Baseball is in a little bit of a down cycle for heart fielders.
A number of of the sport’s all-time best gamers have roamed heart — Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays — however their trendy counterparts pale compared.
The perfect heart fielder of the previous 5 seasons, in response to my rankings, was Brandon Nimmo of the New York Mets. Not precisely a reputation to make you neglect Cobb, Mantle, and many others., and many others.
These position-by-position rankings, you could recall, are decided solely by total base worth (OBV), which measures a batter’s means to build up bases by hits, walks, hit batters, stolen bases, and sacrifices.
OBV particularly compares a given hitter’s variety of bases towards the quantity that a median massive leaguer would have attained below the identical circumstances.
Nimmo, for instance, reached 1,389 bases between 2020 and 2024, whereas a typical hitter would have totaled 1,171 in the identical variety of plate appearances. Nimmo’s ensuing surplus of plus-218 is his OBV, the very best amongst heart fielders.
That will sound like a powerful quantity, however the leaders at seven different positions posted greater values. Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, and Freddie Freeman, for example, all accrued five-year OBVs in extra of 500.
Right now’s rankings are confined to gamers who made a minimum of 1,400 plate appearances within the 2020-2024 interval and spent greater than half of their video games in heart discipline. (Their statistics, nonetheless, embody their full data in any respect positions.)
Nimmo is adopted by Byron Buxton of the Twins at plus-187 and Cedric Mullins of the Orioles at plus-170.
Scroll all the way down to see the half-decade’s 10 greatest heart fielders within the OBV rankings. Every is adopted by parenthetical stats for 2020-2024 — video games, residence runs, runs batted in, and batting common — capped by his total base worth.
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1. Brandon Nimmo (G 601, HR 79, RBI 268, BA .264) — OBV +218
2. Byron Buxton (G 379, HR 95, RBI 208, BA .251) — OBV +187
3. Cedric Mullins (G 626, HR 82, RBI 263, BA .258) — OBV +170
4. Julio Rodriguez (G 430, HR 80, RBI 246, BA .277) — OBV +154
5. Luis Robert Jr. (G 467, HR 88, RBI 245, BA .267) — OBV +121
6. Jarren Duran (G 353, HR 34, RBI 142, BA .272) — OBV +109
7. Michael Harris II (G 362, HR 53, RBI 169, BA .285) — OBV +86
8. Riley Greene (G 329, HR 40, RBI 153, BA .267) — OBV +58
9. Brandon Marsh (G 472, HR 41, RBI 191, BA .256) — OBV +56
10. Cody Bellinger (G 555, HR 85, RBI 309, BA .244) — OBV +37
