Sports

Baseball's Greatest Players: The What-Ifs and 10 numbers that define them

Nairavoice · Sep 10, 2026 · 5 min read

Baseball’s Greatest Players: The What-Ifs and 10 numbers that define them originally appeared on The Sporting News.
Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

They were shaped by circumstance. Legendary careers whose legacies hinge on an overriding factor.

This collection within The Sporting News 140 Greatest Baseball Players celebrates ten legends who have left us wondering: What if they had stayed healthy? What if they had received the same opportunities as others? What if they had played in a different era, avoided adversity, or simply had a few more peak years?

While we will never definitively answer these questions, it remains our fascination to ponder them.

These “what-ifs” occupy that space in baseball history. They are not stories of failure or shortcomings. They are stories of players whose legacies leave us believing there was more to be written. Their careers remind us that greatness is defined not only by achievements, but by how circumstances beyond a player’s control shaped their historical footprint.

Their impact cannot be measured solely by the record book, because so much of their story lies in what is missing from it.

Welcome to the What-Ifs.

(Editor’s note: Each hyperlinked name takes you to that player’s page within the digitized SN Archive. Once registered (it’s free!), readers have instant access to every article and cover related to each player, as they originally appeared in print.)

Baseball’s Greatest Players: The What-Ifs

Mickey Mantle

After shredding his right knee as a rookie in the 1951 World Series, Mickey Mantle would go on to play 17 more seasons, most of them brilliant and all of them agonizing.

Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956, hitting .353 with 52 HR and 130 RBI; he remains the most recent player to lead MLB in all three categories in a season.

SN Archive (1963):Mickey Mantle names his favorite all-time Yankees team

Mike Trout

No career has been more defined by the gap between individual greatness and team futility than Mike Trout’s, but his story isn’t over yet.

Trout has accumulated 53.0 WAR on teams with losing records; only Walter Johnson (71.6) and Ernie Banks (63.2) have more.

Robin Roberts

The Phillies are the losingest franchise in major-league history and no player was more victimized by that losing more than Robin Roberts.

Roberts totaled 2,311 innings through 1955, the most by any live-ball pitcher through eight seasons; he went 126-143 with a 99 ERA+ the rest of his career.

Roy Campanella

Considered by Branch Rickey a candidate to break the color barrier, Roy Campanella went on to win three MVPs in a career that ended at 36 when a car accident left him paralyzed.

Campanella threw out 150 of 233 base stealers (64.4%) across his first five Dodgers seasons; his career caught-stealing rate of 57.4% remains the highest in MLB history.

Mickey Cochrane

Mickey Cochrane was back to playing at an MVP level in 1937 when he was hit in the head by a pitch that ended his career and nearly ended his life.

Cochrane caught 18 World Series games with the Athletics and 13 with the Tigers; he is the only catcher with at least 10 for multiple franchises.

SN Archives (1970):Mickey Cochrane’s case as baseball’s GOAT catcher

Grover Cleveland Alexander

Grover Cleveland Alexander entered the Army in 1918 as the National League’s most dominant pitcher and returned with trauma he would never outrun.

Across his first seven seasons (1911-17), Alexander totaled 190 wins, 219 complete games, 61 shutouts, and 61.2 WAR; each figure is the most by any modern-era pitcher over the first seven seasons of his career.

José Méndez

The surviving numbers and peer testimony agree: José Méndez is the greatest pitcher the baseball-crazed nation of Cuba has ever produced.

From 1907 through 1915, Méndez went 98-42 with a 1.66 ERA (176 ERA+) across 1,335 documented innings, combining his work in Cuba with games against Negro League and AL/NL teams.

Tris Speaker

Tris Speaker’s exploits were obscured by the omnipresent specter of Ty Cobb, the most celebrated American League player of the dead-ball era.

Speaker totaled 1,131 extra-base hits against 393 strikeouts; that +738 margin is the largest in MLB history.

Willie McCovey

Willie McCovey played through chronic foot, hip and knee injuries while calling an unforgiving Candlestick Park home, and still hit 521 home runs.

McCovey slugged .756 at Candlestick Park in 1973, .725 in 1962, and .689 in 1969; those are the three highest single-season marks in stadium history (min. 75 PA).

Clayton Kershaw

Clayton Kershaw’s case as the defining pitcher of the 21st century would be airtight if not for his confounding postseason track record.

In the pitch-tracking era (since 2008), only three individual pitches have produced a run value of +200 or higher: Justin Verlander’s 4-seam fastball (+207), Kershaw’s 4-seam fastball (+225), and Kershaw’s slider (+228).

Our process for Baseball’s Greatest Players

Every week through the end of the World Series, we’ll unveil one room at a time — 10 players along with the numbers that define them — culminating in the Inner Circle, the 10 greatest to ever play, period.

We researched and considered over 500 names, weighing not only fundamental changes to the game, but also factoring in modern metrics, recently uncovered Negro Leagues data, shifting league demographics and the evolution of today’s stars. We stripped away preconceptions and applied objective, critical analysis to every player under consideration.

SN140:Baseball’s greatest 25 teams since 1886

Once we landed on 140 names, we decided that traditional rankings simply don’t work for baseball. How is one to honestly assess if Cy Young — a pitcher whose career began in the 19th century — is greater than Albert Pujols, a 21st-century slugger? How do you compare Josh Gibson in the Negro Leagues to Jackie Robinson in the National League?

Instead, we created 14 position-less rooms, each representing and articulating varying archetypes of greatness.

From there, we slotted 10 players into each room with careers connected by defining common threads.

We factored in modern metrics, recognized and utilized now accessible Negro Leagues data, contextualized changing league demographics, considered functional changes to the game such as strike zone and mound height adjustments, and included active players alongside their historical counterparts.

The result?

The most unique, comprehensive and celebratory evaluation to date of Baseball’s Greatest Players.

Show Some Love By Sharing