Ranking the best pitching, hitting and fielding tools in MLB

Keith Law
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It's best tools time! For the fourth straight year, Keith Law lays out his rankings (and reasoning) for the players with the best tools in baseball, evaluating the top pitchers across five categories, as well as the top hitting, speed and fielding tools.2017 best tools: Hitting | Pitching | Fielding
Best fastball

1. Max Scherzer, Washington Nationals

2. Gerrit Cole, Houston Astros

3. Justin Verlander, Houston Astros

4. Jacob deGrom, New York Mets

5. Chad Green, New York Yankees

Cole's fastball has made the biggest leap with his move to Houston, as the Astros' R&D department showed him that he got better results by throwing more four-seamers and throwing them up in the zone than by emphasizing two-seamers to try to get ground balls.

Green isn't the Yankees' hardest thrower, but he gets the best results on his fastball. FanGraphs has Green's fastball as the fourth-most valuable by any pitcher, starter or reliever, since the start of last year. He doesn't have a clearly above-average second pitch and is throwing almost exclusively fastballs this year, but the pitch remains very effective.

What's surprising, to me at least, is how poorly Aroldis Chapman's fastball has played for its velocity the past two years: By FanGraphs' pitch values, it has been less valuable than the fastballs of Scott Alexander, Brandon Kintzler and Seth Lugo since the start of 2017. No, velocity isn't everything, but it's something to see that even exceptional velocity isn't that big of an advantage.
Best curveball

1. Corey Kluber, Cleveland Indians

2. Aaron Nola, Philadelphia Phillies

3. David Robertson, New York Yankees

4. Lance McCullers Jr., Houston Astros

5. Zack Godley, Arizona Diamondbacks

I doubt anything here is surprising; these guys all have curveballs that any casual fan can tell are really good. McCullers' results have been skewed by how often he has been hurt, but his breaking ball is a knockout pitch, as we saw last October and could easily see again this postseason. Nola is a marvel, a true three-pitch guy whose fastball and changeup are both well above average (the former playing up because he commands it so well), but his curveball is his best offering and the go-to pitch when he needs a swing-and-miss.
Best slider

1. Max Scherzer, Washington Nationals

2. Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers

3. Chris Sale, Boston Red Sox

4. Jhoulys Chacin, Milwaukee Brewers

5. Patrick Corbin, Arizona Diamondbacks

Chacin's transformation shouldn't merit comment anymore, but as I've said in previous years, he went from a fastball/changeup guy to a slider machine, and his slider, by FanGraphs' values, is the second-most valuable in baseball over the past two seasons. Corbin has had a good slider in the past but hadn't been as healthy or as effective as he has been this year since before his Tommy John. He'll be well set up for free agency this winter.


Honorable mentions to Miles Mikolas, whose slider has been behind his success this year -- though it's still based on less than a full season of data, and I tend toward longer looks for these rankings -- and Corey Kluber, whose cutter is the best among major league starters and who would appear here if I combined cutters and sliders, given that the distinction is often a vague one.
Best changeup

1. Carlos Carrasco, Cleveland Indians

2. Zack Greinke, Arizona Diamondbacks

3. Alex Wood, Los Angeles Dodgers

4. Chris Sale, Boston Red Sox

5. Max Scherzer, Washington Nationals

Putting Greinke on any of these lists is tricky, given his propensity for adding and subtracting from pitches or just making pitches up midgame because he can. Carrasco's changeup has been a plus pitch for him going all the way back to his time as a Phillies prospect, and it remains the most valuable in the majors, so I gave him the edge, but I won't argue if you want to put Greinke on top.

Wood's changeup is in the same general league, though as with McCullers and his curveball, the effectiveness of the pitch is obscured by his time on the shelf. Sale, like Carrasco, was a changeup guy as a prospect. It was by far his best pitch while he was at Florida Gulf Coast, even though his arm slot was low enough that most pitchers wouldn't be able to throw one from down there.

There aren't enough guys throwing true splitters -- as opposed to hybrid split-changes such as Kevin Gausman's -- to credibly rank five, but tip your cap to Shohei Ohtani and Masahiro Tanaka, both of whom throw split-fingered fastballs, a pitch that is disdained here but is more popular in East Asian baseball circles. Both throw filthy splitters and benefit from how infrequently MLB hitters see real ones.
Best control

1. Corey Kluber, Cleveland Indians

2. Ross Stripling, Los Angeles Dodgers

3. Josh Tomlin, Cleveland Indians

4. Ivan Nova, Pittsburgh Pirates

5. Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers

Every one of these guys has a walk rate of 4.7 percent or lower this season; that's Nova's rate, and it's in line with what he has done since he joined the Pirates in 2016. You could argue that Tomlin should be first, given that his control is essentially what keeps him in the major leagues, but I'm more impressed that Kluber can walk as few guys as he does while all of his pitches move as much as they do.
Best hit tool

1. Jose Altuve, Houston Astros

2. Freddie Freeman, Atlanta Braves

3. Jean Segura, Seattle Mariners

4. Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins

5. Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Indians

This is always the hardest tool to rank for a few reasons. One is that it has the most ambiguous definition of all. Is a "hit tool" the ability to make contact? To make hard contact? To get hits? To make fair contact on pitches most hitters can't touch or can only hit foul? The top contact hitter in baseball isn't necessarily that valuable if his contact isn't hard or if it's frequently on the ground. DJ LeMahieu has the highest contact rate in MLB since the start of 2017, but he isn't a valuable hitter because he has so little power and, this year, has a very low BABIP for a hitter in Colorado. The leaderboards for contact rate have a weird mix of guys with outstanding abilities to hit across all of these criteria and guys such as LeMahieu, Ender Inciarte and Jose Iglesias, who put the ball in play when they swing but don't get the results you want.

I feel very good about Altuve at No. 1 on this list and Freeman at No. 2. Freddie is second in the majors in line drive rate this year, first since the start of 2017, first since the start of 2016 and first since the start of 2015. I believe the other three names would be in any top 10, even if you define "hit tool" a little differently than I do. I looked at everything I mentioned above -- contact rate, contact quality, BABIP and even power just because you have to have a little bit of that to hit major league pitching in an era when the average fastball is somewhere around 93 mph. But I left off some pretty dang good hitters: Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon and Joey Votto come to mind.

Aaron Judge hits the ball about as hard as anybody in baseball, but doesn't hit it as often as most hitters do. How do you grade his hit tool? Does it balance out to average? We don't split those two factors out, and I think it's unfair to rank him above guys like these five when they all make more quality contact than he does, but there's a reasonable argument here that what Judge does when he puts the ball in play gives him a plus or better hit tool too.
Best power tool

1. Joey Gallo, Texas Rangers

2. Aaron Judge, New York Yankees

3. Giancarlo Stanton, New York Yankees

4. J.D. Martinez, Boston Red Sox

5. Khris Davis, Oakland A's

What used to be estimated from batting practice shows and in-game power can now be corroborated with Statcast data, and all five of these guys litter the Statcast leaderboards provided by MLB. Gallo, who had the most raw power of any prospect I've ever scouted, does more damage than anyone else when he puts the ball in play. His rate of "barrels" (an MLB measure of particularly well-struck balls very likely to be hits) per batted-ball event is by far the majors' highest, with Davis second, Martinez third and Judge fourth. Stanton holds this season's highest exit velocity mark at 121.7 mph. Judge leads in the percent of balls he has put in play at 95 mph or harder.

All of these guys have huge raw power and are producing at a high rate in games. I sometimes distinguish between raw power and game power because guys can have the former without the latter. They might change their swings in games, struggle picking up spin or lose pop for some other reason. These five guys have enormous raw and game power.

I think this is the first time I've omitted Bryce Harper from the list, but between injuries and some approach problems earlier this year, I'm OK slotting him behind these five names.
Best run tool

1. Billy Hamilton, Cincinnati Reds

2. Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins

3. Trea Turner, Washington Nationals

4. Adalberto Mondesi, Kansas City Royals

5. Roman Quinn, Philadelphia Phillies

Buxton is probably the fastest, but he hasn't been healthy enough this year to show it, so I swapped him and Hamilton, who still has the best home-to-first times I've ever recorded from a player at any level. (There's a kid in the 2019 draft, Greg Jones at UNC-Wilmington, who might crack this list someday, but like Hamilton, his hit tool is way below his run tool.) As popular as it is to bemoan the supposed lack of athleticism and speed in today's game, we have many, many fast runners, a slew of guys who grade out at 70 or 80 on the 20-80 scale, and many of them add value on the bases or in the field. It's a less prominent part of the game overall, but it's still there, and rare is the MLB game in which we don't get at least one highlight that shows how athletic and fast these guys are.
Best glove tool

1. Andrelton Simmons, Los Angeles Angels

2. Jose Iglesias, Detroit Tigers

3. Matt Chapman, Oakland A's

4. Mookie Betts, Boston Red Sox

5. Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins

Simmons is on top of this list every year, no matter how I do it. He's the best defensive shortstop since Ozzie Smith, maybe the best ever and certainly the best I've seen since I learned the first thing about evaluating players. He has tremendous range and outstanding hands, and his instincts are unbelievable. Iglesias has the misfortune of playing in the same era as Simmons because in just about any other time, he might be known as the best defensive shortstop in baseball. He has just slightly less range but is no less able to turn in a "how the hell did he do that" play.

Chapman was known in college as a 70 defender with an 80 arm, but his defense improved once he got to the high minors, as did his plate discipline, turning him from someone whose OBP was so low that it negated the added value of his defense to a legitimate superstar who contributes across the board. Betts is the best defensive corner outfielder in the game and probably could be plus at four or five positions, but why move him? Buxton gets a mulligan for this injury-plagued season, but when healthy, he's the best defensive center fielder in the game.

Not listed: Kolten Wong, now the best defensive second baseman in baseball; Austin Hedges, the best defensive catcher; and Francisco Lindor, busy playing third fiddle behind the top two shortstops.
Best arm tool

1. Andrelton Simmons, Los Angeles Angels

2. Brett Phillips, Milwaukee Brewers

3. Aaron Hicks, New York Yankees

4. Matt Chapman, Oakland A's

5. Manny Machado, Los Angeles Dodgers

I still remember a scout describing Phillips' arm, back when he was in A-ball, as "a howitzer," and if anything, he undersold it. Phillips had the hardest throw Statcast recorded in 2017, and it was hardly a fluke. Simmons pitched in junior college and regularly hit 98-99. Hicks pitched in high school and showed mid-90s velocity. Chapman supposedly could throw 100 mph off the mound in college, though I never saw it or heard a truly reliable report on that. I never saw Machado pitch and don't think he did in high school, but he's one of those guys I'd love to see take the mound once before he retires because his arm strength is just so easy.

The next name would have been Nolan Arenado. Arenado was, to be kind, a bad defensive third baseman in high school, and scouts wanted to try to move him behind the plate to take advantage of his arm strength. He went from maybe a 40 or 45 defender in Double-A to a 70 defender in less than a year, and now his arm is often overlooked because his glove is so impressive.
Best plate discipline

1. Joey Votto, Cincinnati Reds

2. Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels

3. Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Indians

4. Carlos Santana, Philadelphia Phillies

5. Alex Bregman, Houston Astros

Votto and Trout are the modern standard-bearers in this category, even though they strike out a bit -- that seems to be the cost most power hitters pay for the hard contact they make. Votto has the second-lowest rate of swinging at pitches out of the strike zone this year, but he makes contact on 78.4 percent of the out-of-zone pitches he does swing at, a well above-average rate that puts him in the top 10 in baseball. Votto and Trout also have long track records of plate discipline.

Ramirez has the best straight ratio of walk rate to strikeout rate; I don't find that ratio incredibly useful for projecting the future, but it's notable when a player is walking that much more than he is striking out in the highest strikeout era in the sport's history. Santana is a distant second, and only five qualifying players in the majors have more walks than strikeouts. Bregman and Ramirez both rarely swing and miss; only six players have swinging strike rates under 5 percent this year, and they are among them.

Honorable mention to Juan Soto, who just got here in the literal and figurative senses but has the majors' fourth-best walk rate as of this writing, even though he's just 19 and started May in the high-A Carolina League. Save a spot here next year for Jesse Winker, whose season ended with a shoulder injury but who posted a .405 OBP and walked more than he struck out.