Juan Soto is now the highest paid player in MLB history, but Childish Bambino has a great big mountain to climb before entering the conversation for top 10 players of all-time.

More than 23,000 players have appeared in at least one game in Major League Baseball history, and participating in arguments over which ones were the best of the best just comes with the territory of being a baseball fan.

Wins above replacement metrics have taken some of the fun out of the debate, turning it into more of a glorified math equation. There’s still plenty of nuance and asterisks to consider, though, as the devil is always in the details.

What follows are Sleeper's rankings of the greatest MLB players ever.

We’ll start with a general top 10 before veering off into specific categories: best pitcher, best power hitter, best contact hitter, best defensive player and even some nominees for the best fantasy players.

Whether you love our rankings as is or are so annoyed by them you feel the need to craft a 4,000 word rebuttal, here’s hoping you have some fun in this trip through the history of our national pastime.

The 10 Greatest MLB Players of All Time

1. Babe Ruth (1914-1935)

Career Stats/Accolades: .342/.474/.690, 714 HR, 2,214 RBI, 123 SB, 1923 AL MVP, seven-time World Series Champion, Won both an ERA Title and a Batting Title

The Sultan of Swat. The Colossus of Clout. The Great Bambino. Or simply Babe. George Herman Ruth ended up with nearly as many nationally recognized nicknames as he did World Series rings.

Ruth is presently third on the all-time home runs leaderboard, but when he retired in 1935, his mark of 714 career dingers was better than second and third place combined. (Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx added together came out to 680 at the time.)

Selling Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000 — a hilarious proposition now that we’re in the era of $700 million contracts, but a monster deal more than a century ago — was such a disastrous decision that it took the Red Sox more than eight decades to recover enough to win another World Series.

An important note before we move on: There was no MVP awarded from 1915-21. And after Ruth won his MVP in 1923, he was ineligible to receive votes again until 1929 when they changed the rule prohibiting players from winning multiple times. It is both a technicality and an absurdity that he only won one MVP, as Ruth was responsible for nine of the American League’s 10 highest wins above replacement seasons from 1920-31, per FanGraphs. He should be right up there with Barry Bonds as the only player to win five or more MVPs.

2. Willie Mays (1948-1973)

Career Stats/Accolades: .301/.384/.557, 660 HR, 1,909 RBI, 339 SB, 24-time All-Star, 12 Gold Gloves, two-time NL MVP (1954 and 1965), 1951 NL Rookie of the Year

The Say Hey Kid’s most iconic moment was the over-the-shoulder catch in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, but that was merely one example of what made Mays the greatest five-tool player in MLB history.

En route to the sixth-most home runs of all-time — this despite missing around 275 games early in his career due to military service — Mays led the NL in slugging five times. He also led the league in stolen bases four times, triples thrice, runs twice and hits once, all while playing elite defense in center field for well over a decade, winning 12 consecutive Gold Gloves.

Plenty of players were elite in three or four ways, but Mays checked all of the boxes, and checked them emphatically.

3. Barry Bonds (1986-2007)

Career Stats/Accolades: .298/.444/.607, 762 HR, 1,996 RBI, 514 SB, seven-time MVP, 14-time All-Star, 12-time Silver Slugger, eight Gold Gloves, two-time batting champ

A complicated legacy to say the least, Bonds was probably on all of the performance enhancing drugs available while winning back-to-back-to-back-to-back NL MVPs in his age-36 through age-39 seasons, posting a downright ludicrous 1.368 OPS during a four-year stretch in which he homered once for every 7.9 official at-bats.

However, between the suspected steroid use and the two decades of being a surly curmudgeon with the media, MLB’s all-time leader in home runs and walks and the only member of the 500 HR / 350 SB club — let alone the 750 HR / 500 SB club — has not been inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame.

TBH, pretending the seven-time MVP wasn’t one of the greatest to ever play the game makes the Hall of Fame look like a joke. It’s long past time to open some sort of “Villainous Wing” or “Cheaters’ Chamber” to at least recognize the likes of Bonds, Pete Rose, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez.

4. Hank Aaron (1954-1976)

Career Stats/Accolades: .305/.374/.555, 755 HR, 2,297 RBI, 240 SB, 25-time All-Star, 1957 NL MVP, three Gold Gloves, two-time batting champ

Though Hammerin’ Hank only won one MVP, how crazy is it that he received at least one down-ballot vote for MVP in 19 consecutive seasons, finishing top 10 in that vote 13 times?

Aaron was just a constant force throughout his 23 years in the majors. He never hit more than 47 home runs in a single season, but he hit at least 40 round-trippers eight times and hit at least 20 taters 20 times.

Bonds eventually eked past Aaron for No. 1 on the all-time HR leaderboard, but Aaron is still the all-time leader in RBI, total bases and All-Star Games — the latter of which is probably an unbreakable record, as Aaron’s tally was inflated by the fact that there were two ASGs in each year from 1959-62.

5. Ty Cobb (1905-1928)

Career Stats/Accolades: .366/.433/.512, 117 HR, 1,944 RBI, 897 SB, 1911 AL MVP, 12-time batting champ

The official Baseball Writers’ Association of America MVP award only dates back to 1931, but Cobb won the Chalmers Award in 1911, which was the first recognized form of a most valuable player designation.

It’s little surprise such an honor was basically invented for Cobb after he led the American league in each of hits, RBI, batting average and slugging percentage in each year from 1907-09, including a Triple Crown in 1909. And in his MVP season, he hit .419 with 248 hits, 47 doubles, 24 triples, 83 stolen bases and 148 runs scored, leading the league in all of those departments.

Cobb’s .366 batting average is the highest in MLB history, and it’s wild that he ended up with a slugging percentage north of .500 while playing during an era when guys didn’t hit many home runs. He did stockpile more than 1,100 extra-base hits, though, ranking fourth all-time in doubles and second in triples.

6. Ted Williams (1939-1960)

Career Stats/Accolades: .344/.482/.634, 521 HR, 1,839 RBI, 19-time All-Star, six-time batting champ, two-time MVP (1946 and 1949), two Triple Crowns (1942 and 1947)

The Splendid Splinter was a no-brainer, first-ballot Hall of Famer, MLB’s all-time leader in on-base percentage and the purest hitter to ever step into a batter’s box.

Williams is also one of the greatest ‘what if?’ athletes of all-time, missing the entirety of his age-24 through age-26 seasons while serving as a pilot in World War II, and subsequently missing most of his age-33 and age-34 campaigns to service during the Korean War.

Just from the WWII stint, he may have lost 100 home runs and 400 RBI from his career totals, and probably close to another 50 and 200, respectively, during the return to active duty.

Even so, Teddy Ballgame is top 25 on both the all-time HR and RBI leaderboards, joining Babe Ruth as the only members of the 500 HR club with a career batting average north of .325.

7. Walter Johnson (1907-1927)

Career Stats/Accolades: 417-279, 5,914.1 IP, 2.17 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, two-time AL MVP (1913 and 1924), three-time Triple Crown (1913, 1918 and 1924), five ERA titles

The lone pitcher in our top 10, the Big Train tossed 110 complete-game shutouts in his career. That’s 20 more than the next-closest pitcher (Grover Alexander), and 16 more than the combined total of single-pitcher shutouts recorded in all of Major League Baseball from 2020-24 (94).

Obviously, Johnson pitched in the bygone era when going the distance was the expectation for starting pitchers, but none of those other rubber arms were as good as this one. Johnson led the AL in strikeouts 12 times and still ranks ninth all-time on the K leaderboard. He also posted a sub-2.00 ERA in 11 of his first 13 seasons.

As previously noted with Ty Cobb, the official BBWAA MVP award didn’t exist until after Johnson retired. However, he won a Chalmers Award in 1913 and an “American League Award” in 1924, joining Carl Hubbell, Hal Newhouser and unicorn Shohei Ohtani as the only pitchers to win multiple MVPs.

Johnson’s 1913 campaign with 36 wins, a 1.14 ERA, a 0.78 WHIP and 243 strikeouts just becomes more incomprehensible with each passing year.

8. Stan Musial (1941-1963)

Career Stats/Accolades: .331/.417/.559, 475 HR, 1,951 RBI, three-time NL MVP (1943, 1946 and 1948), 24-time All-Star, seven-time batting champ

Like Ted Williams, “Stan the Man” had a Hall of Fame career despite losing part of it to global strife, missing the entire 1945 season while serving in the Navy during World War II.

He returned in 1946, though, better than ever, immediately leading the National League in about a dozen different categories to secure the second of his three MVP trophies.

In addition to those three actual MVP wins, Musial was the first runner-up in a vote four times and a top 10 finisher a total of 14 times over the course of his 22 seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Because he fell a bit shy of joining the 500 HR club, Musial sometimes gets overlooked in these “10 greatest of all-time” types of exercises. If anything, though, we’re underselling him at No. 8.

9. Honus Wagner (1897-1917)

Career Stats/Accolades: .328/.391/.467, 101 HR, 1,732 RBI, 723 SB, eight-time batting champ

Wagner is light on the accolades, but only because there was no MVP award until his age-37 season, no All-Star Game until 16 seasons after he retired and no Gold Gloves until four decades after he was done playing.

In the early days of Major League Baseball, though, The Flying Dutchman was to the National League what Ty Cobb was to the American League, routinely leading the league in both batting and slugging while also stealing a ton of bases.

Cobb was a bit better at all of that than Wagner, but the latter pretty well made up for it with his defense — primarily at shortstop, but dabbling just about everywhere.

As great as he was as a player, Wagner’s lasting legacy primarily stems from his legendary baseball card. A nowhere near mint condition Honus Wagner T-206 card sold for $7.25 million in 2022, and just continues to grow in value.

10. Lou Gehrig (1923-1939)

Career Stats/Accolades: .340/.447/.632, 493 HR, 1,995 RBI, 102 SB, two-time AL MVP (1927 and 1936), seven-time World Series champion, seven-time All-Star, 1934 Triple Crown

Yes, you’re reading that correctly. Lou Gehrig won a Triple Crown in 1934 (.363, 49 HR, 166 RBI) and it wasn’t one of his two MVP seasons. He actually finished fifth in that year’s vote, behind teammate Lefty Grove as well as three players from the Detroit Tigers, who won the AL pennant that year.

Gehrig is posthumously remembered as the Iron Horse whose consecutive games streak Cal Ripken Jr. broke in 1998, for his “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech and, sadly, as the namesake for Lou Gehrig’s Disease, dying from ALS at 37 years young.

Before his tearful goodbye from baseball, though, Gehrig was sensational, not only playing every single day, but playing at an incredibly high level. He reeled off 12 consecutive seasons with at least 27 home runs and 114 RBI, and his 1.080 career OPS puts him behind only Babe Ruth and Ted Williams on that all-time leaderboard.

Honorable Mention: Shohei Ohtani

Longevity is such a huge part of coming to be regarded as an all-time great, and it’s just about impossible to argue that what is presently seven years’ worth of Ohtani deserves to stack up against guys who were All-Stars more than 20 times.

All the same, this unicorn is one of one, both a lethal pitcher (when his elbow is intact) and one of the best hitters of this generation.

Just for fun, Ohtani also decided to become one of the best base-stealers in the game in 2024 en route to a legendary 54 HR / 59 SB campaign.

He has already won three MVPs, and would’ve won four were it not for Aaron Judge hitting 62 home runs in 2022. Ohtani was also AL Rookie of the Year, a three-time Silver Slugger and a fourth-place finisher in the 2022 AL Cy Young vote.

He’s unbelievable and will eventually belong in the top 10 when all is said and done. But for now, we threw him an honorable mention just because.

The 3 Best Pitchers in MLB History

Walter Johnson (1907-1927)

Career Stats/Accolades: 417-279, 5,914.1 IP, 2.17 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, two-time AL MVP (1913 and 1924), three-time Triple Crown (1913, 1918 and 1924), five ERA titles

We already discussed Johnson above, but it’s worth reiterating his all-time greatness here.

The Big Train was nearing the end of his Hall of Fame career when his Washington Senators finally made it to the postseason in 1924 and 1925. Between those two World Series, he tossed five complete games (one lasting 12 innings) and pitched four scoreless innings of relief in Game 7 of the 1924 WS before Washington walked it off in the 12th inning.

Johnson had a 2.52 ERA in those 50 innings of work against the best of the National League’s best. 

Cy Young (1890-1911)

Career Stats/Accolades: 511-315, 7,356.0 IP, 2.63 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 1901 Triple Crown, two ERA titles

When Major League Baseball in 1956 started handing out trophies to the best pitcher(s) in each season, they named the award after Cy Young.

So, yeah, he was pretty good.

Walter Johnson was a little more dominant, but Young was the ultimate rubber-armed pitcher, tossing 749 complete games and tallying nearly 100 more wins and nearly 1,500 more innings pitched than Johnson.

When people talk about unbreakable all-time records, Nolan Ryan’s 5,714 strikeouts is usually the first one mentioned. However, best of luck to anyone trying to catch Young in the wins, complete games or innings pitched departments. 

Roger Clemens (1984-2007)

Career Stats/Accolades: 354-184, 4,916.2 IP, 3.12 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, seven-time Cy Young, 11-time All-Star, seven ERA titles, two-time Triple Crown (1997 and 1998), 1986 AL MVP

Just like Barry Bonds, the combination of suspected PEDs use and all-around prickly public persona has left Roger Clemens as a Hall of Fame-less pariah, in spite of being voted the best in the business on seven separate occasions.

Had The Rocket not become one of the poster boys of the steroid era, though, he would have been a no-doubt-about-it, first-ballot Hall of Famer, just overpowering opposing hitters for over two decades.

He won his first Cy Young in 1986 and his seventh in 2004, which is a preposterous range. Clemens was already the best in the sport when Mark McGwire won AL Rookie of the Year in 1987, and Clemens was still the best three years after McGwire retired with 583 home runs.

The 3 Best Power Hitters in MLB History

Babe Ruth (1914-1935)

Career slugging percentage: .690

What will always be ludicrous about Ruth having a career slugging percentage more than 50 points greater than the next-closest MLB great is the fact that he basically invented the art of homering.

Ruth wasn’t some steroids era hero who just happened to mash more than the many other mashers of the time. When he hit 29 home runs in 1919, that was the all-time single-season record. He shattered his own record with 54 the following year, 59 the year after that and 60 in 1927.

By 1932, there had been 20 instances of a player hitting at least 41 home runs in a season. Ruth had 11 of them, while everyone else in the first six decades of MLB history had combined for nine.

Josh Gibson (1930-1946)

Career slugging percentage: .718

Between incomplete data, much shorter seasons and playing in a different league altogether, comparing the greatest from the Negro Leagues to the greatest in the Major Leagues has always been a challenge.

But a career slugging percentage north of .700 is insanity, even in just 602 recorded games.

Gibson averaged one home run for every 13.1 at-bats, and one extra-base hit for every 6.0 ABs. Those are similar to Barry Bonds’ career marks in those departments, though Bonds didn’t slug .700 in any season until 2001, when the increasing circumference of his head gave the Grinch’s heart a run for its money.

Aaron Judge (2016-Present)

Career slugging percentage: .604

Perhaps it’s a little aggressive to put Judge on this list when his career is only halfway finished, but he is an all-time masher.

Ruth averaged 11.76 at-bats per home run over the course of his career. Through 2024, however, Judge has even the Great Bambino bested with a rate of 11.31 AB/HR.

It’s a shame Judge didn’t make his MLB debut until 24, has battled injuries and lost most of a regular season to a pandemic, because he probably could have destroyed Barry Bonds’ all-time mark of 762 home runs in around 16-17 full seasons.

The 3 Best Contact Hitters in MLB History

Ty Cobb (1905-1928)

Career batting average: .366

Most players in today’s game are lucky if they can even post a .366 on-base percentage.

Having a career batting average in that echelon is almost incomprehensible.

Granted, Rogers Hornsby finished his career at .358. Shoeless Joe Jackson was close on his tail at .356. Plenty of Hall of Famers ended up north of .340 back in those early days of the sport.

None of them won 12 batting titles in the span of 13 years like Cobb did, though. In fact, it’s primarily because of Cobb that Jackson never won a single batting title, his .408 mark in 1911 falling short of Cobb’s .419 in the same year.

It wasn’t until Pete Rose came along that anyone even came within shouting distance of Cobb’s 4,189 career hits.

Tony Gwynn (1982-2001)

Career batting average: .338

Gwynn is nowhere near MLB’s all-time leader in batting average. Dating back to 1960, though, no one can hold a candle to his .338 mark.

Mr. Padre won eight batting titles, most notably hitting .394 in 1994, racking up 3,141 hits in his 20-year career.

And much like Luis Arraez in today’s game, a big part of Gwynn’s success is rooted in the fact that he hardly ever struck out. We’re talking 434 whiffs in more than 10,000 trips to the plate. So while he did have a fantastic .341 batting average on balls in play, actually putting balls in play more than anyone else was huge.

Rod Carew (1967-1985)

Career batting average: .328

In 2016, Major League Baseball changed the name of the NL batting title to the “Tony Gwynn National League batting champion” and the AL title to the “Rod Carew American League batting champion.”

It’s nowhere near as prevalent a namesake’s honor as the best pitcher in each league winning the Cy Young, but it’s a testament to how great a hitter Carew was, winning seven batting titles during his 12-year run with the Minnesota Twins.

The stretch from 1973-77 was particularly incredible, with Carew batting .358 over the course of a half-decade. Only two other players during that five-year stretch (Ralph Garr in 1974 and Bill Madlock in 1975) even hit .340 or better for a single season.

The 3 Best Defensive Players in MLB History

Brooks Robinson (1955-1977)

Career Gold Gloves: 16

Nolan Arenado and Matt Chapman have been rather fantastic at the hot corner over the past decade, but those third basemen pale in comparison to the robberies that the Human Vacuum Cleaner routinely committed over the course of 16 consecutive Gold Glove-winning campaigns.

Robinson was neither particularly strong nor fleet of foot, but he was as nimble, fluid and intuitive as ever a ballplayer was. It was as if he knew where the ball was going before it was hit and had already prepared how to best scoop, transfer and deliver it across the diamond in one artistic motion.

Diving stops that would be nearly impossible for most mortals to make were routine outs for Mr. Hoover.

Ozzie Smith (1978-1996)

Career Gold Gloves: 13

While Brooks Robinson was also a pretty good hitter with 268 home runs and a career slugging percentage just north of .400, Ozzie Smith was almost exclusively renowned for his glove.

The Wizard of Oz did steal 580 bases, but he hit just 28 home runs and had a career OPS of .666 that ranks almost dead last among Hall of Famers.

That didn’t stop him from earning 91.7 percent of possible votes as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, though, as the 15-time All-Star backflipped his way to Cooperstown with his incredible play at shortstop.

Greg Maddux (1986-2008)

Career Gold Gloves: 18

In putting Maddux on this list, we are overlooking quite a few outrageously gifted defenders, such as Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., and dozens more who would have absolutely destroyed Maddux in most feats of athleticism.

However, Maddux fielded his position better than anyone ever fielded a position, winning 18 Gold Gloves. And isn’t pitching the first part of defense? He defended his position with top-notch skill, but was also the king of inducing little nubbers back to the pitcher with his wizardry on the mound. 

All-Time Best Fantasy Baseball Players

Fantasy baseball has ‘only’ been around for about half a century, but what if people had been playing it all the way back in the 1880s?

Who would be the most valuable players of all-time, both for their careers and for a single season?

To an extent, the correct answers depend upon your preferred scoring system, but let’s put some candidates on the board anyway.

Best Single-Season Fantasy Hitter: Ronald Acuña Jr., 2023

Shohei Ohtani immediately gave Acuña a run for his money the following season, but 217 hits, 149 runs, 41 home runs, 106 RBI and 73 stolen bases was a pantheon-level five-category performance.

Best Single-Season Fantasy Pitcher: Old Hoss Radbourn, 1884

The post-1900 pick would probably have to be 1999 Pedro Martinez, when he won 23 games with a 2.07 ERA, a 0.93 WHIP and 313 strikeouts. But if we’re including ancient history, Radbourn winning 59 games with a 1.38 ERA, a 0.92 WHIP and 441 strikeouts is more impressive across the board.

Best Career Fantasy Hitter: Hank Aaron (1954-1976)

It’s pretty close between Hammerin’ Hank and Barry Bonds. Bonds has seven more home runs and 274 more stolen bases, but Aaron makes up for it with 836 more hits and a combined total of 248 more runs and RBI. However, if you play in a league with OBP instead of AVG, or where walks count the same as hits, Bonds drawing 1,156 more walks than Aaron probably pushes him over the top.

That said, if we’re trying to determine who would’ve been the most dominant fantasy player in a specific era as opposed to trying to figure out which player would have scored the most fantasy points in his career, there’s little question the correct answer here is Babe Ruth. As previously mentioned, when he retired, he had more career home runs than Nos. 2 and 3 on the all-time list combined.

Best Career Fantasy Pitcher: Roger Clemens (1984-2007)

Like Bonds vs. Aaron, Randy Johnson is right on Clemens’ tail here. The Big Unit won 303 games with a 3.29 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and 4,875 strikeouts. But Clemens having 51 more wins (354) and a marginally better ERA (3.12) makes up for landing a bit behind Johnson in the Ks department (4,672).

Peak Johnson delivered better fantasy seasons than Peak Clemens, though. The latter simply made about 100 more starts in his career.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is considered the greatest baseball player ever?

The vast majority of fans, analysts and wins above replacement calculators all agree that it’s Babe Ruth.

Some would argue for Willie Mays, considering he added a ton of value on defense in addition to being an all-time great hitter. Others say Ted Williams, who was deprived of a bunch of prime years. You could certainly make the case for Barry Bonds, too.

With Bonds, though, you have to be able to overlook the steroids. And with Ruth, you’ve got the questions about the competition level due to segregation. That’s why Mays has become a trendy answer in recent years.

Which baseball player has the most home runs in MLB history?

That would be Barry Bonds, with 762 career home runs.

In 2004, Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s record of 755.

Aaron held that record for three decades, breaking Babe Ruth’s mark of 714 in 1974.

And until Ruth got to 139 career home runs in 1921, Roger Connor held the record with 138, all hit prior to 1900.

Which player is known for having the highest batting average in MLB history?

Among players with at least 4,000 plate appearances — which equates to six or seven full seasons —Ty Cobb is the all-time leader with a mark of .366.

In the divisional era (since 1969), Tony Gwynn has the highest mark at .338.

And among players with at least 5,000 plate appearances since the beginning of 2000, Vladimir Guerrero Sr. has top billing at .318.

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