By John Turney
In baseball scouting, few labels carry more weight than "five-tool player." It describes the rare athlete who can hit for average, hit for power, run the bases with speed, field with range and sure hands, and throw with strength and accuracy. The term has become shorthand for the complete player—the one who impacts the game in every phase.
Willie Mays stands as the archetype.
Across 22 major-league seasons, he posted a .302 major-league career average, 660 home runs, 338 stolen bases, 12 consecutive Gold Gloves, and a fine arm that regularly cut down runners. He did it with flair—basket catches, hat flying off as he raced around the bases—and with a consistency that made the extraordinary look routine. Contemporaries and later generations alike have pointed to him as the standard against which all other five-tool candidates are measured.
The concept itself predates the modern phrase.
Branch Rickey, the innovative executive who built the Cardinals' farm system and later integrated the majors with Jackie Robinson, emphasized five core "talents" or tools when evaluating players. He reportedly considered only two true five-tool stars of his era: Mays and Mickey Mantle. Scouts working under Rickey’s influence, including Al Campanis, formalized grading systems that scored prospects on those same categories—hitting, power, speed, arm, and fielding.
Campanis, a longtime Dodgers scout and later general manager, used exactly that framework. In one widely reported evaluation of major-league talent, the Dodgers' scouting staff (working under Campanis) assigned point values to those five skills. Mays was the only player judged perfect in every category. Campanis reportedly told a reporter the Dodgers would have paid $1 million for him on the spot—big money at the time—because no one else matched that complete profile.
Leo Durocher, Mays's manager with the New York Giants, gave the idea its most memorable public expression. 'There are only five things you can do in baseball," Durocher said: hit, hit with power, run, throw, and field. "Mays had it all." He later added that Mays also possessed the intangible that turned a superstar into something rarer: the ability to light up a room and lift an entire clubhouse.
The phrase 'five-tool player' did not become common in print until later decades, but the underlying idea—looking for the complete package rather than a one-dimensional specialist—took firm root in the 1950s with Mays as its living example. Whether traced through Rickey’s scouting philosophy, Campanis’s formal grading, or Durocher’s blunt praise, the label found its perfect illustration in the Say Hey Kid.
True five-tool players remain scarce. Most big-leaguers excel in two or three areas. Mays excelled in all five for the better part of two decades, and in doing so gave baseball a permanent measuring stick.
So how do we measure the five tools? Here is one proposal: Do it like Bill James' Power-Speed number. He took home runs and stolen bases and did a harmonic mean calculation. It's better than averaging the two because one has to do well in both categories, i.e., power AND speed.
This is our second attempt at doing something similar. We picked five metrics that measure hitting (on base percentage, which includes hits and walks), Isolated power for "hitting with power," and then metrics that purportedly measure base running, fielding and throwing. We do a harmonic mean on them and let the chips fall where they may.
Five-Tool Ranking Method
To identify true five-tool players, we selected five statistics that roughly correspond to the classic tools: on-base percentage (hitting for average/getting on base), isolated power (hitting for power), base running, fielding, and throwing.
These values were adjusted so they could be combined with a harmonic mean, following the approach Bill James used for his Power-Speed number. The harmonic mean rewards balance heavily—players must perform well across all categories to score highly. Dominating one area while being weak in others produces a much lower result.
Minimum thresholds
On-base percentage: .375 or higher
Isolated power: .200 or higher
Rbase had to be a career total of 20
Rfield had to be at least 20 (Ken Griffey added as example)
Rof/Rthrow had to be positive.
Players who fall short of these marks are excluded.
Adjustments applied
OBP and ISO are multiplied by 100 (so a .300 OBP becomes 30).
Fielding: Career fielding runs (Rfield) but would like to comine it with Defensive Regression Analysis (DRA) and average them (each would be divided by two and then combined, then divided by 10). Because neither metric is clearly superior, equal weight is given to both. But we cannot get our hands on recent DRA totals. So we went with Rfield.
Base running: Baseball-Reference’s "Rbaser – DP" (base-running runs minus double-play avoidance) is divided by two. For example, Willie Mays’ career total of 70 becomes 35 in the calculation.
Throwing/arm value: Career outfield arm runs (Rof) for outfielders, or the equivalent throwing runs for the two infielders who cleared the thresholds, are also divided by two. Barry Bonds’ career total of 36 Rof, for instance, appears as 18.
Only players who clear the OBP and ISO and other floors and then post solid adjusted scores in the remaining three categories remain. The resulting list is short—true five-tool performers across a full career are rare.
Issue: for some infielders there was no "Rthrow" when they played so the throwing aspect was ignored and it is a 4-tool number. However, don't fret; the way harmonic means work is one has to do well in everything, so even if all those players were given a score of say, 99, it wouldn't put them atop the list. In fact it wouldn't get any of them to 20. So we did the best we could.
It is notable that only 20 players even qualified; Ken Griffey really didn't, but we included him to show what one very low number can do to a harmonic mean.
The chart:
It is no surprise that Willie Mays is number one. His career on-base percentage was .384, his isolated power was .255. His Rbaser+DP was 70. His Rof is 55 (with a slight adjustment for 1951 and 1952 since that stat began in 1953). We added five runs saved, which may be low. But even if we went with the official total of 50, it makes very little difference.
His DRA was 195, and his Rfield is 185, so the average of the two was 190.
All that means is his Five Tool number is over 27. Only Barry Bonds is close.
Last time we used different numbers and since we used outfield assists, more players were included who don't have at least a ten in DRA/Rfield, but the top two people were the same. Ricky Henderson didn't make it this time because is Rof was negative.
Someone else, we are sure, could do a better job on this. It would be helpful of Baseball Reference added Rthrow and Rof to their search engine (Stathead) so others can follow what we've done and improve it. Surely many would be better. But this is a start.
Thoughts?
