B/R MLB 300: An Introduction to This Year's List

Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls: Welcome to the B/R MLB 300.

This is Year 3 of this project, and those who came across either or both of the first two iterations will notice the big difference. Instead of ranking 500 players, this year we're only ranking 300 players. According to math, that's a much smaller number.

That's not so bad, though. This way, we can skip right to the really good players! And apart from that change, the idea remains the same.

Our goal is to use a comprehensive scoring system to round up the best players position by position until it all culminates in a grand list of 300.

Players' 2015 performances will be our guiding star, but with a twist. Rather than simply taking performances at face value, we're going to project them forward to the 2016 season. This won't involve taking too much for granted, but it allows us to account for things like age, injuries, playing time and good, old-fashioned regression.

If this sounds complicated, think of it this way: Rather than asking which 2015 performances are the best, we're asking which are the best with staying power.

Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

As for which players made the cut, we're focusing exclusively on those who have made some sort of impact in 2015 and also figure to be around in 2016. This means you won't be coming across any prospects who haven't yet debuted in the majors, nor will you be coming across any players who won't be around next year. Sorry, Aramis Ramirez and A.J. Burnett.

As for how the scores were compiled, in some cases we deferred to the eye test. Sometimes that's the best way to measure things, particularly where defensive talents are concerned.

But for the most part, the scoring was informed by the lifeblood of baseball: numbers.

We're living in the golden age of baseball data. We can look at hitters and quantify things like how often they expand the strike zone and how and where they tend to hit the ball. Heck, there's now even publicly available data that tells us how hard hitters hit the ball.

The flip side of that data exists for pitchers, meaning we now know how well they manipulate contact in addition to how well they miss bats and pound the strike zone. And so on.

Now that you know what the project is all about and how it came together, here's when you can expect to see everything:

Slideshow	Date
Top 20 Catchers	Monday, Sept. 21
Top 25 First Basemen	Wednesday, Sept. 23
Top 25 Second Basemen	Thursday, Sept. 24
Top 25 Shortstops	Friday, Sept. 25
Top 25 Third Basemen	Monday, Sept. 28
Top 25 Center Fielders	Wednesday, Sept. 30
Top 40 Corner Outfielders	Thursday, Oct. 1
Top 5 Designated Hitters	Friday, Oct. 2
Top 80 Starting Pitchers	Monday, Oct. 5
Top 30 Relief Pitchers	Tuesday, Oct. 6
Full MLB 300	Thursday, Oct. 8

Whenever you're ready, the top 20 catchers are live and ready for reading. Enjoy.