The Best Offensive Player in Baseball

Living in a world where Mike Trout doesn’t suit up nightly leads to some difficult questions about who might be the best player in his absence. Given their similar ages and trajectories, Bryce Harper is a decent choice. That said, we could consider a host of names, including Jose Altuve, Kris Bryant, Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson, Clayton Kershaw, Manny Machado, Corey Seager… you get the idea. There are a lot of really good baseball players out there who aren’t Mike Trout and all have good cases for second-best player.

If we focus just on offense, the field changes a little bit. Bryant is probably still up there. Harper and Donaldson, too. Joey Votto has a pretty good case, Anthony Rizzo is still very good, and Aaron Judge is certainly a force this season. But if you combine track record, current performance, and expected future performance, Paul Goldschmidt might top them all.

In terms of hitting, patience, and power, Goldschmidt is the complete package. He’s got a career batting average over .300, on-base percentage over .400, and slugging percentage over .500. The only other active players to meet those standards are Mike Trout and Joey Votto. And while those numbers are subject to Goldschmidt’s inevitable decline, players who retire with .300/.400/.500 slash lines tend to end up in the Hall of Fame. Chipper Jones and Frank Thomas are two the most recent examples. And Goldschmidt might be having his best year with the bat. His .323/.448/.596 receives the benefit of his home park, but the 164 wRC+ plays anywhere.

Hitting isn’t the only aspect of Goldschmidt’s offensive profile, either. He’s an excellent runner, both stealing and taking the extra base on batted balls. The list of players with more steals than Paul Goldschmidt since the start of the 2015 season is a short one. They are (in order of total stolen bases): Billy Hamilton, Dee Gordon, Jonathan Villar, Jose Altuve, Starling Marte, Jarrod Dyson, and Rajai Davis. When you take into account runs generated from stolen bases and losses from caught stealing, the list of players better than Goldschmidt over the last two-plus seasons is even shorter: Hamilton, Gordon, and Dyson.

It’s not just on steals where he generates runs. He’s also in the top 10 since 2015 in Ultimate Base Runs (UBR), which measures extra bases taken. So far this season, his percentages of going first to third on a single (50%), first to home on a double (57%), and second to home on a single (63%) are all well above the respective league averages of 28%, 40%, and 60%. He’s done it without making an out.

So Goldschmidt augments his bat with his legs. But does that baserunning really make the difference when it comes to evaluating all players on offense? It sort of does. Let’s go back a ways, to the start of the 2013 and see where Goldschmidt ranks in offensive runs above average.

Trout is lapping everyone, obviously, but Goldschmidt represents a clear number two. His wRC+ isn’t quite that of Joey Votto or Miguel Cabrera, but he makes up the difference on the basepaths. We could go year by year, but I’ll save us all a chart and tell you that nothing changes in 2014. It’s still Trout by a mile, and then Goldschmidt as a clear number two by more than 20 runs over Votto, Donaldson, and Rizzo. If you go from 2015, though, Goldschmidt gets caught by Votto.

Votto has been so good with the bat over the last few years, he was able to beat Goldschmidt by a few runs, although Goldschmidt still beats out Harper and Donaldson by a decent margin. Goldschmidt didn’t have a great 2016 season. He had a very good campaign, recording a 134 wRC+, but he wasn’t great. As a result, when we look at the numbers since the start of last season, he fares even worse.

So he’s falling behind, which seemingly makes the claim for Goldschmidt as the best offensive player in Trout’s absence a dubious one. Look at the list, though. Like Trout, Freddie Freeman is out, too — and Bryant, Votto, and Goldschmidt are essentially in a dead heat with half a run separating the three players. Now let’s look at this year.

If you want to make a claim that Aaron Judge is the game’s best offensive player, the argument is right up there. He’s mashing and his wRC+ sits at 200, well above Goldschmidt’s. Despite that big disparity, Judge is only a couple offensive runs ahead. As for the other players we’ve been talking about, Votto is having another good season. Byrant is 17th on the list, not too far behind. Harper is playing really well after a disappointing 2016.

So how about another way of looking at things. We can also assess the talent expectation going forward. Here’s what the FanGraphs Depth Chart Projections have to say about the rest of the season.

With youth on his side, more is expected from Bryce Harper than anyone else, with Votto and Goldschmidt a couple runs behind. Aaron Judge is currently running a .424 BABIP and once that comes down — the highest single season BABIP since World War II is Rod Carew’s .408 in 1977 — the offense will come down a bit, as well. He can beat his projection by quite a bit and still finish behind Goldschmidt. Yes, Goldschmidt is behind Harper and Votto by just a bit on the projections, he’s 10 runs ahead on current production. There are solid arguments for other players, but when it comes to past, present, and future production, nobody is better on offense than Paul Goldschmidt.