Colorado Rockies: MLB Network ranks Charlie Blackmon as 9th best right fielder; Larry Walker makes best RF list since ’69

On Wednesday, Colorado Rockies right fielder Charlie Blackmon was ranked as the ninth-best right fielder in baseball on MLB Network’s Top Ten Right Now. Fans ranked Blackmon as the seventh-best right fielder.

Blackmon was not on the list last season but he was ranked in the previous three seasons on the center-field list, ranking as high as third.

Host Brian Kenny and MLBN analyst and former outfielder Cliff Floyd as well as the sabermetric panel of former SABR President Vince Gennaro and MLB.com’s Sarah Langs and Mike Petriello did not have Blackmon on their top ten lists.

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All three people on the sabermetric panel had Juan Soto as the best right fielder (he was a left fielder in 2020 but with the Nationals signing Kyle Schwarber, Soto is projected to slide over to right) but Kenny and Floyd had Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts as the best and Juan Soto at number two. That is how “The Shredder” had the top two ranked as well.

Blackmon played much like the Rockies did in 2020 as he started off on fire. In the team’s first 17 games, they were 12-5 but went 14-29 for the rest of the season. Blackmon hit .500 with a 1.248 OPS in the first 17 games but after, he hit only .216 with an OPS of .610. That brought his season totals down to a .303 average with an OPS of .804 and an OPS+ of 103, or three percent above league average.

For Larry Walker, Brian Kenny and Bob Costas both had him on their lists of the best right fielders since 1969, or since the start of the divisional era. Walker was 8th on Kenny’s list and 5th on Costas’ list. They were slightly different because Costas had Hank Aaron as his best right fielder since 1969. However, Kenny did not consider him at all since his prime was before 1969 so he isn’t even on his list.

Here’s what Costas’ list looked like:

1. Hank Aaron
2. Tony Gwynn
3. Reggie Jackson
4. Ichiro
5. Larry Walker
6. Vladimir Guerreo
7. Dave Winfield
8. Andre Dawson
9. Mookie Betts
10. Sammy Sosa

Here was Brian Kenny’s list:

1. Reggie Jackson
2. Tony Gwynn
3. Dwight Evans
4. Dave Winfield
5. Andre Dawson
6. Vladimir Guerrero
7. Gary Sheffield
8. Larry Walker
9. Ichiro
10. Dave Parker

If Aaron is included in the list (he was in his age 35 season in 1969), Frank Robinson could also be considered (Aaron played in 1019 games in 1969 or after and Frank Robinson played in 892 games in 1969 or after and they had a 150 and 149 OPS+ from 1969 on, respectively).

If you include both of them in, they would be at the top of the heap in WAR, WAR7 (each player’s seven best seasons by WAR), and JAWS (which combines them both and compares to Hall of Famers at the position. Walker would then be 4th in WAR, 5th in WAR7, and 4th in JAWS, behind only Aaron, Robinson, Reggie Jackson, and Mookie Betts (for WAR7).

So you can argue that while it’s good that Walker was on both of their lists, the stats seem to say that both of them underrated the Rockies’ first Hall of Famer.