Arod vs David Wright vs Chipper Jones

Yes, it's begun: fan vs fan in the "my player is better than yours" battle royales.

I was having a chat with some baseball buddies yesterday, and they happen to be Yankee fans.

The discussion turned to "best third baseman". This is a typical Yankee fan "argument"--they take the best players on their team and then compare them to everyone else using specious logic. Another of these arguments would be like, "best young power pitcher with a Native American heritage". My point to them was that ARod isn't even a third baseman, but rather the best hitting shortstop of all-time.

So anyway, we get into it a bit over third baseman, and my thoughts were that David Wright, over the last 3 years, has been near equal with ARod, and that ARod's 2007 skews the total numbers a bit in his favor.

That sent them into a tizzy, and they proceeded to say how it was ARod by such a wide margin that the real discussion was who was second. A few placed David Wright fourth behind Chipper Jones and Evan Longoria.

Now while Longoria isn't really in the discussion, Chipper, of course, is. When I look at the three I place DW ahead of Chipper because of his ability to play every day, while Chipper plays in about 70% of his team's games.

So let's look at the 3-year splits and see what the stats tell us:

ARod (2006-2008) Batting Splits
Overall	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	HBP	SO	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
Total	1665	360	503	90	1	124	380	250	43	376	57	11	.302	.403	.581	.984

Chipper (2006-2008) Batting Splits
Overall	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	HBP	SO	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
Total	1363	277	466	94	8	77	263	233	2	209	15	2	.342	.435	.592	1.027

David Wright (2006-2008) Batting Splits
Overall	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	HBP	SO	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
Total	1812	324	566	124	8	89	347	254	15	346	69	15	.312	.396	.537	.933

Each of the three are top hitters. ARod obviously has the most power, Chipper the best eye, and DW the most speed, consistency and durability.

The discussion continues and I tell these guys that my preference is the 26-year old that is just entering his prime vice the 37-year old Brave that can't stay on the field very much, and the soon to be 34-year old primadonna who, despite being one of the greatest hitters of any generation, can't win the big one and is hated wherever he goes.

And what does FanGraphs say?

Chipper Jones, 7.6 value wins, $34.3M value in 2008 against an actual salary of $12.3M.
David Wright, 7.2 value wins, $32.5M value in 2008 against an actual salary of $5.3M.
ARod, 6.2 value wins, $28.2M value in 2008 against an actually salary of $28M.

As far as fielding goes, Chipper is the best of the three, followed closely by DW, with ARod third.

All three have superb numbers, but I wouldn't trade David Wright for anyone, he's the youngest, most consistent, and easily the least expensive of the three. He is the face of the franchise, gritty as hell, and he is going to continue to get a bit better as he makes his way toward Cooperstown.

And God forbid you tell a Yankee fan how much better Jose Reyes is than "past a diving Jeter".