If you're using "new" metric of WARs, he's currently 63rd all-time. Taking a deeper dive, if you're only looking at 1st basemen he's somewhere in the top 30 all time. Putting another spin on it, if you shrink down the all-time WAR list to players that only played 15 seasons or less, Bagwell is 3rd all-time and 1st all-time among positional players.
The baseball thought process on Bagwell and Thomas has complete done a 180 over the last 10 years. Bagwell is viewed as the better player at this point because of his glove, speed, instincts and some time in the Dome.
I think his stats are overvalued, and should be taken into context by the fact that he played in the steroid era of MLB. See Ken Caminiti
I can only imagine what kind of stats Pedro Guerrero would have compiled if he played his prime in the steroid era of MLB, same goes for every generation's top 50 players.
58th sounds about right... puts him Top ~3 at his position all-time. His all-around game is Olajuwon on a diamond.
Imagine if Bagwell played his entire career at Minute Maid. Look, you can dismiss cold hard stats if you want that's your prerogative but you haven't provide anything of substance to back your claim that Bagwell is not a top 100 player other than simply saying he isn't. Here's an exercise for you that won't require you to name 99 players better than Bagwell: name 10 1st basemen that are better than Bagwell since he came to the league in 1991. I bet you can't think of any name past Pujols. To help you out a bit, even if stats appear to not be your thing (which is fascinating because this is baseball) https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_1B.shtml
There's also two kind of arguments: reasoned ones based on facts, and bull**** laden with quips and generalizations.
If we don't count pitchers, I agree. Otherwise, it's Roger. Altuve and Bregs have a shot at passing him.
If you go by baseball reference's WAR, and include players before 1918, Bags is somewhere around 45th in batting WAR. Take out the pre-1918 guys, and he's 29th. There are 26 pitchers with BB Reference WARs over Bags's 79.9. So, about 70 players all-time with more WAR. About 45-50 if we exclude pre 1918 players. Probably a few of those players behind Bags would be ahead of him were it not for little things like WW2 and Korea. A hundred players ahead of him is crazy. 40 or so? About right.
Using BB Ref's JAWS, which is basically 'how good was the player at their peak?', Bags is 6th all time at 1st. Get rid of Cap Anson and Roger Connor, who both basically played before electricity, and he's 4th, behind Foxx, Gehrig, and Pujols. Not bad company. Bagwell was really, really good. Bill James was one of the first to notice just how good Bagwell was.
Nobody's perfect. At least people aren't looking too closely---yet---at their title. That was a bad trade, but who's to say Bagwell would have developed had he not been traded? So much in life depends on the environment around the potential to be developed. Missed your post upthread on JAWS when I made mine. Oops. I didn't read the Athletic column, but 58 seems a little low for Bagwell, after looking at the numbers.
no worries at all. We’re both going to bat for Bagwell. I’m still waiting on Joe to provide us his list of 100 players better.
