It’s a new month, but we still have some old business before us.
I started counting down my list of baseball’s top 100 players on January 14, unveiling successive groups of 10 batters and pitchers each Tuesday and Friday. That brought us to 41st place before the calendar flipped to February.
We have four installments of the Baseball 100 to go — two this week and two next. We’ll begin with the players ranked 40th to 31st.
Every story in this series includes a nine-paragraph boilerplate explanation of my scoring system. Feel free to skip directly to today’s 10 profiles if you wish.
The rankings within the Baseball 100 are determined by 2024’s overall base values (OBV), which measure the relative effectiveness of batters and pitchers.
A positive OBV indicates one of two things:
-
A particular batter reached more bases than the average big leaguer would have attained under identical circumstances.
-
A given pitcher surrendered fewer bases than his typical counterpart would have yielded under the same conditions.
Click here if you want to know more about the formulas and calculations. (Be aware that OBV is slightly different from the BV described in the link. The initial sign for a pitcher’s BV is reversed for his OBV. A negative sign is better for a pitcher’s BV, but a positive sign is ideal for an OBV, which is what we’re using here.)
The player with the highest OBV — whether a hitter or pitcher — is deemed to be the best overall player. The rankings proceed downward in order.
If two or more players are tied with identical OBVs, I break the tie by matching their ratios of bases per out (BPO) against 2024’s big-league average of .675. BPO is exactly what it sounds like, a comparison of bases reached or yielded (through hits, walks, hit batters, stolen bases, and sacrifices) against outs made or induced.
Preference within a tie is given to the player who surpassed the BPO norm by the greatest amount, either above .675 for a batter or below the same mark for a pitcher.
Each player in the Baseball 100 is listed with his rank, club, primary position (the one he played more than any other in 2024), BPO or BPO allowed (BPOA), the numbers of bases and outs involved, and OBV.
A new installment will arrive in your email upon posting
-
Club: Brewers
-
Primary position: C
-
BPO: .819 (on 370 bases and 452 outs)
-
OBV: +65
-
Bottom line: William Contreras is one of two catchers to qualify for the Baseball 100, and he carries the better rating of the pair. His counterpart is his brother, Willson, who ranks 73rd.
-
Club: Red Sox
-
Primary position: P
-
BPOA: .547 (on 295 bases and 539 outs)
-
OBV: +69
-
Bottom line: Houck’s record was just 9-10. But his 3.12 ERA was seventh-best in the American League, and he posted the league’s lowest ratio of home runs allowed (0.55 per nine innings).
-
Club: Braves
-
Primary position: P
-
BPOA: .541 (on 284 bases and 525 outs)
-
OBV: +71
-
Bottom line: Fried worked 174.1 innings for Atlanta in 29 starts. Two were complete games, the National League’s best total. He signed with the Yankees as a free agent after the season.
-
Club: Dodgers
-
Primary position: LF
-
BPO: .839 (on 369 bases and 440 outs)
-
OBV: +72
-
Bottom line: Hernandez generated 33 homers and 99 RBIs in his first season with the Dodgers. He could have departed as a free agent, but he signed a new deal with Los Angeles in January.
-
Club: Mariners
-
Primary position: P
-
BPOA: .478 (on 175 bases and 366 outs)
-
OBV: +72
-
Bottom line: Woo improved dramatically during his second season in Seattle. He upgraded his ERA from 4.21 in 2023 to 2.89 in 2024, while producing a 9-3 record in 22 starts.
-
Club: Brewers
-
Primary position: LF
-
BPO: 1.052 (on 201 bases and 191 outs)
-
OBV: +72
-
Bottom line: A back injury ended Yelich’s season in mid-August. His OBV of plus-72 virtually matched his 73 games played. He batted .315 with an impressive on-base percentage of .406.
-
Club: Tigers
-
Primary position: P
-
BPOA: .418 (on 119 bases and 285 outs)
-
OBV: +73
-
Bottom line: Holton made nine starts, sort of. He didn’t work more than three innings in any of them. His true value was as a reliever, holding opponents to a .173 batting average in 66 games.
-
Club: Padres
-
Primary position: P
-
BPOA: .542 (on 309 bases and 570 outs)
-
OBV: +76
-
Bottom line: The White Sox traded Cease to San Diego in spring training. He responded with 33 starts (the most in the National League) and a 3.47 ERA (ninth-best in the NL).
-
Club: Dodgers
-
Primary position: SS
-
BPO: .902 (on 303 bases and 336 outs)
-
OBV: +76
-
Bottom line: Betts’s productivity was severely reduced by a fractured hand, which limited him to 116 games. He still managed to bat .289, drive home 75 runs, and score 75 more.
-
Club: Cubs
-
Primary position: RF
-
BPO: .877 (on 336 bases and 383 outs)
-
OBV: +77
-
Bottom line: Suzuki’s third season in Chicago ranked as his best. He finished with 21 homers and 73 RBIs. His .283 batting average was tops on the Cubs’ roster.