Who Was Better? Mattingly vs Posada vs O'Neill vs Bernie

It's a slow Tuesday so I thought I'd throw this up here. I wanted to start a winter series of "Who Was Better?", a look at a few baseball players and trying to figure out who was better. The first one is Don Mattingly vs. Jorge Posada vs. Paul O'Neill vs. Bernie Williams. All four of these will probably be together in Monument Park someday but it's interesting to debate who was the best out of the 4. Below is their WAR graphs from FanGraphs and I'll talk about each candidacy briefly below. But I'm going to put up a poll on the right side and I would like you to let us know who you voted for and why in the comments below. Let's get started:

Click to expand. Original graph here

So which one was the best? Let's examine:

Bernie Williams: Since 1980, Bernie has accumulated the highest bWAR of any Yankee hitter not named Derek Jeter but fWAR lists him below Jorge Posada. Although blessed with great speed, Bernie was a subpar baserunner, having his best season stealing bases in 1996 when he stole 17 out of 21. 1996 also corresponded with his breakout power season when he hit .305/.391/.535 with 29 HR and 102 RBI. His best hitting season in the majors came in 1998 when he won a batting title, hitting .339/.422/.575 with 26 HR and contributing to one of the best baseball teams ever. That year he had his highest MVP finish, coming in 7th. Although Bernie was a terrible defender (career UZR of -109.5), Bernie won one his 4 Gold Goves and made one of his 5 All-Star teams. He was a career .275/.371/.480 hitter in the postseason with 22 HR in 121 games and won the 1996 ALCS MVP award. In 2002 he would win a Silver Slugger award but his hitting would fade quite a bit after that. By 2005 he should have retired but stuck around for two more years and put up extremely bad numbers (enough to bring down his cumulative WAR). "Bern Baby Bern" would stop playing after 2006 and owns a career slash line of .297/.381/.477 with 287 career HR.

Don Mattingly: Mattingly got a cup of coffee in 1982 and was a part-time player in 1983 but burst onto the scene as an everyday player in 1984, winning a batting title (.343) and leading the league in hits (.207) and the majors in doubles (44) and OPS+ (156). In 1985 he would win his only MVP, hitting .324/.371/.567 with 48 2B, 35 HR and 145 RBI. In 1986 Mattingly would have an even better season and would finish second in the MVP voting to Roger Clemens. Mattingly would continue to play well throughout the 80's but missed 60 games in 1990 and never seemed to recover from that. His back would sap out all of his power as he averaged only 10 HR a season over the 6 seasons he played in the 90s. "Donnie Baseball" made 6 All-Star teams, would win 9 gold gloves and took home 3 silver sluggers. He finally made the playoffs in his last season, hitting .417/.440/.708 in the 1995 ALDS and hitting one home run that almost brought down the Old Yankee Stadium. He had the best start of this group (and his peak of his best three years were as good or better than any of the other three) and was the best defender, but he faded as the years went on although he's still picking up his share of Hall of Fame votes. Mattingly's final line was .307/.358/.471 with 222 HR.  

Paul O'Neill: Doesn't truly belong on this list but interesting to be here for comparison's sake. O'Neill enjoyed some good--but not great--seasons in Cincinnati before he was traded to the Yankees. In 1993, his first season with the Yankees, he posted his best hitting season and then topped that in 1994, hitting .359/.460/.603 with 21 HR and 25 2B in the strike-shortened season, coming 5th in the MVP voting. The next 4 seasons he would also hit over .300 (and would walk 102 times in 1996) and then his hitting began to fall off a bit. O'Neill was considered a good--but not great--defender, making up for his lack of speed with a good arm and much better reads than his CF counterpart, Williams. O'Neill made 5 All-Star games and was a career .284/.363/.465 postseason hitter. "The Warrior" finished with a career line of .288/.363/.470 and 281 HR though with the Yankees he was a .303/.377/.492 hitter with 185 HR in 9 seasons. It's interesting to think what could have happened had he fixed his hitting issues with the Yankees earlier in his career.

Jorge Posada: The top cumulative WAR among this group and, because he has been a catcher, probably the best chance to make the Hall of Fame. Posada got the slowest start on this list as he took a while to get the Majors and then to get regular playing time. Posada got cups of coffee in 1995 and 1996 before becoming the back-up catcher 1997 and slowly moving more towards the everyday catcher by 2000. 2001 was his first great offensive season, putting up a .287/.417/.527 line with 35 2B and 28 HR, making one of his 5 All-Star teams and winning one if his 5 Silver Sluggers. His best season came in 2003 when he put up a .281/.405/.518 line with 30 HR and 101 RBI and came in 3rd in the MVP race. He would hit pretty well over the next few seasons but had another spectacular year in 2007, hitting .338/.426/.543 with 42 2B and 20 HR, and finished 6th in the MVP voting. That year got him his last contract which concludes at the end of this upcoming season. Although great at staying healthy up to that point, Posada has averaged only 361 plate appearances a season over the past 3 seasons. Posada's defense is certainly the worst out of this group (though Bernie is not far off) and his playoff numbers may be the worst out of this group putting up a career .241/.349/.381 line with 11 HR in 120 games. Still, Jorge's position (catcher until 2011 when he will become a full-time DH) and his impressive career line of .275/.377/.479 with 261 HR may propel him to the top of the list...

...but that's for you to decide. So please register your votes on the right and let us know: Who Was Better? Then go below to the comments and let us know who you chose and why.