Let's build the best 5-tool player in baseball

The five-tool player is the golden ideal of a baseball player: the player who can do everything.

The classic five tools -- contact hitting, power, speed, glove and arm -- have been around for decades, and while rare, five-tool superstars have existed in every MLB era, from Willie Mays to Ken Griffey Jr. to Mookie Betts.

But what if we wanted to create the best five-tool player out of today's big league stars? We can use Statcast data to identify five of the best baseball players in the world with the most elite individual skills -- and combine them into one super-five-tool player. What would that player look like? How good could that player be?

Let's do it. Let's build the ultimate five-tool star for Major League Baseball in 2024.

(Unless otherwise noted, all stats are entering the weekend.)

CONTACT: Luis Arraez

Key stats: .318 xBA, 7.2% whiff rate, 4.9% K%

Arraez is the king of bat-to-ball skill.

He ranks at the top of the Majors in both swing-and-miss rate (7.1%) and strikeout rate (4.8%). Think about what that means: Arraez misses on only one out of every 14 swings. And he strikes out in less than one out of every 20 plate appearances.

That's insane. The average Major League hitter in 2024 whiffs on 25.1% of their swings and strikes out 22.4% of the time. So Arraez is more than three times better than an average big leaguer at putting the bat on the ball when he swings, and over four times better at not striking out.

But you can't be a great contact hitter unless you can actually turn all those balls in play into hits. Arraez is elite at that, too. In particular, he's elite by a trio of Statcast's contact metrics.

Squared-up swing rate

Arraez leads MLB with a 43.1% squared-up rate, which is a new Statcast bat tracking stat that reflects how often he hits the ball on the sweet spot of the bat when he swings. Making squared-up contact so often means Arraez is great at turning his bat speed into actual exit velocity when he makes contact, which is basically all the time.

Launch angle sweet-spot rate

Arraez ranks third among MLB regulars with a 41.8% launch angle sweet-spot rate, which isn't about the physical sweet spot of the bat, but how the ball comes off the bat. The launch angle sweet-spot zone is 8-32 degrees, which encompasses both the line drives and fly balls that are most likely to be hits. Only Freddie Freeman and Taylor Ward have a higher launch angle sweet-spot rate than Arraez in 2024.

Expected batting average

Based on his quality of contact, Arraez has a .318 expected batting average this season, fourth-best among qualifying hitters on Statcast's leaderboard behind only Bobby Witt Jr., Juan Soto and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. And over the last two seasons, Arraez has maintained a .324 xBA across over 1,000 plate appearances, the best among any player in that group.

If you're building a superstar five-tool player, this is the foundation you want to start with. Right off the bat, our superstar is a top contender for the MLB batting title.

The one thing Arraez doesn't do is hit the ball hard … but guess what? That doesn't matter for us. Because we're about to give our super-player the exit velocity of the best home run hitter since Barry Bonds.

Honorable mentions: Steven Kwan, Juan Soto

POWER: Aaron Judge

Key stats: .745 xSLG, 88 barrels, 26 no-doubter HR

Give us the Judgian blasts. No one exemplifies light-tower power like the Yankees' superstar slugger.

Judge obviously leads MLB with 49 home runs after homering in his fourth straight game on Friday night. But he also leads MLB in basically every Statcast measurement of power as a tool.

• He has 88 barrels -- batted balls hit with optimal exit velocity and launch angle, the most dangerous level of contact. Judge has a double-digit lead over the next-closest hitters, Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani
• 27.8% of his batted balls are barrels, and 15.6% of his plate appearances end with a barreled ball, the best barrel rates of any qualifying hitter

• His 95.9 mph average exit velocity leads the Majors. His exit velo on line drives and fly balls is 99.8 mph, behind only fellow Bronx Bomber Giancarlo Stanton … as is his 107.1 mph "EV50," which averages the hardest 50% of a hitter's batted balls to get a sense of his true high-end exit velocity
• He has an expected slugging percentage of .748, by far the best in the Majors (way ahead of Soto and Ohtani) and even higher than his actual otherworldly slugging percentage (.726)
• He's hit 26 "no-doubter" home runs -- homers that would be gone in all 30 MLB ballparks -- the most of any hitter, just ahead of Ohtani
• He's the only player with three 470-plus-foot home runs this year (with a long of 477 on Aug. 2 at Yankee Stadium). Ohtani has two. Seven other players have one. That's it.

Judge crushes enough home runs on his own. Imagine how many our five-tool super-player would hit with Judge's power combined with Arraez's bat-to-ball skill.

Judge is on pace for 61 home runs this season. If he had Arraez's strikeout rate instead of his own 23.9%, and maintained his normal home run rate over those extra plate appearances that were no longer K's, he'd be on target to blow past 70. Our five-tool superstar might have a shot at Bonds' record 73-home run season.

Honorable mentions: Shohei Ohtani, Giancarlo Stanton

SPEED: Elly De La Cruz

Key stats: 30.1 ft/sec sprint speed, 67 bolts

This is a close race, figuratively and literally, between De La Cruz and Bobby Witt Jr. In the end, we're going with the guy who has 60 steals before September.

Witt and De La Cruz are neck-and-neck for the title of fastest man in baseball. Witt has the smallest of edges on Statcast's sprint speed leaderboard, with an average speed of 30.4 ft/sec this season to De La Cruz's 30.1 ft/sec. They also rank 1-2 in MLB among players with at least 100 competitive runs going back to the start of last season, with Witt at a 30.5 ft/sec sprint speed and De La Cruz at 30.3 ft/sec.

Both players have elite pure speed -- anything 30 ft/sec or faster is elite by MLB standards. De La Cruz and Witt are two of just four big league regulars averaging above that mark in 2024, and they regularly record "bolts," or individual runs at 30-plus ft/sec.

But consider how they turn their raw speed into game speed. The big example: Witt and De La Cruz have been caught stealing the same number of times, 12. But De La Cruz has stolen nearly 2 1/2 times more bases than Witt (60 vs. 25).

For our five-tool star with Luis Arraez's contact ability, Aaron Judge's home run power and Elly De La Cruz's stolen-base speed, forget the 30-30 or 40-40 club. He's creating the 60-60 club or the 70-70 club.

We're picking De La Cruz for the speed component of the player we're creating -- but don't worry, we're not leaving Witt out of this five-tool megastar. Witt is a five-tool superstar all by himself, which is how he can rival Judge in the AL MVP race even when Judge might hit 60 homers again. And he's coming up next here.

Honorable mentions: Bobby Witt Jr., Corbin Carroll

GLOVE: Bobby Witt Jr.

Key stats: +16 Outs Above Average, +12 Fielding Run Value

It's crazy to think that Witt's fielding has come this far, this fast. He's now one of the truly elite defenders in baseball, at a premier position, when just two years ago, as a rookie, he was one of the worst.

Witt went from the lowest percentile of MLB fielders in Statcast's flagship defensive metric, Outs Above Average, as a rookie … to the 98th percentile of MLB fielders in 2023 … to the very top percentile of MLB fielders in 2024. That's an incredible season-to-season turnaround.

Witt's fielding progression

• 2022: -11 OAA (1st percentile / 9th-worst among all MLB fielders)
• 2023: +14 OAA (98th percentile / 12th-best among all MLB fielders)
• 2024: +16 OAA (100th percentile / T-2nd-best among all MLB fielders)

Witt has been the best defensive shortstop in the Majors this season, ahead of Gold Glovers Dansby Swanson (+15 OAA), Francisco Lindor (+14 OAA) and Anthony Volpe (+13 OAA). The only fielders at any position with a higher OAA total is Nationals rookie center fielder Jacob Young at +18 OAA and Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien at +17 OAA.

Witt's range at shortstop has become truly elite. The signature Bobby Witt Jr. defensive gem is when he uses his insane speed to range over 100 feet to track down a popup in the shallow outfield -- like this play on May 9 of this season when he covered 129 feet at a sprint speed of 30.0 ft/sec to make a sliding catch on the Angels' Nolan Schanuel.

Honorable mentions: Daulton Varsho, Jacob Young

ARM: Oneil Cruz

Key stats: 95.7 mph avg. arm strength, 98.6 mph max arm strength

We could go a few different routes here -- an outfielder with a rocket arm like Brenton Doyle or Fernando Tatis Jr., a catcher with a cannon like Patrick Bailey or J.T. Realmuto … or an infielder with a laser like Cruz.

We decided to go with Cruz. Pair Cruz's arm with Witt's glove, and you have the supreme all-around defensive shortstop in baseball.

The Pirates' 6-foot-7 shortstop has the top arm strength of any infielder in the Majors this season, averaging 95.7 mph on his competitive throws. That's strong enough to be the fifth-best arm of any fielder at any position, including outfielders.

Cruz has reached a max arm strength of 98.6 mph (on a relay throw to the plate) and as high as 97.4 mph on an infield assist (on a bang-bang play to get the Blue Jays' Ernie Clement at first base in a tie game in the 14th inning on May 31).

With Witt and Cruz's talents combined, we've got a Gold Glove defender -- really, a Platinum Glove defender -- on our hands.

Honorable mentions: Brenton Doyle, J.T. Realmuto

THE FINAL 5-TOOL SUPERSTAR

Luis Arraez's contact, Aaron Judge's power, Elly De La Cruz's speed, Bobby Witt Jr.'s glove, Oneil Cruz's arm

We're done. We've got our five-tool superstar.

How valuable of a player is he? Well, our player is a potential batting champion ... with a historically great power-speed combo ... who's also the best defensive shortstop in baseball. Our five-tool super-duper-star wouldn't just be a runaway MVP, he might have the best season of all time.