Joining the First Base Debate

Posted: 28th May 2009 by vacant in Justin Morneau, Statistics
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Who is the best first baseman in the American League? Seth Stohs posed this question earlier today and left me scratching my head. What a tough question!

First off, let’s clarify exactly what the question is that we are answering. As Seth points out, there are many different ways we can go with this topic. “Who has had/will have the best career?” “Who is the best today?” “Who do you start a team with?” For the sake of this discussion, I’m going to focus on the “Who is the best today?” question. Courtesy of TheBaseballCube, here is a handy chart comparing five of the biggest contendors:

Player Name Year Bavg Obp Slg OPS G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO
Carlos Pena 2009 .244 .380 .595 .975 47 168 36 41 9 1 16 40 35 61
Miguel Cabrera 2009 .377 .441 .599 1.040 44 167 30 63 10 0 9 36 18 22
Justin Morneau 2009 .347 .428 .670 1.098 47 176 38 61 13 1 14 44 25 28
Mark Teixeira 2009 .271 .382 .584 .966 43 166 32 45 10 0 14 37 27 35
Kevin Youkilis 2009 .379 .486 .672 1.158 32 116 28 44 13 0 7 28 19 29

Offense is pehaps the most important aspect to consider when comparing first baseman. (Speed isn’t an issue, as none of the above have more than one. For the sake of spacing, I simply removed that category.)  Morneau and Youkilis are the best in this category. We are only a few months into the season, so small sample size could obviously be an issue, but we’ll overlook that for now. Pena is a home run machine, but doesn’t hit for average and can’t get on base. He doesn’t even have many more RBI than Cabrera, who has seven less long balls.  The best BB/SO ratio goes to Morneau, with Cabrera close behind. Pena is far behind in that category. From the above statistics, here is how I would rank the five:

Offensive Ranking

  1. Justin Morneau
  2. Kevin Youkilis
  3. Miguel Cabrera
  4. Mark Teixeira
  5. Carlos Pena
Player Name Year Age Pos G GS Inn CH PO E DP Fld% RF/9 RF/G A
Carlos Pena 2009 31 1B 46 45 399.2 402 367 5 43 .988 8.94 8.63 30
Miguel Cabrera 2009 26 1B 41 41 355.1 365 329 4 28 .989 9.14 8.80 32
Justin Morneau 2009 28 1B 41 41 354.1 345 312 1 28 .997 8.74 8.39 32
Mark Teixeira 2009 29 1B 42 42 374.1 361 342 0 38 1.00 8.68 8.60 19
Kevin Youkilis 2009 30 1B 29 29 249.1 239 212 1 18 .996 8.59 8.21 26

Youkilis, because of an injury, has less time spent at first base than the rest of these five. Even playing the whole season, the other four have way too little playing time to make any assumptions. The best defensive player of these five is either Morneau or Teixeira. I’ll go with Teixeira first simply because he has one less error in twenty more innings, but it’s extremely close.

Defensive Ranking

  1. Mark Teixeira
  2. Justin Morneau
  3. Kevin Youkilis
  4. Miguel Cabrera
  5. Carlos Pena

Pena finishes fifth on both lists, proving that home runs don’t make a great first baseman. Cabrera is also out of the running with a 3rd and 4th place finish. Youkilis may have had a great year both offensively and defensively last year, but he needs a larger sample size before I can compare him to the rest. That leaves Morneau and Teixeira.

As a Twins’ fan, I’m obviously biased towards Morneau. When I try to be objective, though, I tend to be bias against Morneau, as Dwade pointed out. Just for fun, let’s take a look at both player’s wOBA from the past few years (sorry for the awful formatting).

 

Player Name Year wOBA
Justin Morneau 2008 0.470
Mark Teixeira (54 G with Angels/103 G with Braves) 2008 0.559/0.485
Justin Morneau 2007 0.445
Mark Teixeira 2007 0.501
Justin Morneau 2006 0.494
Mark Teixeira 2006 0.479
Justin Morneau 2005 0.401
Mark Teixeira 2005 0.512
Justin Morneau 2004 0.475
Mark Teixeira 2004 0.502
Justin Morneau 2003 N/A
Mark Teixeira 2003 0.441

Interestingly, Morneau led only one year; 2006, his MVP year. Here are the 2009 numbers, through Monday’s games:

Justin Morneau 2009 0.577
Mark Teixeira 2009 0.516

Who is the best first baseman in the league?

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