How Do We Rank The Players?
That's a Great Question. In short, it isn't Simple.
We have gone to great lengths to make our All-Time Baseball Player Rankings as thorough as possible. We believe our rankings are the most comprehensive, fair, and accurate.
Players are evaluated on five criteria as the foundation of our rankings:
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Career Value
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Long Peak
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Short Peak
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Career Prime Value
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Contribution to Championship Teams
We use Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as a basis for these calculations. However, we also adjust for era, integration and level of competition, and missed playing time due to factors beyond the control of the player.
Generally, a player’s Career Value is worth about 50-60% of the ranking score we assign him. That leaves half or just under half from his long peak (seven best seasons), short peak (three best seasons), and prime (five best consecutive seasons). The contribution to championship teams (player performance in seasons where his team wins the pennant) is a small factor in most cases.
Because we adjust for timeline and era, our rankings have fewer players from before 1941 than many other baseball player lists.
We feel it’s important to acknowledge that baseball is harder to play today than it was 25 years ago, and 50 years ago, and so on. It doesn’t make sense, in our opinion, for most of the great baseball players to have played prior to World War II, when MLB was segregated.