Joe Mauer: #5 First Baseman

[JP3700]

Recently I was watching a show on MLB network called Top 10 Right Now. It's a show where they rank players position by position using what they call the "Shredder". The Shredder uses a multitude of statistical factors with no human bias. Brian Kenny, Bill James and one of the MLB network analysts also supply their own lists.

 

The one I happened to catch was Top 10 First Basemen. I was curious where they would have Joe Mauer ranked. I was a little surprised when the Shredder, Brian Kenny and Bill James all had Mauer at a consensus #5. After all, there are a lot of great hitters at first base and Mauer isn't your prototypical power hitting first basemen. So I decided to dig deeper.

 

Using the last two years, here are the top 10 first baseman using wRC+.

 

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 500]

[/TD]

[TD]wRC+ (2012-2013)

Miguel Cabrera

178

Joey Votto

165

Edwin Encarnacion

148

Chris Davis

146

Joe Mauer

142

Paul Goldschmidt

141

Prince Fielder

139

Freddie Freeman

133

Brandon Belt

129

Albert Pujols

124

[/TABLE]

 

*I left out Allen Craig since he projects to be a right fielder this year. He would have ranked eighth.

 

Surprise, surprise! Mauer ranked fifth among projected first basemen. What's even more impressive is that he achieved this while making 145 starts behind the plate. We won't know until the next couple of years pass whether or not the move to first base will help Mauer's offensive production, but I'd think the consensus thought is that it can't hurt.

 

After really breaking it down and looking at the numbers, it seems to me that Mauer at #5 is right about where he should be. One could probably make an argument for #4.

 

Where would you have him ranked?