My mother is British and my dad has always been more of a basketball guy, so that I wasn’t raised a baseball fan from birth shouldn’t come as great surprise.  I had to find the game and the Seattle Mariners at least somewhat on my own.  I wouldn’t say I was a Mariner fan until 1996 when I was eight years old.

I have a vague memory of the 1995 one game playoff, specifically Luis Sojo and the “everybody scores!” play.  I like to think that it was televised down in southwest Washington and that my family– new to the northwest– watched it because it was kind of a big deal.  I fear that it’s a manufactured memory, however, born out of my desire to be connected to the most important Mariner team in franchise history and made possible by the dozens and dozens of times I’ve seen the highlight.

Point being, my first firm memories of Major League Baseball and the Mariners came in 1996.  That being the year Alex Rodriguez began his assault on the league, he naturally became my favorite.  Given what I’ve since learned about the young A-Rod and especially what’s gone on with him since he played his last season in Seattle, it would be nice to be able to look back and say that Ken Griffey Jr. was my favorite Mariner like the rest of the children of the ’90s.

To me, as my favorite, A-Rod was the Best Player In Baseball.  I wasn’t alone, of course.  Many people bestowed that label on him given his explosive all-around game.  That he was doing it from the shortstop position was the clincher for many if not most.  Never mind Barry Bonds. 

The way I remember it, A-Rod held the Best Player In Baseball title until Albert Pujols proved he had staying power and began wrangling it away sometime around 2006, becoming the definitive Best Player In Baseball by 2008 or so.  Pujols continues to hold the title, but at age 31 he’s due for a challenger in the next couple years.

This is something I think about from time to time– the progression and passing of the torch of the Best Player In Baseball– mostly in terms of A-Rod to Pujols to whoever is next.  In thinking about it on this insomniatic Thursday morning I couldn’t decide who the Best Player In Baseball was before A-Rod.  Naturally, Griffey was my best guess.  I couldn’t really come up with anyone for the 1980s.  So I rolled out of bed and did my best to figure it out with my good pal FanGraphs.

What I did was rank players by WAR over 5-year arcs.  I don’t know if this is the best way to do it– I’m not much of a stats guy, after all– nor do I know if someone has already done something like this.  Either way, I felt like 5 years would show the rise and fall of great players while awarding year in, year out consistency, which I figure is a requirement for the Best Player In Baseball.

Based on this table, I might put the progression of Best Player In Baseball something like this:

• Honus Wagner
• Ty Cobb
• Babe Ruth
• Lou Gehrig
• Joe DiMaggio
• Ted Williams (Lou Boudreau and Stan Musial in his WWII absence)
• Mickey Mantle
• Willie Mays
• (Do Santo, Yaz or Bench belong here?)
• Joe Morgan
• Mike Schmidt
• Wade Boggs
• Barry Bonds
• Albert Pujols

Most of these guys are definitively known as the best players of their respective generations, so it looks like we did good.  A few don’t look right, however.  I wouldn’t have ever guessed Boggs for the late 80s/early 90s over Henderson or Ripken.  Bench feels like a better pick than Morgan even though Morgan had more time at the top.

There are a lot of true greats on this list that were continual runners up.  Many have cases for Best Player In Baseball over a period of time if you’re using something besides WAR.  Musial was an odd case given WWII’s influence on the results.

Some thoughts and observations:

• Add this to the Bagwell for Hall of Fame file.  While you have it open, Santo too.
• Bonds and Ruth both showed up 13 times at the top spot.
• About half a dozen teams had two players show up in the top three, but only the Big Red Machine managed to nab three of three, and they did it twice with Morgan, Bench and Rose.
• Bonds appears most in the table (15).  Ruth is second (14) and followed by Musial (12), Aaron (12), Wagner (11), Cobb (11), Hornsby (11), Gehrig (11), Mays (11),  Speaker (10), Foxx (10), Henderson (10)
• I need to brush up on my pre-1950 baseball history.

Let’s hear it.  How would your Best Player In Baseball passing of the torch go?  What players are you most surprised to see on the table?  Do you find any of the results particularly interesting?  Who do you see being the next Best Player In Baseball?