Baseball's Greatest Players: The Pioneers and 10 numbers that define them

They went first. By reimagining who could play and how to play, they built the foundation for those who followed.

Baseball is ever changing: playing styles and preferences, information, technology, and rules have driven many of these contours. Each era of baseball history had trailblazers, and we endeavored to celebrate them in this room of the SN 140: Baseball’s Greatest Players.

Baseball history and traditions are strong, and conventional wisdom can be quite difficult to resist. Leading change takes courage and ingenuity, and this group had both. These players challenged the existing limits and advanced the game.

The players in this chapter helped make baseball better than the sport they inherited. Other players were able to take the next step because these men took the first step.

These are the Pioneers.

BASEBALL'S GREATEST PLAYERS
Immortals | Artists | Unicorns | Juggernauts | Supernovas | Unsung | Showmen | 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 Pioneers

Juan Marichal

Juan Marichal's baseball journey began in a Dominican farming village, bloomed in San Francisco where his unmistakable windup bedeviled hitters throughout the 1960s, and culminated with a plaque in Cooperstown.

Marichal's 191 wins, 197 complete games, 45 shutouts, and 55.3 WAR led all pitchers during the decade of the 1960s.

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Dan Brouthers

The strapping Dan Brouthers was doubling and tripling in a 19th-century baseball defined by the game's other stars running and bunting.

Brouthers owns the highest career slugging percentage (.520), OPS (.943), and OPS+ (171) among players to debut in the 19th century.

Jim Thome

Jim Thome intended to do damage if you pitched to him and take a walk if you didn't, accepting strikeouts as the tradeoff that made him the prototype for the modern slugger.

47.6% of Thome's career plate appearances ended in a walk, strikeout, or home run; that is the highest rate among 28 members of the 500-HR club.

Max Scherzer

The maniacal Max Scherzer ripped his fastball at the top of the zone off which everything else played, years before it became the sport’s go-to strikeout formula.

Scherzer has recorded 1,601 strikeouts with his 4-seam fastball, most by any pitcher with any pitch in the tracking era (since 2008).

Nap Lajoie

The origin of the American League and explosion of baseball in Cleveland can be traced to Nap Lajoie, the league’s first superstar so popular there that the club came to be called the Naps.

Lajoie led AL position players in WAR seven times in the 10 seasons spanning 1901-10; only Babe Ruth has done that more often (10 times).

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Sam Crawford

Sam Crawford brought the frontier east, turning the vast outfields in Cincinnati and Detroit into fertile ground for triples and inside-the-park home runs.

Defining number: Crawford retired after the 1917 season as the all-time AL leader in home runs (70, 30 of which were inside-the-park HR), total bases (3,576), and remains the major-league leader in career triples (309).

Martín Dihigo

Martín Dihigo’s game knew no position and his career no border, stretching across the Americas decades before baseball became a global game.

Dihigo accumulated 40.3 WAR in Latin Leagues and 29.7 in Negro Leagues (70.0); only Oscar Charleston had more (75.6).

Sadaharu Oh

Sadaharu Oh uncoiled from his famous flamingo leg kick to uncork more home runs than any player in history, forcing the baseball world to reckon with greatness beyond the major leagues.

Oh won MVP of the Japan Central League nine times in the 14 seasons spanning 1963-76, during which time he hit 641 of his world record-868 home runs.

SN Archives (1978): Oh would hit 700 HR in the U.S.

Larry Doby

Larry Doby integrated the American League three months after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, likewise becoming a star despite the indignities that came with doing so.

Doby hit 20 home runs in eight consecutive seasons from 1949-56; Yogi Berra was the only other American League player to do that.

Hank Greenberg

Steadfastly devoted to his faith and his country, Hank Greenberg embodied strength at the plate and became a symbol of pride in the Jewish community as its first baseball star.

Using averages from his eight pre-military seasons, Greenberg would have totaled approximately 470 home runs and 1,800 RBI if not for his time serving (had 331 HR & 1,276 RBI).

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.

• Immortals
• Artists
• Unicorns
• Juggernauts
• Supernovas
• Unsung
• Showmen
• What-ifs
• Pioneers
• Prodigies
• Stalwarts
• Beloved
• Pariahs
• Inner Circle

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.