Who is Baseball's Best Player?

May 12, 2010

No question: Albert Pujols. He is baseball’s best hitter. Has been for years. And he is baseball’s best defender at his position. He is the only four-time recipient of the Fielding Bible Award. You can’t get much better than that.

Or can you?

I submit, for your consideration, that baseball’s best player right now is Chase Utley. Let’s compare Pujols and Utley year by year, going back to 2005, Utley’s first full season. By that point, Prince Albert had already established himself as baseball’s best, but let’s see what happens from that point forward.

In 2005, Albert Pujols won his first MVP award. He hit .330 with 41 home runs and 117 RBI. He led the league in Runs Created with 139. Chase Utley was no slouch, but he was no Pujols either. He hit .291 with 28 dingers and 105 RBI. He had 102 Runs Created.

What about baserunning and defense? In The Fielding Bible—Volume II we developed a method to compare players so that we include their baserunning and defense as part of the equation. It’s called Total Runs. It uses a slightly different definition of Runs Created, a version that eliminates the clutch hitting component. In our calculations we are assuming that there is no such thing as clutch defense and clutch baserunning. Eliminating clutch hitting for Runs Created puts everything on the same basis. Pujols’ Runs Created changes to 142 and Utley to 108.

As a baserunner, Pujols is pretty good. In 2005 he saved his team an estimated two runs on the basepaths. As we’ll see as we go through this, Chase Utley has been, arguably, the best baserunner in all of baseball. In 2005, he saved three runs on the basepaths, only one run better than Pujols.

Defense is where Utley catches Pujols. There are two elements. 1) How much better than average is the player at his position, and 2) How much more important is second base defensively than first base?

Pujols had a great year defensively at first base in 2005 with 9 Runs Saved. That means he saved 9 more runs than an average defender at first base. That was the fourth best first-base total in all of baseball. But Utley was even better. He saved an estimated 18 runs defensively for the Phillies at second base, compared to an average second base defender.

To come up with the relative importance of each defensive position, Bill James developed a formula to estimate the run value of each position defensively. It’s called a Positional Adjustment. Based on the innings each player played at their respective positions (including some innings at first base for Utley), Pujols gets 12 runs in 2005 and Utley gets 27. In essence, this adjustment is saying that Utley was worth 15 more runs defensively than Pujols in 2005 because he played a more important defensive position.

In total, with the defensive and baserunning adjustments, Utley almost caught Pujols, but Albert beat Chase by seven runs, 165 to 159. Two other players beat them overall, Derrek Lee and Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod won the AL MVP that year and led the league in home runs, slugging percentage and OPS. You can make a good case for D-Lee for NL MVP over Pujols. He finished third in voting but led the league in batting average, hits, doubles, total bases, slugging percentage and OPS. Here are the top four players in Total Runs in 2005:

In 2006, Pujols had an even better year than 2005 hitting .331-49-137, but finished second in MVP voting to Utley’s teammate, Ryan Howard. Utley bettered his 2005 as well with .309-32-102. When adding all the components, Utley actually beats out Albert Pujols for the number one spot in baseball. Teammates Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins are tied for sixth. Here are the 2006 Total Runs leaders:

By his own standards, 2007 was an off year for Pujols. Utley’s home run total is down, but everything else is up and he has his best year. Pujols goes .327-32-103 and Utley is .332-22-103. Pujols has a huge year defensively with 29 runs saved and finishes fifth in total runs in baseball while Utley is seventh:

In 2008, Albert won his second MVP award with .357-37-116. Utley had another great year with .292-33-104. Offensively, Chase pales by comparison but he had such an incredible defensive year, saving 34 runs, that he overtakes Pujols. Utley and Pujols finish one-two in Total Runs:

In 2009, Pujols wins his third MVP with a .327-47-135 season. Utley continues his steady performance with .282-31-93. And he’s 23-for-23 in stolen bases, which, by the way, is included in Runs Created, not Baserunning Runs. Pujols and Utley finish one and two again in Total Runs, this time with Pujols on top:

So far in 2010, Pujols is doing well hitting .320 with seven home runs and 25 RBI. But that’s actually a bit down from his previous norms and he is tied for 14th in baseball with 33 Total Runs. Utley’s standard line of .302-8-18 doesn’t look that impressive but he currently has his career highest on-base and slugging percentages at .434 and .578. With his usual stellar defense, Utley leads all of baseball in Total Runs once again:

Summarizing the past five-plus seasons, we have Utley with 907 Total Runs and Pujols with 878. And that’s why I submit that Utley is currently baseball’s best. (By the way, over that time span, no one else is close; Jimmy Rollins is a distant third with 742 Total Runs).

Here are summary charts for Utley and Pujols:

Source: www.BillJamesOnline.com