Willie Mays was an excellent 5-tool player: he excelled at hitting for batting average, hitting for power, running, fielding, and throwing. A first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee, his credentials rate him as one of the all-time greats. Some would even say he was the greatest, but I don’t want to argue that in this thread. That’s for another thread.
As @RickJay put it in the other Willie Mays thread,
I don’t think anyone has been better. You’re welcome to disagree. But for this thread my question is, ever since his first game in the MLB, and from that day to today, has anyone been nearly as great as Willie Mays? Does anyone come close to him?
As I put him #2 of all time behind Ruth, clearly I don’t think anyone since willie has been better than Willie.
Mantle was pretty damn good, but not as good. Bonds has gaudy offensive stats but, well you know why not. Also Willie was the better complete player. Maybe the greatest fielding center fielder to go with crazy good offensive numbers.
Henry Aaron was a better hitter, but Mays was faster and played center field, a more demanding position. Mantle might have been as good, but injuries and hard living reduced his performance and cut his career short. And as much as I admire Roberto Clemente, Stan Musial, and Frank Robinson, Mays was a more rounded talent.
In the latter part of the era Albert Pujols was superstar caliber in the first part of his career but faded badly when he was with the Angels.
And although it’s intangible, Mays was simply a more exciting player to watch.
I think the only arguments to be made are Bonds, Aaron and Mantle. If he’d been healthier, Mantle was on a hell of a trajectory. But he wasn’t, so he didn’t quite make it to the pinnacle.
I think Aaron gets a poor reputation as “just” a power hitter, but he was an incredibly complete player as well. He was dominant for decades - how many players do that? Well, Mays did that, and there aren’t too many baseball historians that place Aaron ahead of Mays. Their offensive numbers are really similar - so the tiebreaker has to be Mays’ defensive dominance. And it really was dominance at a critically important position.
Which brings us to Bonds. BlankSlate made a good argument in the other thread:
Bonds’ numbers are silly. I’m not interested in going back and forth regarding the PEDs (it’s a tedious argument on both sides, and that’s not what this thread is about). If Bonds had been able to play in an earlier era, I think he’d have hit 900 home runs, because he simply wouldn’t have been intentionally walked 688 times. Bonds’ Giants weren’t a bunch of shitty players either - it wasn’t like he was being walked so the pitchers could face Mark Grudzielanek.
Bonds was also a good defender - he won a bunch of Gold Gloves in LF. He was a demon on the basepaths as well. But if we get to consider how Bonds could have done in a different environment, we get to do the same for Mays. What could someone who hit 660 HRs when the mound was 14 feet tall do in the expansion era of the 90s?
Their WAR numbers are really remarkably similar. And that’s just as big factor of Mays’ defense and hitting so well in a pitching-friendly era as they are of Bonds’ ability to hit any pitch a million miles. I cast my vote for the guy who’d I’d rather watch on both sides of the ball and go with Mays.
watched the special on ESPN this morning where they showed his "basket’ catch and then turned around and threw to cutoff man 400 feet away, which showed the strength of his arm (he was QB in HS)
The Giants led visiting National League teams in attendance for eight years during the 1960s. People paid to watch Willie play, even against their home team.
I went in and checked how the guys batting behind him after all the IBBs in question that one year did.
They were utterly absymal. It’s been a number of years and 3 computers ago so I don’t have the numbers, but the Giants made a major mistake by not signing someone to give Bonds any protection. Note by that term I simply mean having someone to take advantage of all those baserunners, and not someone who would allegedly give an indirect boost to Barry’s actual hitting stats.
I think this is a good analysis. I also think the legendary players of old have a certain aura that players we actually watch play don’t have yet. As a kid I read so many books about baseball that the greats seemed like gods to me. The different eras are hard to compare. Today’s players have science, including nutrition, travel and training advantages. The salaries today allow for full year conditioning as well. That being said, IMO, no one has been better than Mays since his heyday.
Ken Griffey, Jr. would be my pick for closest to Mays. He mostly played center field, had 10 gold gloves, and seven silver slugger awards. Mays had a higher batting average and more stolen bases, but otherwise their stats are similar.
At his peak, Griffey was amazing, and an incredibly similar player. But again, injuries left us wondering what coulda been. For a quick dirty comparison, Griffey’s lifetime WAR^ was 77.7. Mays’ was 149.8. Those injuries hurt - the last 9 years of his career, Griffey accumulated just 2.0 WAR (Mays put up 45.7 - and he retired 2 years older than Griddey when he hung it up). Mays had 4 seasons of 10+ WAR - Griffey never hit that mark (neither did Hank Aaron, but Mantle had 3, Bonds had 5).
^WAR isn’t the end-all be-all, but its goal is to be able to compare across eras, and encompass all aspects of the game - so it’s at least a place to start.
However the way pitchers were used in Griffey’s time like using multiple relievers and situational pitching vs. Mays’ time where starters were expected to pitch complete games may equalize those hitting stats.
I was thinking about Griffey too. I loved watching him play in Seattle. However, he can’t come close to 24 Allstar games (Griffey played in 9). Mays was dominant for a generation. Griffey was great for 1/2 a generation.
Craig Calcaterra’s “Cup Of Coffee” newsletter contains some discussion of who is now the Greatest Living Ballplayer.
Top candidates are
Barry Bonds,
Rickey Henderson,
Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, or Pedro Martínez, and
Mike Schmidt or Johnny Bench.
Ken Griffey, Jr. is listed in “a secondary tier containing players who, for a time anyway, looked like the best players alive but who either had injuries or late-career declines which took the shine off their ‘Greatest’ claim,” along with Mike Trout and Albert Pujols.
Thanks for mentioning Mike. Certainly one of the best of his era. Great hitter and player. Not so great at running, probably because he played his entire career with cartilage worn out in both knees. He would have fluid drained from his knees before every game and slept with his knees packed in ice. So his shortage of steals is no surprise and his extra base running was mostly due to his incredible hitting ability in the largest stadiums ever used in the game. Despite that he managed to win 10 Gold Gloves at 3rd base.
In 1995 he was the only player elected to the HOF in his first year of eligibility. In the what I consider the greatest hallmark of his career he retired voluntarily while being offered millions to work as a DH because he didn’t feel like he could perform to his own personal standard anymore.
Great player, maybe belongs in the top 10 list, but I don’t think he would put himself ahead of Willy Mays on the all time list.
Joe Posnanski has a similar discussion going, but I’m not a paid member, so I don’t get to see his answer. He lists Bonds as the 3rd best player in history, but teases the first couple paragraphs to suggest Bonds isn’t his GLB.
I think I have to go with Rickey. Bonds is most certainly the “living ball player who had the greatest career”, but I think “Greatest Living Ballplayer” is a slightly tongue-in-cheek honorific^ that needs to highlight someone a little off the beaten path. And no one out-Rickeys Rickey!
^Joe DiMaggio insisted on being called “the greatest living ballplayer” throughout his retirement. It might be the most egotistical move of all time, considering that Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Berra et al. lived at the same time as him.
Well, clearly, Barry Bonds. Bonds was not the all around player Mays was in the sense that he wasn’t the center field defensive wonder Mays was - Bonds did win many Gold Gloves but he was a left fielder and IMHO was only brilliant at it for a few years.
Other than that, no. The best position players whose careers largely came AFTER Mays retired, by WAR (Mays was 156):
Barry Bonds, 163
Alex Rodriguez, 118
Rickey Henderson, 111
Mike Schmidt, 107
Albert Pujols, 101
Joe Morgan, 101
I think these are fair approximations. So yeah, it’s Bonds and no one else. As great as the like of A-Rod, Schmidt or Morgan were, I do not believe they are close to Mays.
There is not a single doubt in my mind that if Mays’s career had started in 1990, he could have hit 800 home runs.
He his 660 despite missing two years to military service AND playing in a harder home run context. When Barry Bonds hit 73 bombs in 2001, the AVERAGE NL team hit 184 home runs. There was never a time in Mays’s career that home runs were that common, or really even close.
Mays also led the league in stolen bases four times. His 339 career steals aren’t close to Bonds but, again, it was a different time; for the part of his career when he was fastest, stolen bases were not in fashion.
I don’t think the DH part of that can be true, inasmuch as Schmidt’s team didn’t play in a DH league and he retired from the Phillies midseason, and midcontract. He was NEVER leaving Philly at that point. He was still playing third base, in fact.
Schmidt may not be as great as Mays… but he’s the greatest third baseman there ever was.
