I'll give it a try.
Honus Wagner
Ernie Banks
Alex Rodriguez
Barry Larkin
Miguel Tejada
Those five I consider better.
I have a hard time trying to put Ozzie Smith or anybody else anywhere in his league...so I would say..that he is the clear cut 6th best shortstop in MLB history.
This is my fault; when I wrote the question, I meant to say 5 shortstops currently in the HOF that are better. Nevertheless, I would urge you to take a look at
this article before determining Ripken's place in baseball history. When looking at the value of shortstops in their prime, only Hornsby, Rodriguez and Vaughn were better than Ripken. Ripken's value exceeds that of Jeter, Tejada, Larkin and Smith.
Here's the thing: we tend to think of the 1990's Ripken, the guy who probably played a little too long, whose career probably suffered under the weight of The Streak, and who posted a lot of so-so batting averages in a super offensive era. We forget that the
Ripken from 1982-1991 was an absolute offensive monster in an era where run production was much lower than it is today. You have to compare players against the era in which they played. When all is said and done, Tejada's raw offensive stats will probably look a lot better than Ripken's. However, by the standards of the day, Ripken was better vis-a-vis his peers than Tejada, and by the study above, a tick better than Jeter (though in Jeter's defense, it's awfully close). For Ripken's prime years (82-91), his OPS+ was 126.4, meaning he was 26% better than an average hitter. For Tejada's prime years (2000-06), it was 121. Thus, in his prime years (and it's prime years that we should be most seriously considering, since that's what usually gets you into the HOF), Ripken was better compared to his peers than Tejada.
Ozzie Smith isn't close. Smith's defense was tremendous, of course, but he was a mediocre, at best, offensive player. Even at shortstop, offense still counts for a lot more than defense. For Smith to have been a more valuable player than Ripken, he would have probably had to play 2nd, shortstop and 3rd base all by himself to make up for the difference in offense.
Barry Larkin probably would have been close if he could have stayed healthy during his prime years. But he lost an average of 43 games a season to injury. What's more valuable, 162 games of excellent production, or 119 games of excellent production?
