Recently, as I was writing my post on why Barry Larkin deserves to be a first-ballot hall-of-famer, I got to wondering who the top 10 shortstops of all time are. In order to get an answer, I decided to crowdsource my question to the internet!

What I did was I went to Google and looked up the first ten top-10 rankings of shortstops that I could find, and tallied up their rankings to get a final top-10.

Honus is still the king.

As for the question of whether the first ten random top-10 lists I found are reliable or not, I crowdsourced that too, in a manner of speaking – because these lists were the ten highest ranking according to Google’s PageRank formula, by some definition they are the best lists, because they are the lists more people want to link to.

Taking each player’s ranking from each of the ten top-10 lists, I subtracted that number from 101 to get a point total, which I added to their score. In other words, a first place ranking on a list was worth 100 points, for a theoretical maximum of 1000 points over the 10 polls, and a 10th place ranking on a list was worth 91 points. This ensured that appearing low on two lists was still worth more than appearing high on just one list. If lists listed more than 10 players, I did not give points for any ranking after 10, in order to ensure that all lists were weighted equally.

So without further ado, here are the top ten shortstops of all time, according to the average of ten random internet top-10 lists, along with total final score and total “first place votes” in parentheses:

1. Honus Wagner – 992 (5)
2. Cal Ripken Jr. – 974 (1)
3. Alex Rodriguez – 885 (2)
4. Derek Jeter – 858
5. Ozzie Smith – 765 (2)
6. Robin Yount – 669
7. Ernie Banks – 671
8. Barry Larkin – 657
9. Luke Appling – 562
10. Arky Vaughan – 561

Amazingly, given the rather ridiculous method I used, this is not a bad list at all. In fact, it is pretty close to a list I might have made myself using some sort of advanced statstics-based measures. A-Rod got left off of one ballot on account of his time at third base, so his ranking of #3 seems fair, especially given that by the end of his career he will almost certainly have more innings played at third base than at shortstop (not to mention his admitted steroid usage).  Even if we leave A-Rod out, assuming he is going to wind up remembered more as a 3B, it’s pretty hard to argue with a top 5 of Wagner, Ripken, Jeter, Ozzie, and Yount.

Ernie Banks was similarly left off some ballots since he played more games at first base, so it’s right for him to not be in the top five, but given that he still played 1125 games at shortstop, was one of the first power-hitting shortstops, and is best remembered as a shortstop, #7 doesn’t seem like a bad spot to have him at.

All in all, I find myself quite encouraged by this little experiment in crowdsourcing, as this is really a pretty decent result. If people are interested, it might be worth doing this for other positions, and seeing what comes up.

By the way, altogether across the ten top-10 lists, 20 different players appeared at least once.  Although I was mostly interested in the top ten, where outliers were not likely to appear, in case you are interested the next best ten shortstop according to the average of these lists were:

11. Luis Aparicio – 369
12. Lou Boudreau – 373
13. Joe Cronin – 279
14. Omar Vizquel – 187
15. Alan Trammell – 184
16. Phil Rizzuto – 183
17. Dave Concepcion – 94
18. Pee Wee Reese – 93
19. Nomar Garciaparra – 93
20. George Davis – 91

Here are the ten lists I used (again, these were the first ten lists to come up on Google):

“Top 50 Shortstops of All Time” (The Baseball Page.com)
“Top 10 Greatest MLB Shortstops Of All Time” (Bleacher Report)
“Top 10 Shortstops In Baseball History” (About.com)
“Best Shortstop of All Time?” (FanIQ)
“Top Ten Shortstops of All Time” (World in Focus)
“MLB’s 10 Greatest Shortstops of All Time” (Bleacher Report)
“FSN Sports Top 10 Shortstops” (Baseball Fever)
“Greatest Major League Baseball Shortstop All-Time” (Rankopedia)
“All-Time Top 100s: Shortstops” (SethSpeaks)
“Best Shortstops in History” (RateItAll)

So yesterday morning as I was in my local bagel shop waiting on my bacon egg and cheese on an onion bagel, I glanced down at the newspapers and I saw this photo of A-Rod and Kate Hudson on the cover of the NY Daily News:

Then I noticed the headline of the story beside this photo. And thought, “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right”:

From the New York Times’ Bats blog comes word that Details Magazine is coming out with a story about A-Rod, who sat for the interview on the day he found out Sports Illustrated reporter Selena Roberts would write he had tested positive for steroids in 2003.

Maybe the article will shed some light on the riddle that is A-Rod, but I have a feeling people will be paying more attention to the photos.

From Bats:

“We thought he was getting to a different level of comfort with himself,” Bhattacharji said. “The picture of him kissing his reflection is very revealing. Is he in love with himself or is he kissing something goodbye?”

A picture of A-Rod kissing his reflection? If you think we overuse the Pat Burrell “Man or Machine” photo, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Well, it can’t buy taste. But it can buy one heckuva swimming pool:

If this isn’t a pathetic excuse of an attempt at spreading a viral web video, I don’t know what is.

What’s Activision thinking, putting four elite athletes in a room, with nary boxer briefs and a pink shirt? That we’re just going to post it!?

We have no shame…

(For those of you scoring at home, yes, that’s Tony Hawk, Michael Phelps, Kobe Bryant, and his studness, Alex Rodriguez)

Yes, that’s Alex Rodriguez actually wiping his face with a $100 bill.

It’s time for each member of the umpbump staff to make his or her MVP picks. Nick went first. Now it’s my turn. Buckle up — it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

American League

Rob Neyer says 30 win shares is a good baseline for an MVP caliber season and if he’s right than we’ve got a problem, because not one single player had 30 win shares in the AL this season. Still, I’ve got to pick someone, so I guess I’ll go with…

3. Alex Rodriguez, 3B, Yankees. In 100 fewer at bats, he hit only two fewer home runs than league leader Miguel Cabrera. His .573 slugging percentage led the league, and his .964 OPS was fourth. Defensively, he had the highest fielding percentage among AL third basemen, and he got to more balls outside his zone than any AL 3B other than Adrian Beltre. Oh, and he stole 18 bases.

2. Dustin Pedroia, 2B, Red Sox. He was third in runs created in the AL this season, behind Grady Sizemore and Josh Hamilton. His .325 batting average was second in the league. He stole 20 bases and only got caught once. He was arguably the best defensive second baseman in the league, and he gets extra credit for being adorable.

1. Joe Mauer, C, Twins. I don’t have much to add beyond what Nick said. This guy is the best all around player in the game. He’s not only one of the best defensive catchers in baseball, but he is one of the best defensive player overall. This season, Kurt Suzuki led the majors with 9.3 defensive win shares. Mauer came in second with 8.2. That’s not second among only catchers. That’s all positions. To do what he does defensively and also lead the league in hitting makes for an obvious MVP selection, as far as I’m concerned.

National League

This year’s NL MVP selection is complicated a bit by the enigmatic Ryan Howard, who managed to lead the league in home runs and RBI — by a lot — while maintaining an anemic .250 batting average. How do you not vote for a guy who led the league in homers and RBI? This is how…

3. Chase Utley, 2B, Phillies. He’s tied for fourth in the league with 27 win shares and eighth in defensive win shares. He’s fifth in the league in runs created. Utley’s season stalled after a torrid April. The media speculated that he was playing hurt. Utley denied it, saying he wasn’t injured beyond the usual bumps and bruises that a player accrues over the course of a season. But what a lot of fans don’t know is that Utley’s bruises are more plentiful than most. He was hit by a pitch 27 times this season — almost twice as many HBPs as anybody else. He does whatever it takes to win. And he’s an above average defensive second baseman.

2. Lance Berkman, 1B, Astros. I’m having a hard time not voting for Berkman for MVP, just because he clearly had an MVP calliber year. He had four more win shares than anyone in the NL, including Albert Pujols. But that’s about the only metric I can find that favors Berkman.

1. Albert Pujols, 1B, Cardinals. He was the man. He led the league in OPS and runs created. He was second in batting average and OBP, behind Chipper Jones. He walked nearly twice as often as he struck out. Moreover, as Jayson Stark point out, Pujols “racked up almost twice as many intentional walks (33) as anybody else in the league and only 46 percent of the pitches thrown to him have been in the strike zone.” That’s an MVP.