Was Rickey Henderson Greatest MLB Player of All Time? Where Does He Rank?
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Rickey Henderson, who died Friday at age 65, stole 1,406 bases in his incredible 25-year Major League Baseball career. That not only made him the all-time leader, it put him 468 steals ahead of second-place Lou Brock. Henderson stole his final 109 bases after he passed the age of 40.
Henderson also holds the record for most home runs leading off a game. He played 3,081 games in his career, fourth on the all-time list. He led off 81 of those games with a home run. George Springer of the Toronto Blue Jays comes in second, but at 60 he’ll need to pull off the feat 22 more times to break Henderson’s record.
The object of the game in baseball is to score runs, and nobody scored more than Henderson, who crossed the plate 2,295 times, 50 more than second-place Ty Cobb.
Was Henderson the greatest baseball player of all time? If not, where does he rank, out of the 20,787 players who have worn a Major League uniform since the National League was founded in 1876?
OAKLAND, CA: Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics runs during a season game at Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland, California. Rickey Henderson played for the Oakland Athletics from 1979-1984, 1989-1993, 1994-1995 and in 1998. OAKLAND, CA: Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics runs during a season game at Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland, California. Rickey Henderson played for the Oakland Athletics from 1979-1984, 1989-1993, 1994-1995 and in 1998. Jeff Carlick/Getty Images
There are a few different ways of evaluating Henderson’s place on the “Greatest of All Time” list. In 2022, ESPN.com put together its own ranking of the top 100 MLB players ever. On that list, Henderson placed 23rd, a pretty respectable showing. Baseball-Reference.com assembled it own list of the top 25 players, and Henderson in on there too, though that list is in alphabetical order.
But ranked by Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, Henderson places 19th in Major League history. WAR is a statistic that, according to Baseball-Reference.com, “measures a player’s value compared to a typical player that would replace him.”
Henderson’s WAR number of 111.1 puts him ahead of Mickey Mantle (110.2), Albert Pujols (101.4) and Mike Trout (86.2), among many other baseball greats.
No matter what statistic is used to evaluate him, there is no doubt that baseball has now lost one of the greatest players ever to play the game.
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