Weighted WAR: 2025 Update Part 2

Last time, we did a brief review of how the Weighted WAR system works, and also updated the top-100 lists for right field, left field, third base, and first base/DH to reflect the results of the 2025 season. Now, we’ll go over the remaining positions, as well as some numbers dealing with the current state of the top-100 lists as a whole.

The first update post opened with right field, the home of the player who had the best season in 2025. This time, let’s start with the home of the active player with the highest career rating: center field.

Player	Rank	Years	WAR	aWAR	wWAR	2025 WAR	Rank Change
Mike Trout	5	2011-25	87.5	89.6	69.5	1.5	0
Andrew McCutchen	30	2009-25	48.9	49.4	39.6	0.1	0
George Springer	40	2014-25	42.3	44.8	35.7	4.8	+7
Cody Bellinger	63	2017-25	30.5	33.8	29.7	5.1	+23
Byron Buxton	71	2015-25	29.9	32.5	27.5	4.9	+23
Brandon Nimmo	93	2016-25	26.2	28.2	24.0	2.9	+12
Julio Rodriguez	111	2022-25	22.8	22.8	21.3	6.8

Not only has Mike Trout stalled on the center field list, he’s pretty much stalled on the overall list as well. Once you’re in the overall top 20, it becomes very hard to make progress, especially when you’re no longer doing your best work. Trout did squeak past Joe Morgan into the #18 spot overall, but if he doesn’t rebound to post at least a couple of legitimately good years, that’s probably where he’ll still be at the end of his career.

Below Trout and Andrew McCutchen, however, there’s some real progress to be found. George Springer, Cody Bellinger, and Byron Buxton all had resurgent seasons that were varying degrees of unexpected, and all of them climbed accordingly. Of the active players currently in the top 100, Buxton is the only one who was primarily a center fielder in 2025; Bellinger in particular is pretty likely to reclassify to a different position at some point, as he now has substantial value at all three outfield spots and first base.

Julio Rodriguez would already be in the top 100 at six of the other seven positions. Center field has the highest current standard of entry, so he’s still barely shy. Given that he just turned 25 last month, I suspect he’ll make his way pretty far up the list in time. And it’s a good thing Rodriguez is there, because there are no other active center fielders ranked between 101-150. Quite a few are scattered through the 50 after that, some of whom are young enough to still have growth potential (Daulton Varsho, Luis Robert, Jarren Duran); hopefully a couple of them can join J-Rod as standard bearers among the under-30 center fielders’ club.

Up next, let’s cover a position which (unlike center field) has quite a few relative youngsters making their marks to varying degrees: catcher.

Player	Rank	Years	WAR	aWAR	wWAR	2025 WAR	Rank Change
JT Realmuto	24	2014-25	38.8	40.5	32.2	2.5	+3
Salvador Perez	31	2011-25	35.7	38.1	29.4	0.4	0
Willson Contreras	40	2016-25	29.3	30.4	24.6	2.5	+5
Will Smith	58	2019-25	23.0	24.6	21.5	4.5	+21
Cal Raleigh	77	2021-25	18.9	19.4	18.3	7.4	+72
Sean Murphy	97	2019-25	15.9	17.2	15.4	2.4	+25
William Contreras	104	2020-25	15.3	15.4	14.4	3.9
Adley Rutschman	106	2022-25	15.0	15.0	14.2	1.9
Gary Sanchez	117	2015-25	14.3	15.1	13.6	-0.5

Two years ago, what odds could you have gotten on Cal Raleigh joining the top 100 before Adley Rutschman? (Well, two years ago I hadn’t published this list yet, but you get what I mean.) Raleigh’s breakout was one of the most enjoyable baseball stories of the year, helping to offset the apparent collapse of Rutschman’s future stardom.

Meanwhile, Will Smith and William Contreras have continued their fight to succeed JT Realmuto as the NL’s best catcher, while Realmuto himself remains productive into (relative) old age. And while Sean Murphy’s 2.4 WAR this year doesn’t look like much (he didn’t even have the best season by a catcher on his own team), the catcher list is so tightly packed that he still rocketed into the top 100.

Catcher is a tough position, both to play and to evaluate. The #50 catcher on the list (Mike Scioscia, if you’re curious) has a score of 22.5; that score would not qualify for the top 100 in center field. It is tempting to give catchers a boost in the rankings as a result, but that’s a complicated issue. Many of the players on this list either regularly shift to other positions (Salvador Perez), or have moved altogether (Contreras the elder); giving Willson’s 2025 season extra credit just because he used to play catcher is clearly not desirable. At some point I may look at this in more detail, but for now, we’re still going with “lump all primary catchers together and consider each position individually” as a palliative measure.

Speaking of positions that have significantly lower cutoffs than most, let’s move on to second base.

Player	Rank	Years	WAR	aWAR	wWAR	2025 WAR	Rank Change
Jose Altuve	19	2011-25	53.4	53.7	42.7	0.5	0
Marcus Semien	23	2013-25	49.3	49.8	41.0	3.3	+3
Ketel Marte	39	2015-25	35.6	37.4	31.7	4.4	+8
DJ LeMahieu	44	2011-25	30.6	35.9	29.5	0.6	-1
Jeff McNeil	78	2018-25	23.0	24.7	21.8	2.0	+10
Ozzie Albies	79	2017-25	24.1	25.0	21.7	2.1	+10
Nico Hoerner	91	2019-25	21.9	22.8	20.8	6.2	+47
Andres Gimenez	98	2020-25	19.4	20.6	19.2	1.1	0
Tommy Edman	100	2019-25	19.2	20.5	18.6	1.1	+5
Brandon Lowe	101	2018-25	18.0	20.8	18.4	1.9
Jorge Polanco	103	2014-25	20.8	20.9	18.4	2.6
Gleyber Torres	120	2018-25	18.7	18.7	16.6	2.9
Jake Cronenworth	129	2020-25	15.4	17.2	15.8	2.4
Luis Arraez	130	2019-25	16.5	17.4	15.7	1.2
Adam Frazier	149	2016-25	15.6	16.5	14.3	1.4

That’s nine top-100 players active at the position… and yet, which of them is actually a star right now? Ketel Marte, yes. Jose Altuve and Marcus Semien have been stars in the past, but are clearly on the decline. Nico Hoerner is a star if he plays like he did in 2025, but his skill profile (contact, speed and defense) is hardly guaranteed to age well. And the rest of the group (as well as the guys knocking on the door) currently just look like pretty good players that you don’t build your team around. This time next year, we could have 11-12 active second basemen in the top 100 and have none of them be the best player on his team. (One other active second baseman might qualify as a star, but Brice Turang is more than a year away from joining the top 100.)

Andres Gimenez making no progress from #98 with a positive score is unusual enough to be worthy of note. He did actually pass two players, despite taking a bit of a hit from prior-year adjustments. However, he was passed by Hoerner, and also suffered from our second top-100 position change of this update.

As noted last time, adding 2025 moved Max Muncy’s primary position from first base to third base. Our other shift came in the person of Jean Segura. That may come as a bit of a surprise, since Segura hasn’t played since 2023. But the prior-year WAR updates struck again, and in multiple ways. Segura’s weighted WAR increased by half a point, from 25.1 to 25.6. But his distribution of WAR between positions also shifted, and his totals at shortstop and second base had been close to begin with. As such, instead of moving up to #71 at shortstop, Segura retroactively hopped across the keystone, settling in as the #62 second baseman.

We have one position left, and it’s closely related to second base. It also has quite a few top-100 players active, but does not share second base’s difficulties with a current star deficit. Let’s look at our active shortstops:

Player	Rank	Years	WAR	aWAR	wWAR	2025 WAR	Rank Change
Francisco Lindor	17	2015-25	55.7	57.3	45.3	5.9	+3
Carlos Correa	22	2015-25	45.7	47.5	39.1	1.5	+2
Corey Seager	28	2015-25	43.2	45.5	37.3	6.2	+11
Trea Turner	29	2015-25	41.8	45.0	36.6	5.4	+12
Xander Bogaerts	32	2013-25	42.0	43.4	35.0	2.0	-1
Trevor Story	50	2016-25	34.7	37.6	32.0	3.8	+5
Dansby Swanson	62	2016-25	28.4	31.9	27.5	4.5	+15
Fernando Tatis Jr	64	2019-25	27.1	30.3	27.2	5.9	+24
Javier Baez	67	2014-25	27.6	30.4	26.4	1.9	+5
Willy Adames	85	2018-25	25.1	27.2	23.2	3.7	+19
JP Crawford	103	2017-25	22.3	24.1	21.0	3.8
Bobby Witt Jr	105	2022-25	21.7	21.7	20.8	7.1
Gunnar Henderson	108	2022-25	21.5	21.5	20.5	5.3
Bo Bichette	111	2019-25	21.0	22.6	20.4	3.5
Tim Anderson	121	2016-25	15.1	21.6	19.6	0.0
Chris Taylor	136	2014-25	16.5	20.1	17.8	-0.6
Miguel Rojas	137	2014-25	19.3	21.6	17.7	1.9
Jeremy Pena	139	2022-25	18.6	18.6	17.4	5.6
Isiah Kiner-Falefa	148	2018-25	16.0	18.4	16.7	1.7

Yeah, that’s a good list. Ten active players in the top 100. Third base exceeds that total by one – but third base also has nobody on the verge of joining the list, while shortstop has four active players between 103 and 111, all of whom played very well in 2025. Even with Fernando Tatis Jr. having moved to the outfield (which should be reflected in the rankings soon, likely next year if he maintains his usual level of performance), we should come out of 2026 with at least a dozen active top-100 shortstops. And in this case, the guys at the top of the list are generally still excellent players. Francisco Lindor and Corey Seager have second-place MVP finishes in the recent past. Trea Turner just won a batting title.

Longer term, Lindor looks to be a near-lock for the Hall of Fame. Seager isn’t quite in that territory yet and has more health issues, but is still fabulous when healthy, and his candidacy has two World Series MVPs to fall back on. Turner, Carlos Correa, and Xander Bogaerts all still have work to do, and Bogaerts in particular will need to rebound to a level that remotely matches his enormous contract. But I would guess that three of those five make it eventually.

And I say all of that to set up the following statement: Bobby Witt Jr. and Gunnar Henderson may end up being better than all of them. Between those two, Jeremy Pena, Geraldo Perdomo, Zach Neto, and Elly De La Cruz (to name a few), the next crop of shortstops looks likely to keep rolling right along when the previous generation ages out. Even though it doesn’t have a Judge or an Ohtani to lead the way, shortstop is without question baseball’s strongest position at the moment, and may stay that way for quite a while.

Having gone through each position individually, let’s finish up with a couple of summary tables. First, active players in the top 100 by position:

Position	Top 100s
3B	11
SS	10
2B	9
RF	8
CF	6
C	6
1B/DH	5/3
LF	3

With the number of second basemen and shortstops who finished 2025 right on the edge of joining the top 100, this table may be even more skewed toward infielders in a year’s time.

Second, one of the bits of information I retrieve for each player in the database is “year of median plate appearance,” as a way of classifying players into chronological buckets. I used this table as a sanity check during the development process for Weighted WAR, and mentioned it in at least one of the posts in the original series. Using this method, you can see that top 100 representation generally climbs over time, with very occasional jumps or drops that can generally be explained by things like expansion and war. But now, I want to look at the decade-by-decade breakdown of positional top-100 representation as it changes from year to year:

Decade	2023 T100	2024 T100	2025 T100
1870	5	5	5
1880	21	21	20
1890	25	24	23
1900	30	31	30
1910	28	28	28
1920	49	48	48
1930	42	42	42
1940	41	38	38
1950	52	52	52
1960	56	55	55
1970	71	71	71
1980	77	77	76
1990	86	86	85
2000	94	91	89
2010	112	108	101
2020	11	23	37

You can see that as we add seasons to the database, older players gradually drop off; 15 players whose median PA came before 2010 have fallen out in the last two years. But the 2010s have declined much more sharply than any other decade as the 2020s have increased. The reason for this is quite simple: as players who debuted in the 2010s continue playing, their median plate appearances move forward in time, and some of them are relabeled as 2020s players. In 2025, six top-100 players had their median PA move from 2019 to 2020: Jose Ramirez, Francisco Lindor, Marcus Semien, JT Realmuto, Javier Baez, and Eugenio Suarez. (It’s worth pointing out that not all of these players had their best seasons in the 2020s; Baez, at least, definitely has not. Median plate appearance is probably not the platonic ideal measure here, but it gets the job done for observing general trends.) Another eight top-100 players active in 2025 currently have a median PA in 2019; not all of them will necessarily play enough moving forward to push the median ahead by a year, but the 2020s will likely claim a couple of players currently listed as 2018s as well before they retire. All of which is to say, the 2010s will likely end up not too far ahead of the immediately preceding decades in this table, and the 2020s will continue to gain ground.

And that’s a wrap on the 2025 update of Weighted WAR. This season saw eight new players join positional top 100 lists. Given the number of players who got close, here’s hoping 2026 sees at least that many; my suspicion is that we’ll get closer to a dozen. Pitchers and catchers report in about a month; bring on the baseball!