufax).

The NEWS HOF Gauge seeks to point out those players who appear to have obvious HOF numbers based on their career performance . It suggests that these players deserve to be in the Hall based on what they did on-the-field.Of course, there may be other players (who do not have the numbers) who should be in the Hall of Fame.Roy Campanella, for example, is a player who did not attain HOF numbers (according to the NEWS Gauge) but who I feel should definitely be in the Hall of Fame.And, of course, there are others.

This series of articles will deal with a slightly different approach to interpreting the NEWS score – than that which was presented in my book, BASEBALL’S BEST: The TRUE Hall of Famers.

The approach has not changed nor has the player’s NEWS score .What has been tweaked is the score required at some positions to establish HOF numbers.I have done this for two important reasons.

1. Feedback from many fans and my careful consideration of that feedback.

2. The fact that if the Win Shares system has a flaw it is related to the amount of credit given to certain positions for defensive reasons.The positions that seem to suffer somewhat in this context are catcher, shortstop, center field, second base and third base.

For these reasons, new benchmarks for HOF numbers (according to the NEWS score) have been created for these positions.This series of articles will deal with those new benchmarks and the players who met them during their careers.

Here are the number of 20 ^th century players at each position that the NEWS Gauge suggests have obvious HOF numbers under the new benchmarks .

There are a total of 108 position players here. This does not meanthat these are the onlyposition players who should be in the Hall of Fame. It does meanthat each of these 108 position players has the performance numbers to merit inclusion in the Hall.As noted above, there may be other players who deserve induction – even though they did not have the numbers.

In the series of articles to follow, I will point out the following.

1. The 20 ^th century players at each position who have obvious HOF numbers.

2. The other players who make up the top 25 at that position.

3. The players who are in the Hall but who do not make the top 25.

When I have finished the articles dealing with the position players, I will address the pitchers.