MLB found a statistc to make a former NY Mets player look better than Tarik Skubal

Tarik Skubal is the best pitcher in baseball, winning back-to-back AL Cy Youngs and with better overall numbers in 2025 than he had in 2024. It’s possible he’ll be even better in 2026 whether he’s with the Detroit Tigers or, as we dream about, the New York Mets.

Everyone knows he’s the mound GOAT. MLB’s X account found a way to make a former Mets player look even better.

Using only bWAR, the WAR value on Baseball-Reference, they ranked the best players in this category who debuted specifically in 2020. The winner was Andres Gimenez.

This might be the only stat to suggest Andres Gimenez has been better than Tarik Skubal

Other than his 2022 campaign which had him representing the Cleveland Guardians as an All-Star, Gimenez hasn’t been an amazing offensive player. A career-96 OPS+ suggests he’s slightly below-average. His .253/.317/.382 slash line is nothing special. What makes him such a highly valued player in bWAR is his defense. Three consecutive Gold Gloves and a whole lot of Wins Above Replacement as a result help make the current Toronto Blue Jays infielder the alpha in this ranking.

Just a quick look at the players who did make the list, we see how much bWAR clearly values defense. Daulton Varsho has routinely been one of the league’s better defenders. The same goes for Luis Robert Jr. Jake Cronenworth is more of an exception as his defense could, at best, be classified as slightly above average.

It’s a small pool of players to pull from for this list considering they had to debut in one of the 60 games played for their team in 2020. Three, ironically enough, were signed to early extensions. Only Skubal and Varsho were not. The Guardians got out from Under Gimenez’s contract and the Padres would certainly like to do the same with Cronenworth. With the White Sox and Robert, the current hangup is how much of his $20 million salary they’ll eat in a trade or not.

Whether it’s bWAR or fWAR, this single statistic does its best to try to value players. In this case, the flaw is clear. A below average hitter in most of his big league seasons versus an incredible pitcher with two monster seasons can’t be compared in this way.