Willie Mays
Ted Williams
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Willie Mays leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Willie Mays at #2 and Ted Williams at #5.
Head-to-head FAQ
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The case for Willie Mays
The most complete player the sport has produced. Mays hit 660 home runs with a .301 average, stole 338 bases, scored more than 2,000 runs, and won 12 consecutive Gold Gloves in center field — the sport's most demanding everyday position — while playing in 24 All-Star Games. His 156.2 WAR is the highest of any player who debuted after integration, and it survives every adjustment: park effects (Candlestick's winds suppressed his power for years), era, and the nearly two full seasons he lost to Army service in 1952-53, which plausibly cost him the home run record. The Catch off Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series — a sprinting, over-the-shoulder grab 420-plus feet from home, followed by an impossible spin throw — is the sport's defining defensive image. If the GOAT question asks who could do everything on a baseball field at the highest level, the answer is Mays.
The case for Ted Williams
The purest hitter in history by nearly any rate measure. Williams's career .482 on-base percentage is the all-time record, his 1.116 OPS trails only Ruth, and his .344 average came with 521 home runs — power and discipline fused as no one has fused them since. He hit .406 in 1941, the last .400 season, famously refusing to sit on the final day and going 6-for-8 in a doubleheader to finish there. He won two Triple Crowns (1942, 1947) and somehow lost the MVP vote both times. The counterfactual defines him: he missed all of 1943-45 training as a naval aviator during World War II and most of 1952-53 flying combat missions as a Marine pilot in Korea, costing him roughly five prime years. Conservative projections put his career at 650-plus homers and near 3,300 hits. He hit .388 at age 38 and homered in his final at-bat in 1960.