In the past few weeks, especially with quarantine, the debate over the top third basemen in baseball has intensified over social media, especially Instagram. The two main candidates in this debate are the Angels’ Anthony Rendon and the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado. It seems as though the two sides of the argument are equal in the number of supporters, and today I will present to you my side and who I think is the best third baseman.
The first thing I’d like to say is that both Arenado and Rendon are great players that have had great careers and will continue to do what they have done. There are also other third basemen as well, so I will include the top five in fWAR from the past three years in this discussion. Those other three are Alex Bregman, Jose Ramirez, and Matt Chapman. Here they are ranked in fWAR for the past three seasons:
As shown here, Rendon and Arenado are both ranked 1st and 4th, respectively. Many feel that fWAR can be an end all be all stat, but there has to be more context and other stats to go along with it to determine how talented a certain player is.
Defensively in 2019, Matt Chapman is superior to the whole group, leading in DRS, UZR, rPM, and Def. Arenado does win in OAA, but he does not come very close to Chapman in any of the other metrics. When Arenado and Rendon are compared to each other, Arenado beats Rendon pretty easily, beating him out by a decent amount in all defensive categories shown. Rendon and Bregman may be the worst defenders in this group, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t good and that they aren’t very far behind everybody else listed. The 2019 defensive statistics are shown below:
The only problem with using just 2019 stats, though, is that you aren’t taking into account years prior. A player may have had a bad year in 2019, but spectacular years in seasons before. So, I decided to take into account the last three years as I did with the hitters as well. Since the total number of games weren’t as close as the 2019 GP, I decided to use rate versions of those defensive metrics. UZR/150 was the only rate version of those statistics that exists, so I made the same thing for the other by taking the stat total, dividing by games, and then multiplying by 150. The stats are shown here:
In the past three seasons, Rendon actually does come closer to the top in Def/150 and UZR/150, as he comes within Arenado at 0.4 and 0.3 respectively, but Arenado is still just a bit better as he easily wins the rest. Chapman is still number one, and the top trio of him, Arenado, and Rendon get some separation from the rest of the pack. Alex Bregman is at the bottom and even has some negative numbers, showing that he is a little below average at defense. There is also some decent separation between Ramirez and Bregman as well, with Ramirez having 7.1 higher Def/150 and 7.8 UZR/150.
I feel that playing good defense is important, however, players provide more value by using the bat than the glove, so let’s compare these players using their offensive stats:
These numbers from the last three years suggest that Rendon and Bregman are very close to tied at the top, with both having very high wOBAs at .397 and .390, with Arenado coming in at second in wOBA and falling back to fourth in wRC+. When comparing Rendon and Arenado, Rendon wins in both wOBA and wRC+, they’re also both very close in BABIP, initially suggesting that they both had about the same amount of luck, more on that later. Rendon also strikes out less and walks more, leading to a higher OBP. In baserunning, Rendon also wins with a 7 BsR compared to Arenado’s 2.9. One thing that Arenado has going for him in this comparison is that he has had more power than Rendon, with an ISO 0.023 points higher, an SLG 0.021 points higher, more total home runs as well. However, Rendon has better overall offensive numbers than Arenado. Chapman loses a lot of ground here as he isn’t as good of a hitter as the rest of the group, taking last in both wOBA and wRC+.
Now we can use x-stats and batted ball data to predict how each of these hitters will do when we have baseball again, as they take into account batted ball data, ballpark effects, and defenses to create the stat:
The BA-x, SLG-x, and wOBA-x are just the actual stat minus the expected stat. A positive shows you that the hitter got lucky and a negative shows that the hitter was unlucky. As shown, it appears that all of these hitters got at least a little bit lucky. When looking at Rendon and Arenado, they are both at about the same in BA, but when looking at SLG and wOBA, Rendon’s x-stats were about the same, meaning he performed just as he should’ve while Arenado got luckier and overperformed. Jose Ramirez performed just as he should’ve with a .002 difference in BA, but got more lucky with the other two, the same thing happened with Chapman as well. Alex Bregman outperformed by just a bit in all three stats.
With all of these factors included, it seems as though Rendon takes home the top spot. His 19.9 WAR over three years tops everybody, and so does his wOBA of .397, he also takes second in wRC+ with a 145. His x-stats are all close to his actual statistics, so his actual talent has been shown through his performance. He’s also close in second in Def/150 with a 9.2 and in UZR/150 with a 7.0. In second place is Alex Bregman who isn’t amazing defensively, but is great with the bat with a third base best wRC+ of 150 and a very close third with a wOBA of .392. He had a rough start last year, but Jose Ramirez is the third-best in the hot corner. He’s an above-average defender with an UZR/150 of 5.0 and a solid hitter with third-place wRC+ of 134 and finishes in fourth in wOBA of .377. Our second target player, Arenado, takes a lower than thought fourth place. He is an amazing defender, like fifth-place Matt Chapman, but he gets the higher rank because he is the superior hitter with a higher wOBA by 0.037, and just edges out Chapman in wRC+ by 3 points.
With all of these numbers shown, I have just given you my rankings for the top 5 third basemen in baseball. Again, there will always be a debate on which player or players are best and nobody is wrong for their opinion. These debates will change and progress as these players continue to play in the future.
STATS FROM: FANGRAPHS AND BASEBALL SAVANT
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