willie mays

Now, I understand that arguing for Willie Mays as the greatest baseball player of all time isn’t exactly like arguing for barack Obama to be the greatest president ever in american history. because he was better than Aaron ,and Aaron was pretty awesome. Here’s one comparison with Aaron, using the number of runs created per season, starting with the best season of each plays first best second best and so on. Aaron eventually passed Mays -- but it took him 13 seasons to do it. And remember that Mays missed nearly two full seasons while in the Army early in his career; the first year he returned he won the MVP Award. The point is: When you're a tad bit better than Hank Aaron and played one of the most important defensive positions and played 150-plus games 13 consecutive seasons ... well, Jim Murray had a good point. 

He was one of the best fielders of all time. He won 13 Gold Gloves. Do I need to defend his fielding? The advanced fielding metrics back up the reputation. Baseball-Reference ranks him as having the eighth-most fielding runs saved of all time -- behind Brooks Robinson, Mark Belanger, Andruw Jones, Ozzie Smith, Roberto Clemente, Bonds and Carl Yastrzemski. Other than Bonds, none are within 100 points of Mays in career OPS.