Fangraphs Weekly Mail Bags: August 9, 2025

My favorite baseball problem is the one that requires quantitative data and subjective analysis. Who is the greatest baseball player ever? Well, I could pull up the career war rankings, say Babe Ruth and call it “a day,” but that’s not a satisfying way to conclude. We all know that Ruth’s nature (his great achievements and legends) cannot be beaten by his worthy replacement.

Where is Barry Bonds? He finished second in the 164.4 War, with less than three wins in Ruth’s (167.0) while fighting better games. After all, Bond will not allow winning games in Ruth’s career. It’s good, but the whole steroid stuff shrouds his legacy. For a while, Mike Trout looked like an answer worthy of answering, because when Sabermetrics became mainstream, he was much better than the others. We will use data to quantify his excellence and then, as long as the numbers don’t convince the numbers, we will say something about the outstanding talent level in the game today. Of course, now, due to his two-way loophole, the vast majority of us may answer Shohei Ohtani. We can cite his statistics, but we have to include a lot of qualifications, most of which are related to his pitching and hitting.

I won’t reveal my answer in this week’s mailbag, because none of you asked for it. Instead, I asked this question because it relates to another question submitted by a reader named Derek, which we will raise later. But before we do this, I want to remind everyone that although anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is unique to Fangraphs members. If you don’t have a membership yet and want to continue reading, you can sign up for a membership here. This is the best way to experience the site again and support our staff and brings many other huge benefits. Also, if you want to ask a question about an upcoming mailbag, please email me: sailbag@fangraphs.com.