Red Sox: Was Mookie Betts snubbed in ESPN’s top 100 of all time?

Former Red Sox Mookie Betts has a case for being an all-time great

ESPN recently released their ranking of the top 100 players of all time. Several of these legendary figures wore a Boston Red Sox uniform for a significant portion of their careers. One former face of the franchise who was curiously omitted from the list is Mookie Betts.

Betts has had an outstanding start to his career, the first six seasons of which were spent with the Red Sox. The five-time All-Star already has five Gold Gloves, four Silver Sluggers, a batting title and an MVP award on his resume. He’s won two World Series titles, one with Boston and the other with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Through eight seasons, Betts owns a .296/.373/.518/.890 slash line that is comparable, it not better, than several position players who appear on the list.

Betts has already piled up 178 homers and 146 stolen bases. The Dodgers have him under contract for another 11 years. If Betts approaches the production he achieved in his first eight seasons over the next decade-plus, he could conceivably finish his career with over 300 in both categories. Only eight players in major league history have reached 300+ in both home runs and stolen bases.

Holding Betts back from cracking the top 100 is a lack of longevity. With only eight seasons under his belt, Betts doesn’t have the counting stats to match most of the other all-time greats. We can project him to reach that territory but a lot can happen over the next decade to derail that prediction. That concern is precisely why the Red Sox weren’t willing to hand him the extension he was looking for. It’s nearly impossible to project that far into the future and accurately predict when the decline will come.

This is why the top 100 list is almost entirely made up of retired players or fading stars approaching the end of their careers. Betts might be enshrined in the Hall of Fame one day but most of the players in these rankings are already in Cooperstown (or would be if the stain of PEDs hadn’t banished them).

Very few players on this list are still at the peak of their careers. A notable exception is Mike Trout (No. 15), who could find himself at the top of the list when it’s all said and done if he can stay healthy. The other outlier is Bryce Harper (No. 94), whose inclusion is a bit more debatable.

Harper has been a phenom since entering the league in 2012. The six-time All-Star already has two MVP awards. He’s hitting .279/.392/.524/.916 with 267 home runs through 10 seasons.

The power ceiling is higher for Harper, who led the league in home runs once and both slugging and OPS twice. The slugging percentage is relatively close though with Betts piling up more doubles and triples in fewer games. Harper draws more walks, twice leading the league in that category, but Betts owns a better batting average.

Harper has a slight edge at the plate but Betts is the better base runner and an elite defensive outfielder. That places the overall value of the former Red Sox star above Harper’s. Since Harper entered the league in 2012, his 43.3 fWAR ranks sixth in the majors, per Fangraphs. One spot ahead of him is Betts (44.0 fWAR), despite that Mookie has played two fewer seasons and over 300 fewer games! Since Betts debuted in 2014, only Trout (56.9 fWAR) has been more valuable by this metric.

The gap in value by Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR is even wider. Harper’s 40.1 bWAR lags far behind Mookie’s 50.0 bWAR.

Bias towards recent memory may have led some voters to jump the gun on considering either of these players. Neither cracks the top 250 in career fWAR among position players. They should surpass the figures produced by several of the players on ESPN’s list within a few seasons but that assumes sustained production and health, neither of which are guaranteed.

Betts might be on his way to a top 100 worthy career but he’s not there yet. Neither is Harper though. If we had to pick one of them to make the cut, I would still lean towards Betts.