Deepest position in the sport right now?

[Barnaby Graves]

Seems like there's an absolute wealth of great young centerfielders. Sometimes there's a lot of good shortstops or first basemen or closers seemingly all at once, right now we have Trout, Jones, Ellsbury, McCutchen, Harper, Fowler, Pagan, Bourn, Jackson, B.J. Upton.

Thoughts?

[Spy Fox]

Centerfield was my first thought before I opened the thread. And the list you wrote out doesn't even include some of the more veteran CFers who are star players such as Curtis Granderson, Josh Hamilton, and Matt Kemp. You can also throw in players like Chris Young, Denard Span, Yoenis Cespedes, Jon Jay... You're right, there's a lot of CFers out there right now who can play at all-star type levels and are part of their team's core.

[MarylandAaron]

Man, CF is ridiculous right now. Definitely the deepest position in MLB.

3B is pretty stacked too: Cabrera, Beltre, Longoria, Zimmerman, Headley, Wright, Middlebrooks, Machado, ARam, ARod, Alvarez, Sandoval, Freese.

[skanar]

WAR agrees with you: here are the total fWAR accumulated throughout the majors at the various positions

C: 93.2

1B: 65.7

2B: 77.7

SS: 84.6

3B: 102.6

RF: 99.0

CF: 125.2

LF: 109.6

DH: 31.8

Remember, WAR includes defense and a position adjustment that covers many years of data.

So yes, it appears CF is where the most value is right now. LF, 3B, and RF come next, and 1B and 2B are weak.

LF was a bit of a surprise to me, but Trout got some of his value there. The 2012 LF list also includes Braun, Prado, Gordon, Holliday, Melky Cabrera, and Josh Hamilton.

[Barnaby Graves]

WAR agrees with you: here are the total fWAR accumulated throughout the majors at the various positions

C: 93.2

1B: 65.7

2B: 77.7

SS: 84.6

3B: 102.6

RF: 99.0

CF: 125.2

LF: 109.6

DH: 31.8

Remember, WAR includes defense and a position adjustment that covers many years of data.

So yes, it appears CF is where the most value is right now. LF, 3B, and RF come next, and 1B and 2B are weak.

LF was a bit of a surprise to me, but Trout got some of his value there. The 2012 LF list also includes Braun, Prado, Gordon, Holliday, Melky Cabrera, and Josh Hamilton.

What's interesting is the shallow talent pool at 1B and DH. Now... there could be a few structural reasons for this... but I believe there's actually something to those numbers. A bunch of important young players are still at a non-fat kid position. Something to do with PEDs? Maybe the kids coming up now are a bit leaner and still have the agility for their positions. The GIAMBINO (lol) was a 1B/DH full time by age 27.

[skanar]

What's interesting is the shallow talent pool at 1B and DH. Now... there could be a few structural reasons for this... but I believe there's actually something to those numbers. A bunch of important young players are still at a non-fat kid position. Something to do with PEDs? Maybe the kids coming up now are a bit leaner and still have the agility for their positions. The GIAMBINO (lol) was a 1B/DH full time by age 27.

You could be right, but those were just the numbers for 2012. I'd like to see an annual average over, say, 1996-2003 and 2005-2012, to help determine if things are actually changing. When I have some time I'll take a look at it.

[Loophole]

What's interesting is the shallow talent pool at 1B and DH. Now... there could be a few structural reasons for this... but I believe there's actually something to those numbers. A bunch of important young players are still at a non-fat kid position. Something to do with PEDs? Maybe the kids coming up now are a bit leaner and still have the agility for their positions. The GIAMBINO (lol) was a 1B/DH full time by age 27.

DH is always going to be low because WAR penalizes it so much. Same with 1B to a lesser extent.

Edit: Well, and because it's often filled with mediocre part-time players.

Oh, and that data only includes WAR accumulated from 14 teams while all the others use the numbers from all 30. Thaaaat might be the bigger issue.

[skanar]

DH is always going to be low because WAR penalizes it so much. Same with 1B to a lesser extent.

Edit: Well, and because it's often filled with mediocre part-time players.

Oh, and that data only includes WAR accumulated from 14 teams while all the others use the numbers from all 30. Thaaaat might be the bigger issue.

Yes, there are only 14 DH spots. Prorating gives 31.8*30/14 = 68.1 WAR, which is no longer an extreme outlier. Still, 1B and DH are the two lowest by a significant margin.