The 5 all-time best baseball players from St. Louis

While St. Louis may be known as a soccer city from the inside, its baseball history is just as storied as its soccer history. There has been a baseball franchise in the city since 1881 when Chris von der Ahe brought the Brown Stockings to St. Louis and renamed them the St. Louis Browns. Since then, the franchise has a record of 11,131 wins to 10,776 losses for a 50.8% winning percentage.

Plenty of success has been had at the team level within St. Louis. What about the player level? Which St. Louis-born Major League Baseball players have had the most success? While St. Louis doesn't have as many natural-born players as cities such as Chicago or Philadelphia, it does rank third in all cities in America with players born in or near the city itself. In the history of baseball in America, 317 players have been able to call St. Louis home.

I'll be using career Baseball-Reference WAR to find which St. Louis natives had the best careers. The surrounding area (St. Charles, Chesterfield, etc.) will also be counted as players from St. Louis. Additionally, players who spent formative years of their lives will be included in the list.

Max Scherzer

Max Scherzer was born in Chesterfield, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. After a successful career at the University of Missouri, Scherzer was drafted 11th overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2006 MLB draft. Contractual disputes between Scherzer, his agent, Scott Boras, and the Diamondbacks pushed his signing date back to May 30th.

Scherzer made his MLB debut on April 29th, 2008, and he never looked back. He has since pitched for the Detroit Tigers, Washington Nationals, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, and he is now pitching in the playoffs for the Texas Rangers. In his career, Scherzer has accumulated 75 bWAR, has won the Cy Young Award three times, was voted into 8 All-Star Games, and even won a World Series with the 2019 Washington Nationals. Scherzer is the best player to come out of St. Louis, and the Cardinals could have had him as their ace for the last decade.