Rating the 10 MLB players who produced the most value for their team in 2019 while playing third base. Slugging, on-base, and defense are considered.
In baseball, we’re pretty much obsessed with the concept of value. We apply a plethora of often exotic statistical approaches to measure it: batting average, slugging, home runs, WAR, OPS+, Defensive Runs Saved, Weighted Runs Created…the list goes on.
The one factor we generally overlook in all these assessments is the most meaningfully value-oriented of all of them: salary. What, precisely, was the player paid – relative to all other players tasked with doing what he was doing – and how much of that pay did he “earn?”
The rating system that follows corrects that oversight. Based on 2019 performance, it measures which players were the most “valuable” as judged by their on-field production relative to their salary. And let it be noted here that we are limiting our focus to on-field value only. Some players, megastars, are paid based largely on factors unrelated to on-field performance, their drawing power at the gate, their celebrity, their endorsement/promotional potential being among them. Those factors, while acknowledged as real, are not part of this discussion.
Since different positions require different skills, the standard for determining production will vary depending on position…although for position players there will always be an offensive component.
Today we’re looking at third base, one of the most offensive-oriented positions on the field. Our system reflects that, with 60 percent of value determined by the player’s slugging average. An additional 20 percent is based on on-base average, giving 80 percent of the weight to the offensive side of performance.
The final 20 percent is divided equally between fielding percentage and innings played, participation always being relevant to some degree.
Those with even a passing familiarity with the current third base situation will recognize that three players predominate. Those three are Nolan Arenado, Alex Bregman and Anthony Rendon. They’ll hold down the top three spots in our ranking as well.
But third base is a particularly deep position, and there is no greater evidence of this than the fact that Matt Chapman, the All-Star third baseman of the Oakland Athletics, can’t break into the top 10. With a value of $7.151 million, just $49,000 short of the top 10, Chapman only rates 11th on our list.
Largely due to its offensive nature, third base is a position where teams are willing to spend very big. The average salary of the 33 third basemen who qualify for consideration was $6.657 million. Nine of them earned more than $12 million in 2019, topped by Arenado at $26 million. At the other end of the scale, 14 earned less than $1 million, 11 of them basically playing for the minimum.
For our four criteria, here are the other group averages: a player rating at the average in each group would then be worth $6.657 million.
- Slugging average: .471
- On-base average: .339
- Fielding average: .964
- Innings: 1,060
We begin with the guy who edged out Chapman