Using Runs Above Average To Determine The Best All Around Seasons

Using the Baseball Reference Play Index, I called up the best seasons in fielding (Rfield), base running (Rbaser) and batting (Rbat). But when I called up the leaders in one category, they also had to meet some minimum level in each of the other two stats (more details at the end of the post).

To rate "all-aroundness," I used a geometric mean. For example, if a player was 10 runs better than average in all three stats, I multiplied 10*10*10 = 1000. Then I took the cube root of that, which gives us 10. The geometric mean rewards balance, so a guy with 20 in all three stats is better than someone who had 100 in batting and just 1 in each of the other two.

Here is the top 25. It seems heavily weighted to 1980-2001 (15 cases) and it seems that base running usually had to be pretty good. There were only two seasons from 1911-1960. There were 8 cases from 1996-2001, by 8 different players.

Rank	Player	Rfield	Rbat	Rbaser	Year	Rating
1	Rickey Henderson	13.2	47.5	17.7	1985	22.30
2	Mike Trout	21	52.5	9.8	2012	22.10
3	Eddie Collins	24	33	9.9	1910	19.86
4	Rickey Henderson	24.1	32	10.1	1989	19.82
5	Joe Morgan	13.7	54.9	10.1	1975	19.65
6	Willie Wilson	23.9	18.6	16.5	1980	19.42
7	Rickey Henderson	18	41	9.3	1980	19.00
8	Willie Mays	15.1	54.5	8.3	1958	18.97
9	Willie Mays	16.8	53.5	7.3	1964	18.72
10	Rickey Henderson	16.1	61.5	6.1	1990	18.21
11	Craig Biggio	18.7	43.5	7.2	1997	18.02
12	Alex Rodriguez	15.9	58.1	6.1	2000	17.79
13	Barry Bonds	9.9	69.8	7.8	1996	17.53
14	Darin Erstad	28.8	35.3	4.7	2000	16.84
15	Ellis Burks	12.4	47.9	8	1996	16.81
16	Larry Walker	9.6	69.6	6.6	1997	16.39
17	Ken Griffey	32.3	39.8	3.4	1996	16.35
18	Carl Yastrzemski	23.3	69.4	2.7	1967	16.34
19	Willie Mays	19.9	55.2	3.9	1962	16.24
20	Frankie Frisch	37	23.1	5	1927	16.22
21	Ichiro Suzuki	15.2	29.9	9.4	2001	16.22
22	Lenny Dykstra	25.4	29.2	5.7	1990	16.17
23	Hank Aaron	23.4	43.9	4.1	1961	16.14
24	Carl Yastrzemski	24.7	47.3	3.6	1968	16.14
25	Al Kaline	29.2	39.3	3.6	1961	16.04

Click here to see the complete rankings. After the top 50 or so, you might start to see duplicate entries. That is because as I called up these lists, some cases appeared on both of them and then I merged them all together and sorted them to get the ranking.

Criteria:

Seasons with 44.1+ batting runs, 0.1+ fielding runs, 0.1+ base running runs (197 cases)
Seasons with 0.1+ batting runs, 17.9+ fielding runs, 0.1+ base running runs (198 cases)
Seasons with 0.1+ batting runs, 0.1+ fielding runs, 5.8+ base running runs (190 cases)
Seasons with 30+ batting runs, 3+ fielding runs, 3+ base running runs (161 cases)