#MLBRank: A-Rod, the Rocket make Schoenfield’s all-time top 10

2:00 PM ET

Let’s start here: If I did this list again tomorrow, I’d likely change my mind. The easy thing to do would be to just go to the Baseball-Reference all-time WAR leaderboard, plug in the top 10 names and call it a day.

The problem with doing that is we get this: 1914, 1890, 1907, 1986, 1951, 1905, 1954, 1984, 1907, 1897. (And if we extended the list to the top 15, we’d get 1915, 1907 and 1911.)

Those are the dates each of the players began their major league careers, meaning nine of the top 15 players started before the United States even joined World War I — more than 100 years ago. Yes, I have a problem with that. Does it make sense that the majority of the elite players in the game’s long history didn’t play against black players, wore baggy wool uniforms and used gloves that look like something you use to take a turkey out of the oven with?

Of course not. So my top 10 list includes players from all across the baseball timeline.

10. Mike Schmidt

He hit just .267 in his career? As Bill James once said, if he’d hit for a higher average, he’d be the greatest player to play the game. Schmidt led the National League eight times in home runs and was first or second nine times in WAR among NL position players. He drew walks, won nine Gold Gloves and played on a lot of good teams. And, yes, this could have been Honus Wagner or Stan Musial or Lou Gehrig or Rickey Henderson or Mantle or Roger Hornsby. This wasn’t easy! But never of them had the best cry ever.

9. Greg Maddux

This spot was between Walter Johnson and Maddux (although I was tempted to put Pedro Martinez here because of his unbelievable peak level of performance, the greatest attained by a pitcher), but I went with the recent guy. For his career, Johnson averaged 6.4 WAR per 250 innings; Maddux averaged 5.2. But if you remove Maddux’s terrible rookie season and the final two seasons when he was sort of just hanging on, he averaged 5.8 per 250 innings. That’s pretty close, and adjusting for the more difficult era Maddux pitched in, I’m taking him over the guy who pitched 100 years ago and basically used one pitch for much of his career.

8. Ty CobbALL-TIME #MLBRANK

We’re counting down the greatest players in baseball history. ALL-TIME #MLBRANK

Top 10s: LHP | RHP | C | SS | 3B | 2B | 1B | LF | CF | RF

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