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Greatest Baseball Players of All Time, According to Science
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Late baseball legends Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron have been outranked by players from later eras as a new study has calculated the sport's greatest players of all time.
Researchers from the statistics and history departments at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a new statistical framework for comparing baseball players across different eras.
The study may finally settles debates that they argue typically "overvalue players from earlier eras of baseball," by offering a "significant advancement in how historical player performance is understood and evaluated," the university claimed in a statement.
The new ranking of the players was based on Full House Models, a new framework created by the researchers. It adjusts player metrics by "balancing the achievements of Major League Baseball (MLB) players within a given season and the size of the talent pool from which a player came," the team explained in their study.
The updated ranking includes several modern players among the best players of all time. "Modern players are elevated by Full House Modeling because they come from a larger talent pool," the researchers noted.
The study's findings saw modern players such as Barry Bonds and Willie Mays rise to the top as all-time great batters, surpassing the aforementioned legends Aaron and Ruth. Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson were found to be the best era-adjusted pitchers of all time.
A stock image of a pitcher throwing a ball in front of crowds at a game in a baseball field.
A stock image of a pitcher throwing a ball in front of crowds at a game in a baseball field.
Getty
The latest research forms part of a broader initiative from the Eck Sports Lab, which aims to explore all aspects of baseball through interdisciplinary research.
"The Full House Modeling project is a significant step in the lab's ongoing efforts to develop principled, era-neutral metrics for evaluating player greatness," the researchers said.
The latest study comes as revenue in the baseball market is forecast to reach over $14.2 billion this year, with most revenue (around $10.5 billion) to be generated in the United States, according to Statista, the global data platform.
The market is expected to see an annual growth rate of 4.68 percent, approaching a projected market value of over $17.1 billion by 2029.
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Reference
Yan, S., Adrian Burgos, J., Kinson, C., & Eck, D. J. (2025). Comparing baseball players across eras via novel Full House Modeling. The Annals of Applied Statistics, 19(2), 1778–1799.
