MLB's 30 Most Naturally Gifted Athletes

Let's take a break from all of this PED mudslinging and get back to appreciating what some of MLB's most naturally gifted baseball players are doing on the field.

For every five-tool athlete like Ryan Braun or Alex Rodriguez who might have used steroids, there are at least a dozen other players like Albert Pujols and Mike Trout who are clean as a whistle and talented as heck.

I'll spend the next two slides explaining my criteria for identifying a naturally gifted player before listing them out position-by-position and offering my two cents on some of the players listed—as well as some notable names who missed the cut.

*All statistics are courtesy of Fangraphs.com and are accurate through the start of play on Tuesday, July 23.

Criteria Considered (Part 1 of 2)

In my opinion, a naturally gifted athlete is what the scouts call a five-tool player—someone who can hit for average, hit for power, run the bases and field his position. (That's only four tools, but I'm combining throwing ability and fielding ability into one bucket.)

With that in mind, these are the criteria I used to whittle the playing field down to the final 30 players.

1. No pitchers

With all due respect to guys like Clayton Kershaw and Felix Hernandez who can paint a 97 MPH fastball on the outside corner, there's no great way to measure how athletically gifted a pitcher is. For the most part, they don't hit or run, and they rarely have to field their position.

Considering we've seen pitchers with the physique of David Wells and Bartolo Colon make it to multiple All-Star Games, and the greatest relief pitcher of all time has torn his ACL while shagging fly balls, you're not convincing me that anyone on the mound deserves to be in the same discussion as Andrew McCutchen for athletic prowess.

2. Must be on an active roster with a minimum of 600 career plate appearances

Here's a link for those 345 players (there are 351 in the link, but six are pitchers). I exported that file and narrowed the rest of the field offline.

3. Must have a positive Fld + BsR total (192 players remaining)

This one knocked out nearly half of the field, but it's also more than half of the tools.

In case you're unfamiliar with those sabermetrics abbreviations, Fld is "fielding runs above average" and BsR is "baserunning runs above average." In each case, a zero means the player is league average, as is the case with Jed Lowrie in fielding and Josh Donaldson in baserunning.

A negative number means you are worse than average in that aspect of the game. If the sum of the two numbers is negative, that means that with the possible exception of your time spent in the batter's box, you're actually a detriment to your team.

One of the biggest casualties here was Miguel Cabrera, whose -83.3 score is the seventh-worst in all of baseball, and a testament to why Mike Trout should have been the 2012 AL MVP. As great as he is at hitting the ball, he's not a five-tool athlete.

(Criteria continued on next slide.)

Criteria Considered (Part 2 of 2)

4. Must have a career batting average of at least .270 (83 players remaining)

I'm not looking for Tony Gwynn here. I just want you to have a better lifetime batting average than Shawon Dunston. Considering Endy Chavez and Nate Schierholtz made it into the final 83, I don't think that's asking too much.

5. Must have at least one home run for every 100 plate appearances (73 players remaining)

Sorry, Ben Revere and Juan Pierre, but I don't care how fast you are if you can't hit at least six home runs per season in this day and age.

6. Must have at least one stolen base for every 100 plate appearances / 150 PA for catchers (60 players remaining)

Prior to this paring, Adrian Gonzalez was in the running for most gifted athlete despite averaging roughly one stolen base for every two seasons. I gave a little extra leeway to catchers since their knees take a daily beating, but they still need to be able to do something on the basepaths to be an athlete.

7. Must have a career OPS (on-base plus slugging) of at least .770 (32 players remaining)

Similar to the batting average cut-off, I'm not looking for Barry Bonds, but I would hope that baseball's finest could tally a better career OPS than Todd Zeile.

8. Must have a minimum of 1.0 WAR for every 250 plate appearances (31 players remaining)

I made up this metric solely to get rid of David Murphy, but he doesn't belong in this discussion, right? His career WAR-per-plate-appearance ratio is right on par with Luke Scott and Sean Rodriguez, neither of whom survived the batting-average line of cuts.

#9. Must not be hopelessly linked to steroids (30 players remaining)

We lost Ryan Braun in the Fld + BsR criterion, but had to add this in to get Alex Rodriguez out of the list. As good as he was as a 20-year-old back in 1996, no one would classify him as naturally gifted anymore.

Naturally Gifted First Basemen

Player	AVG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/SB	PA/WAR	Fld + BsR
Albert Pujols	.321	1.009	17.4	91.7	97.9	70.0
Joey Votto	.316	.964	23.7	79.7	114.6	10.2
Paul Goldschmidt	.290	.877	24.2	37.1	154.2	9.7

It's a good thing Pujols stole enough bases in his career to make the cut, because this article wouldn't have been complete without him. Though his batting average is plummeting for a fifth consecutive season, he's working on his 13th straight year with at least 30 home runs, which will tie him with Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds for the all-time record.

In addition to what he famously does with the bat, Pujols has been a considerably above-average fielder over the course of his career. His glove has saved his team more runs than any of the other 45 first basemen with at least 600 plate appearances.

Granted, that's a cumulative stat, and he has more plate appearances than all but three guys on the list, but it's still impressive that one of the best hitters of the past decade is no slouch on defense. He's the most naturally gifted first baseman in my books and might be the best among all players at any position.

Votto—A.K.A. the patron saint of on-base percentage—isn't all that far behind Pujols in a lot of career categories, especially AVG and OPS. And Goldschmidt might eventually reach their level of production. He's another two months away from turning 26 and is clearly still improving.

I'd like to also give an honorable mention to Todd Helton, who isn't anywhere close to cutting the mustard as a base stealer but is second to Pujols in fielding and second to Votto in on-base percentage.

A lot of people try to discount his 360 career home runs by writing them off to a career in Coors Field, but thin air doesn't magically give you league-leading plate discipline and fielding skills.

Naturally Gifted Second Basemen

Player	AVG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/SB	PA/WAR	Fld + BsR
Chase Utley	.287	.875	25.6	42.4	99.8	150.3
Dustin Pedroia	.303	.828	44.5	37.2	132.3	58.4
Ian Kinsler	.273	.810	29.6	27.6	160.8	45.0

So, perhaps this is why Ruben Amaro Jr. has been so opposed to trading Chase Utley.

He's not the absolute best at anything, but he's significantly above-average in every facet of the game—other than staying healthy. If we were approaching this thing from a role-playing-game perspective and assigning points for each attribute at peak performance, Utley might be the highest-ranked total package in all of baseball.

Let's just gloss over Pedroia and Kinsler—as I can't imagine anyone would argue that either of them is undeserving—and address the two noteworthy second basemen who didn't make the cut.

Robinson Cano is not a good fielder. Excluding Skip Schumaker because he plays practically every position, only Dan Uggla and Rickie Weeks have a worse glove than Cano at second base. He isn't of much value on the base paths, either. No doubt he's great in the batter's box, but that just makes him a natural hitter, not a natural athlete.

Brandon Phillips survived the criteria-based cuts until we got to OPS, where he has a career clip of .752. Considering his power, I was really surprised by that, until I remembered he draws walks less than six percent of the time.

It's a bit silly to take athletic points away from a guy for being an early-in-the-count swinger—especially one who was athletic enough to make these defensive plays in the All-Star Game—so we'll give him an honorable mention.

Naturally Gifted Shortstops

Player	AVG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/SB	PA/WAR	Fld + BsR
Troy Tulowitzki	.296	.880	23.5	65.3	125.8	32.1
Jose Reyes	.292	.782	59.4	13.6	159.7	65.2
Manny Machado	.292	.775	46.9	82.1	119.5	20.9

Yes, I know Machado is currently a third baseman. However, he came up through the farm system as a shortstop, I think he'll eventually move back to shortstop, and putting him here gives us some symmetry with three players at each infield position.

And speaking of Machado, I'm willing to admit that I set the plate appearances minimum at 600 for the sole purpose of making sure he was included. In just 661 career trips to the plate, it's pretty obvious that he's going to be a lot of fun to watch for a long time. And that's not even including his best assets—his arm and his glove.

Meanwhile, Tulowitzki might be the purest hitter to play shortstop without being linked to steroids, and Reyes is one of the best in the game at either hitting triples or stealing his way to those extra bases.

As always, let's make sure to address the elephants in the room.

Derek Jeter is not a good fielder. He has the worst Fld total in all of baseball, and was only above-league average in two of his previous 18 seasons. You may fall asleep at night to visions of his patented jump, spin and one-hop throw from the outfield grass, but I'm merely reporting what the numbers tell me.

Jimmy Rollins, on the other hand, has been a great fielder over the course of his 14-year career, but—just like Brandon Phillips on the previous slide—he was doomed in this list by a career OPS of .755. Though he definitely would have made the cut from 2004-2008, the slugging just hasn't been what it used to be.

Naturally Gifted Third Basemen

Player	AVG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/SB	PA/WAR	Fld + BsR
Evan Longoria	.276	.876	21.0	84.9	92.2	84.2
David Wright	.301	.888	26.8	32.4	119.1	11.1
Adrian Beltre	.281	.810	24.8	79.2	144.4	165.7

With the exception of Miguel Cabrera—who is the second-worst fielder and second-worst baserunner among third basemen—and Alex Rodriguez, is there an active third basemen who you would think should be included, but isn't?

Aramis Ramirez is every bit as poor as Cabrera at the whole fielding and running part of baseball, so he's nowhere close despite a career OPS of .845.

Ryan Zimmerman perhaps came the closest to making the cut, only coming up short in the stolen base department with one swipe for every 133.5 plate appearances.

Placido Polanco was also surprisingly in contention until his .742 career OPS knocked him out. He's actually fifth among all active third basemen in career WAR.

Aside from that, it's just these three kings of the hot corner.

Hitting on just one of those names—leaving Longoria and Wright as givens—Beltre's career fielding numbers are so far ahead of everyone else on the list that it's a little absurd. His glove hasn't totally been there this season, but on average he has saved his team more than 10 runs per season. He's also pretty good at throwing his glove.

Naturally Gifted Catcher

Player	AVG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/SB	PA/WAR	Fld + BsR
Joe Mauer	.323	.873	48.7	115.6	115.6	9.1
Buster Posey*	.315	.891	27.4	328.6	96.1	3.5
Yadier Molina*	.284	.741	52.6	110.6	160.8	44.9
Russell Martin*	.259	.751	39.1	45.4	161.7	24.0

Mauer was the only catcher to officially fit the bill, but I included a couple of the close calls in order to justify actually making a table.

Mauer and Posey are without question the most offensively gifted catchers of this generation. Molina has crept into the discussion with his incredible numbers over the past three seasons, and we would be remiss if we didn't mention Brian McCann as a great slugging catcher.

However, Mauer and Posey are the types of players you can really build a lineup around and count on day in and day out. Since he's a catcher, I'm willing to overlook Posey's lack of stolen bases to consider him the second most naturally gifted catcher in the game today.

But can we please talk about Martin for a moment? I knew he was having a solid 2013 campaign, but career numbers that have brought him this close to greatness? I'm sure Yankees fans are well aware of his batting average deficiency, but I never realized how much of a dual threat he was to homer and steal bases.

Naturally Gifted Left Fielders

Player	AVG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/SB	PA/WAR	Fld + BsR
Matt Holliday	.310	.916	24.3	59.9	135.3	22.7
Carl Crawford	.292	.774	51.3	14.3	168.1	185.3
Carlos Gonzalez	.299	.888	22.4	26.9	143.7	31.8
Alfonso Soriano	.272	.824	20.3	28.2	208.1	38.9
Justin Upton	.275	.829	27.7	39.9	200.8	19.9
Alex Gordon	.270	.784	38.1	55.9	183.3	41.5

Before looking at this chart, if I had told you there are two active outfielders (excluding Ryan Braun) with a career OPS over .900 and asked you to guess who they were, how many players would you have named before Matt Holliday? 10? 25?

(I performed the experiment on a friend, and he made seven incorrect guesses before getting frustrated and demanding the answer.)

Personally, I had forgotten how incredible Holliday was from 2006-09—perhaps because those were the years I was in college and was either "studying" during the semesters or slaving away at an internship in between them. My personal recollection doesn't change the fact that he was and still remains one of the most complete players in the league.

Crawford's defensive numbers are pretty astounding given how much of a defensive liability that he became the moment he arrived in Boston. Coupled with his speed on the basepaths, it was only his barely-above-requirement OPS that came anywhere close to keeping him from making the grade.

Also found among the sextet of left fielders, Soriano deserves some bonus points for transitioning from second base to left field in the middle of his career and actually becoming a much more valuable asset on defense. His 46 home runs and 41 stolen bases in 2006 also make him something of an athletic anomaly.

Naturally Gifted Center Fielders

Player	AVG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/SB	PA/WAR	Fld + BsR
Mike Trout	.312	.931	23.9	16.4	72.4	38.5
Andrew McCutchen	.293	.862	30.2	24.4	122.0	2.8
Josh Hamilton	.295	.888	20.2	76.9	142.7	15.0
Jacoby Ellsbury	.298	.791	50.1	13.3	140.4	70.6
Starling Marte	.275	.775	40.2	15.1	128.3	20.6
David DeJesus	.280	.774	59.3	83.7	218.1	40.6

The first four names make perfect sense.

Trout and Hamilton are simply freaks of nature, while McCutchen and Ellsbury are two of the most talented, prototypical center fielders in today's game. You certainly wouldn't confuse either of them with in-his-prime Ken Griffey Jr., but they are light years ahead of players like Marlon Byrd, B.J. Upton and Denard Span when it comes to total value added.

The other two names are somewhat of a conundrum.

Marte was a "casualty" of making sure the plate appearance minimum was low enough to include Manny Machado. Don't get me wrong, I like Marte—I just have some serious doubts that his OPS will withstand the test of time. Through 603 career plate appearances, he's hanging on above that .770 plateau by a thread.

DeJesus, on the other hand, has been criminally underrated for his entire career. I can appreciate the fact that you have to be pretty special to get national attention while playing your first eight seasons in Kansas City.

However, though he isn't amazing at any one thing in particular, wouldn't you give DeJesus at least a B-minus as a grade for each of the five tools?

His PA/HR numbers are in line with Jose Reyes' and his stolen base rate is almost identical to that of both Evan Longoria and Manny Machado. His Fld per game is slightly less than Ryan Zimmerman's and slightly better than Jayson Werth's. Those are some quality names to which DeJesus is comparable.

Naturally Gifted Right Fielders

Player	AVG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/SB	PA/WAR	Fld + BsR
Ichiro Suzuki	.321	.780	82.6	19.5	164.9	210.8
Carlos Beltran	.283	.857	24.7	28.3	136.5	114.7
Jayson Werth	.270	.828	26.5	39.3	163.1	48.7
Hunter Pence	.283	.808	27.6	51.9	191.9	32.9
Torii Hunter	.278	.800	27.2	44.1	199.8	32.0

If we were going to pick one specific player as the most naturally gifted athlete in baseball, I would have to give that honor to Ichiro.

Three months from now, Ichiro is going to be 40 years old, and he's probably still going to steal at least 25 bases and bat over .270 for a 13th consecutive season. He has contributed the third-most runs above average via baserunning and the second-most runs above average via fielding among all active players.

No one has a higher Fld + BsR score than Ichiro, and only three players have a marginally better batting average. The only area where you might find him lacking is in power, but he apparently displays a ton of it in batting practice and refuses to unleash it during games.

He's basically the Tim Duncan of baseball. Could Duncan have been a rim-rattling dunker? Most definitely. But both players chose to prolong their careers and put the needs of the team ahead of their own highlights by becoming Mr. Fundamental of their sports.

Maybe you've grown tired of his slap-hitting approach, but I suspect that a few years from now, we'll look back on Ichiro as one of the greatest players of all time.