Who is the greatest ever baseball player? Who’s among the top 5? The top 10? The top 50?
As long as the fans continue to gather at the ballpark, and new stars continue revolutionizing the game’s game, there will be no end to the debate over who is the best Major League Baseball player. There’s no way to objectively compare players from different eras, different teams, or different positions.
We still have to wait for the MLB lockout to end, so we decided that we would give it another shot with our list the 100 greatest MLB players.
Below are links to our lists and related stories.
How would you change the look of your list?
The List 100-51 | 50-26 (coming Wednesday) | 25-1 (coming Thursday)
These are the key links Who got snubbed?
Methodology
We selected more than 200 players from both major leagues as well as the Negro Leagues. This includes some of the most prominent stars of today.
We then asked many ESPN writers and editors to help us create a balloting system which pits the players against each other in head to head voting. Our question was: “Based upon a combination of career worth and peak performance, which player would your rank higher?”
Would you rather choose Ted Williams or Barry Bonds? Mike Trout or Joe DiMaggio Walter Johnson, Roger Clemens?
More than 20,000 votes were cast by our participants. The votes determined the order in which the players were ranked based on how often they were chosen ahead of any other player. Our No. For example, the No. 1 overall player was selected 99% of all times. Our No. 100 player? He was taken 31%. Even though the range seems large, it was very competitive. A single percentage point could significantly increase or decrease a player’s ranking.
The Top 100
This is our list. It will be published in three parts. (First up, Nos. 100-51. We will add Nos. Nos. 25-1 on Thursday.