Are the athletes that play Major League Baseball today better than most of their predecessors? Itâs fair to answer yes to that question. They are generally bigger, stronger, faster and all that.
Certainly the gameâs all-time greats would be great in any era. But collectively, todayâs players are more physically talented than those of previous generations. It shows up in different ways.
Mostly it shows up these days in the amazing, night in and night out highlight reel defensive glove work thatâs on display all across the sport. If youâre a baseball purest, someone who loves the artistry of the game and appreciates watching what statistics canât measure, you love watching spectacular defense.
If youâre heavily into analytics â or an MVP voter â then not so much. Â Then the defense rests. Itâs not supposed to, but it does.
Sabermetrics have revolutionized the game in a lot of ways. But for whatever reason, the analytics crowd has yet to figure out how to properly value defense when it comes to the overall evaluation of player, most especially catchers and first basemen. When it comes to postseason awards other than the Gold Glove, defense gets left out.
“The Catch” is Common Place Today
The irony is that defense at the Major League level has never been this good. Itâs the reason hitters started trying to lift the ball and are willing to strike out rather than hit the ball on the ground. âWeb Gemsâ today are the norm, not the exception. You could argue that a dozen or more big league shortstops today are at least on par with an all-time great defender like Ozzie Smith. Willie Mays historic catch in the 1954 World Series? Centerfielders make those kinds of plays almost commonplace today.
Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge each won their second consecutive MVP award recently. Each had another magnificent season at the plate, putting up incredible stats. Ohtaniâs unique and unprecedented two-way skills as both a pitcher and a hitter werenât really part of the equation this season, since he didnât take the mound until very late in the regular season. He was unanimously voted MVP this past season strictly on what he did as a hitter. His Baseball Reference Wins Above Replacement was 7.7, which is outstanding of course.
Meanwhile, on the other coast, Judge was once again a very slightly below average defensive outfielder, registering a -0.1 bWAR defensive metric for 2025. That didnât do much to harm his overall bWAR of 9.7.
The American League MVP race was close. Judge beat out Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh by a narrow margin, 17 first place votes to 13. Judge hit 53 home runs and had a batting average of .331, which won him the AL batting title. Raleigh hit an MLB leading 60 homers, and led the AL in RBI with 125.
Based on offense alone, you can see why the vote was close.
Cal Raleigh’s Great Defense Overlooked
Raleighâs bWAR was 7.4, which is also outstandingâ¦especially if you consider that his defensive WAR rating was a ridiculous -0.4, for some undocumented reason. One of his greatest strength was viewed â analytically â as a negative.
Besides being an outstanding hitter, Raleigh is also a two-time Gold Glove winner and in 2024 won the Platinum glove for work behind the plate. This year he was once again outstanding. He had a .996 fielding percentage, ZERO passed balls, and threw out 21% of would-be base stealers, which is very good.
Despite the fact that he plays the gameâs most demanding position (Raleigh caught 121 games in 2025) none of that was accurately documented by a far from perfect analytics formula. Therefore being a far better defender than Judge didnât factor into the MVP voting.Â
Defense may be the most artistic part of baseball, but the sabermetrics crowd has yet to figured that out.
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