Baseball’s Greatest Living Player

Non pitchers its Griffey Jr. or Bonds. The 2 most dynamic players of the last 40 years. Nolan Ryan is the greatest living pitcher.

😂😂😂😂 Don’t forget, the lad hit for power and had a notch below Chiyankee speed…

This is a great question. With Willie passing, there's a lot of good candidates for greatest living player. No one has even mention Albert Pujols or Frank Thomas, two of the best right handed hitters of all time, so I'll throw their names into the ring. 

Excellent drag bunting as a lefty hitter, but seldom batted left. Sometimes batted left just to drag bunt. Always bunting for a hit…no sacrifices…

Pretty sure Aaron has left this world...

Add me to the list of those who love this question Inger.  If you just went by what you saw on the field, it would be Bonds for position players and Clemens for pitchers.  I mean, Bonds is second all-time in WAR for position players, behind only Babe Ruth, and Clemens is third all-time in WAR for pitchers behind only Walter Johnson and Cy Young.  They were easily HOF players without being chemically-enhanced, but their late-career Superman performances were made possible only by the PEDs, so like most of you I just can't reward them for that.

I think I join you in putting Mike Schmidt at the top for position players, with serious consideration of Rickey Henderson and Mike Trout.  Rickey's crazy diversity of skills make him an outlier.  His career WAR is about four points higher than Schmidt, but he did play seven more years and Schmidt has that ocean of black ink plus the ten Gold Gloves that to me boost him to Number One.  A good argument can be made for Trout -- I think he may be the most skilled living position player -- so many of his key offensive stats are almost identical to Mantle's, including BA, OBP, and OPS+ -- but he has yet to go through his decline phase.  Plus I do dock him for so much missed time.  His last remotely full year came in his age 27 season, when he played 134 games.  Had he been able to play 130-150 games a year over the last six seasons, his WAR would be in Mike Schmidt/Frank Robinson territory and closing in on Mantle.  But as the cliche goes, the most important ability is availability, and if you're not on the field, you're not helping.

For pitchers I would probably go with either Greg Maddux or Randy Johnson.  Maybe a nod to Maddux for consistency.  Koufax or Pedro for peak performance, but again they didn't have the years and that has to be a factor.  While I still believe Koufax was the most unhittable-appearing pitcher I ever saw during his five-year superhuman run, Pedro's peak run was statistically even more off the charts.  Although I would rank him just a shade lower than the aforementioned, I always feel obligated to throw Nolan Ryan's name out there just because his best was better than anybody else's best, he just wasn't as consistent.  If Jacob deGrom hadn't been cursed by the gods of health, there is no doubt he would be in the picture too.  His stuff and his sadly curtailed numbers justify that.

Of course if we look at everybody, Mariano Rivera is in a league of his own.  But at least to me, relief pitchers are a separate and not equal category to starting pitchers.

Here's one of the many things I hate about the affect of PEDs.  Barry Bonds' career WAR is almost exactly double that of Ken Griffey Jr.  Griffey had to deal naturally with the kinds of injuries in his later years that Bonds was nearly immune from.

Hey Chi, I remember that trade very well -- Pete Rose gave him the nickhame "Five For One."  He actually was a decent player during his nine years with the Phillies -- .363 OBP, 118 OPS+, pretty good defensive player -- the only players of significance who went to Cleveland in that trade were Manny Trillo and Julio Franco.  Most of Trillo's best years were behind him by then, but the ageless Franco was just starting out and he had a heck of career as we know.  He's probably playing in a league in some place like Suriname or Montenegro as we speak.  He's still "only" 65 years old.

Hayes was another of those picture-perfect lefty swing guys who almost never do what they're supposed to unless they are Griffey Jr.  There were murmurs that Hayes could be the closest thing to Ted Williams -- yeah, those are in short supply -- so when he turned out to be just a pretty good player, he was considered a major flop.  Looking at his baseballref comparisons, I see the closest for him are Matt Lawton, Dan Driessen, Jeff Francoeur and Jeffrey Leonard.  That sounds about right.  Still a valuable piece on a team with a few bona fide All Stars.