Today's crop of third basemen are as good as it gets

— -- If we asked you to name the golden age of third basemen, what would you say? Would you tell us about the 1970s, the days of Mike Schmidt and George Brett? Would you tell us about the 1960s, the days of Brooks Robinson and Ron Santo?

Maybe you'd nominate the 1980s, when Wade Boggs, Bill Madlock, Carney Lansford and Brett were all winning batting titles at third base. Or possibly you'd decide it was just a decade ago, a time when Chipper Jones, Miguel Cabrera, Alex Rodriguez and Adrian Beltre were the stars of this class.

But here's another thought. Suppose the golden age of third basemen is right now? Seriously. Look around. Give it some thought. Maybe this is as good as it gets.

You could make a case that Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado are the MVPs in each league right now. The AL MVP last year was a third baseman ( Josh Donaldson). The top three finishers in the NL rookie-of-the-year voting were third basemen ( Kris Bryant, Matt Duffy,  Jung Ho Kang). The guy who won the Home Run Derby ( Todd Frazier) was a third baseman.

Beltre is closing in on Cooperstown. David Wright and Evan Longoria are the faces of their franchise. Nick Castellanos and Martin Prado are threatening to lead their leagues in hitting. Matt Carpenter, Anthony Rendon and Chase Headley have been top-five MVP finishers. And we haven't even mentioned Kyle Seager, Maikel Franco, Mike Moustakas,  Justin Turner or Travis Shaw yet.

We're only about one-third of the way through the season, but 10 every-day third basemen currently have an OPS-Plus better than 120. Ten. The most ever in any full season was nine back in 2004. The most before this century was eight in both 1987 and 1982. So even if there's some slight falloff, we would still be looking at an extraordinary year -- by a potentially extraordinary group.

And it isn't just knucklehead sportswriters who are seeing this, luckily. It's becoming a topic in front offices everywhere.

"I challenge you to find a time in baseball when you could find a better crop of third basemen,"  St. Louis Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak said. "In fact, I was just talking about this the other night with some people. So you're definitely onto something. This really is an amazing group."

Not that there's anything unusual about teams getting massive production from a corner infielder. They just usually get it from the other side of the diamond. That's all.

For the past 24 seasons (1992-2015), according to baseball-reference.com, it was actually first base that was the most productive position on the field. Year after year. In every one of those seasons. It was a run that spanned two generations, from the days of Mark McGwire/ Jeff Bagwell/ Frank Thomas to the Albert Pujols/ Todd Helton/ Prince Fielder/ Ryan Howard era. It seemed as if there was no end to that run in sight.

But now, Mozeliak said, "the impact teams are getting at third has moved the needle away from where it was once pointed -- at first base." And when you peer inside the numbers, they show he's a very perceptive fellow.

• The OPS of third basemen across the sport this year is .771. When you compare that with the OPS at all other positions, it ranks second only to right field (.781). But here's the big news: Third basemen actually have a better OPS than first basemen (.757). Want to know the last season that happened? How about 1953.
• Or how about we look at extra-base hits. Third basemen have produced more of them this season (694) than any other position on the field.
• Or there's an excellent modern metric known as weighted runs created-plus (wRC+), which measures each player's numbers based on their likelihood to produce a run, then adjusts for era and ballpark. According to FanGraphs, there are 11 regular third basemen with a wRC+ of 130 or better. That's more than at any other position.
• And if we go back a little further and compare the 2010s to all other decades, the third basemen of this decade are on pace for 60 seasons with a wRC+ of 130 or better. According to ESPN Stats & Information, that would be the most of any decade in history.

"So how about the third basemen in our game?" Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter mused. "It happened fast, didn't it? And how many of these guys only do it on one side of the ball? Not many. Teams today aren't willing to sacrifice defense for production. And with these guys, they don't have to."

Another excellent point. Of the five current third basemen who have won a Fielding Bible Award, four -- Arenado, Donaldson, Beltre and Longoria -- also have won a Silver Slugger. Five of the top six finishers in last year's Fielding Bible voting -- Arenado, Beltre, Machado, Donaldson and Frazier -- have all had at least one 30-homer season.

"It used to be a bunch of big hairy men who were the power hitters in our game," Showalter said. "Now I've never seen so many guys with power who are also great defenders."

But you know what's funny about this particular golden age? We'd love to tell you that once upon a time, the 30 scouting directors in this sport embarked on a mission to scour the countryside for the great third basemen of tomorrow. But boy, is that ever NOT how this came about.

"I think it just happened," said David Chadd, now a vice president and assistant general manager for the Detroit Tigers, but before that a longtime scouting director in Detroit and Boston. "I certainly don't think it was by design."

So how accidental was it? Think about a few of these unlikely stories:

MACHADO: Oh, he was always bound for greatness -- but as a shortstop. He landed at third base in 2012 only because Wilson Betemit and Robert Andino weren't evoking memories of Brooks Robinson. So the Orioles wondered if maybe Machado might solve their little third-base problem. They sent their infield coordinator at the time, Bobby Dickerson, to their Bowie, Maryland, minor league team to work with him at third for a few weeks, then sent the video to Showalter. He took one look and said, "Yeah, I think this is gonna work."

The rest is history, other than the fact that Machado is currently filling in at short for the injured J.J. Hardy and might well wind up back at short some season after Hardy moves on. But as a third baseman, "the great thing about Manny is his imagination," Showalter said. "He makes plays nobody else makes, just out of instinctual imagination."

ARENADO: He was a catcher/shortstop in high school. Then 58 different players went before him in the 2009 draft, including 11 infielders. But here's the punch line: Arenado has hit more big-league home runs (86) than all 11 of them combined. And that shift to third base? You might say that has worked out OK, too.

The Rockies' scouting director, Billy Schmidt, and the scout who signed him, Jon Lukens, had a gut feel that Arenado could be a special defender, said their GM at the time, Dan O'Dowd. Loved his footwork. Loved his anticipation. And saw early on that Arenado "had a unique way of being able to place his body into movement positions to execute a skill defensively that really no one else could -- or can today," O'Dowd said.

Did they see 40 homers a year coming? Never did, O'Dowd admits. But they saw bat-to-ball skills that would play in Colorado. And above all, they felt as if his passion for the game was so far off the charts that, "we knew that when he went through tough times, his love for the game would see his way through it," O'Dowd said.

DONALDSON: How about this for an unlikely path to being an MVP third baseman? Donaldson caught nearly 400 games in the minor leagues and wound up at third in the big leagues only because the third baseman in Oakland, Scott Sizemore, blew out his knee in 2012. But as Eddie Matz wrote in a 2014 profile for ESPN The Magazine, Donaldson was ready because he'd seen this coming and went to winter ball after the 2011 season to learn the nuances of third base.

So how's it gone since? Since 2013 (his first full big-league season), Donaldson leads all third basemen in wins above replacement, home runs and OPS-plus. So pretty well, I'd say.

As Oakland's director of player personnel Billy Owens put it to Matz in 2014, "putting JD at catcher was like caging a wild boar. It just didn't fit his personality. He was meant to run around on the field, do athletic things on the diamond and play third base like a warrior."

CARPENTER: Ready for another wild ride to third-base glory? Carpenter was a 13th-round draft pick in 2009. He got to the big leagues as a five-position utility man in 2012, then made the All-Star team as a second baseman in 2013. He bounced to third the next year and made another All-Star team. And now he could go back to hip-hopping around the infield this month once Jhonny Peralta comes off the Cardinals' disabled list.

Mozeliak said it wasn't until Carpenter reached Double-A that his offensive aptitude and his ability to control at-bats caught their eye, and they began projecting him as a big leaguer. But "to end up maturing and looking like the player he is today, I don't think anyone saw that -- not to this degree," the GM said.

OTHER UNLIKELY STORIES: Boy, where do we start? Frazier was drafted as a shortstop -- "and I thought he might stick at short," Reds scouting director Chris Buckley said.

Seager lasted until the third round of the 2009 draft, even though Seattle scouting director Tom McNamara said: "He played like a pro, and you could tell he had it in his blood."

Castellanos was still stuck in left field until 2014, when the Tigers shipped Prince Fielder out of town to create an opening for him back at third. Then he scuffled through two tough seasons at the dish (.257/.304/.407) in 2014 and 2015 before he finally started playing up to Chadd's billing as "the best amateur hitter I've ever seen."

Matt Duffy was a 14th-round pick. Shaw was a ninth-round pick, hung out at first base way more than third in the minors and got his shot at third in Boston only because Pablo Sandoval self-destructed. Bryant has played almost as many innings in the outfield and even at first base this year as he has played at third. Rendon has zig-zagged from second base to third, back to second and back to third. Prado made his only All-Star team as a utility man. Etc., etc.

So for every Wright, Longoria and Moustakas who followed a textbook path, for every Beltre and Franco who were signed as toolbox third basemen out of the Dominican, there are a half-dozen tales that sound like something a scriptwriter made up out of his schlock-filled imagination.

But that's life. And that's baseball. You can't make this stuff up.

"That's just how baseball goes," said one longtime scout. "It goes in cycles. One second, you're saying, 'We don't have any guys at this position.' Then you blink -- and you have a historic era on your hands."