The Hardball Times -- Richard Barbieri

The Hardball Times -- Richard Barbieri http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en studes@hardballtimes.com Copyright 2013 2013-06-18T08:13:15+00:00 The all-decade team: the ‘50s http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-50s/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-50s/#When:07:04:15
But does being in many a mind’s eye baseball perfection mean that the 1950s can produce a team better than that of any other decade? We’ll attempt to answer that question momentarily. First, we shall once again review the rules selecting this team: to qualify for any non-pitching position, a player must have played at least 500 games there during his career—though not necessarily during the decade in question. For starting pitchers, to appear on the team requires at least 200 starts in a given decade. Until we hit the more modern usage pattern (and we’re getting close) relief pitchers will be selected at my discretion, with no game or inning requirements.

Catcher: Yogi Berra
In 1950, Yogi Berra finished third in the American League’s MVP voting. It would not be until 1957 that he finished outside of the top four—including winning the award in 1951, ’54 and ’55. Only six other players, including Berra’s runner-up at catcher, Roy Campanella, ever won three MVP awards within a single decade.

Berra led ‘50s catchers in literally every offensive counting stat: runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBIs, and walks. Though his reputation as a defensive catcher is somewhat mixed, Berra still anchored the Yankees by playing a huge number of games behind the dish, six times playing 135 or more games there.

First baseman: Stan Musial
Musial earns an unusual distinction, the first player to appear on two different all-decade teams in different positions. Musial actually played more games at first base in his career than anyone else; he is—I believe—widely regarded as a left fielder but actually appears on neither team at that spot. That is the consequence of playing an outstanding career parallel to that of Ted Williams.

Noted wordsmith and sometimes catcher Yogi Berra (US Presswire)

Among first basemen in the decade—a list that also includes names like Gil Hodges and Ted Kluszewski—Musial was first in hits, doubles, triples, walks, batting average, slugging percentage and OPS. History may not think of Musial as a first baseman, but there is no question that this spot belongs to him for the decade.

Second baseman: Jackie Robinson
More than just about any player, there is nothing to be said about Robinson that hasn’t already been said. There was a time, perhaps, when one could have at least said that Robinson was an underrated player—Hall of Fame induction notwithstanding—but that has passed. In fact, given that Robinson ranks 11th on Baseball-Reference’s Fan ELO Rater, higher than the likes of Hank Aaron and Rickey Henderson, one might even argue Robinson is slightly overrated.

Of course, not being quite to the level of Hank Aaron isn’t much of an insult. Robinson was a fantastic player, and having him at second base is an easy choice for the decade.

Third baseman: Eddie Mathews
Eddie Mathews does not lead 1950s third baseman in hits; that honor belongs to Eddie Yost. In fact, Yost leads all third baseman during the decade in runs, doubles and walks. So why does Mathews rank as the decade’s best third baseman—and do so by nearly 20 WAR? The short answer is power. Mathews hit just shy of 300 home runs over the decade. No other third baseman came within 100 home runs of that total and just two—Al Rosen and Willie Jones—hit more than 150. For his career, Mathews slugged 512 home runs, with only Mike Schmidt hitting more from the hot corner.

Mathews may not have led third basemen in many categories during this decade (though he is high on the list for virtually every offensive statistic) but his elite power gives him the position.

Shortstop: Ernie Banks
Let’s Play Two!

Sorry, I’m required by federal law to start any story about Ernie Banks with that quote. Having gotten that out of the way, we can discuss Banks in earnest. Although not a regular until 1954, and playing fewer than 1,000 games in the decade, Banks is a no-doubt selection at shortstop.

Twice the National League’s Most Valuable Player during the decade, Banks slugged nearly twice as many home runs as his nearest competitor. For the '50s, he posted four seasons—out of just six as a regular, bear in mind—with a WAR better than seven. For good measure, Banks is also the best shortstop seen on any team since Honus Wagner on the 1900s team.

Left field: Ted Williams
You may remember that last month I said that “the chance of a decade topping [the All-40s outfield] is basically none. “ Oops. I don’t know if this month’s outfield is better than one featuring Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Musial, but it is seriously talented.

Though Williams did not miss quite as much time in the 1950s due to military service as he did in the previous decade, it still cost him all but a handful of games in the 1952 and 1953 seasons. Despite missing that time, Williams was still the dominant left fielder of the decade. He won two batting titles—coming within five hits of hitting .400 in 1957—and putting up nearly an 1.100 OPS for the decade.

Center field: Mickey Mantle
There are a lot of decades stacked with talent at a certain position, but the '50s are in a class all themselves when it comes to center field. In addition to Mantle—who had nearly 1,400 hits and scored nearly 1,000 runs in the decade—the decade saw four other Hall of Fame center fielders in their prime: Willie Mays, Duke Snider, Richie Ashburn and Larry Doby. That is an absolutely astonishing collection of talent at one position in a 10-year period, and a fine endorsement of Mantle’s talent that he wins out as the best of that bunch.

Right field: Hank Aaron
This may just be me, but here we go: somehow, I have a hard time imagining Hank Aaron playing in the 1950s, let alone being the best right fielder of the decade. I think the explanation for this is that the image of Aaron after his 715th home run is not only so iconic, but so very 1970s. Aaron is wearing that horrendous ‘70s Braves uniform, and even the fans who come out of the stands to run the bases with him are wearing lapels you could land a small plane on.

Hank Aaron enjoys a laugh (US Presswire)

Nonetheless, Aaron was terrific in the 1950s, winning the 1957 MVP and finishing third in ’56, ’58 and ’59. Overall, he hit .323 and despite playing fewer than 900 games in the decade, he ranked 15th in WAR.

Starting pitchers: Robin Roberts, Warren Spahn, Billy Pierce, Early Wynn, Sal Maglie
In 1950 Robin Roberts, in his third major league season, threw 304 and a third innings. He would not go below 300 until 1956—when he came within less than five innings of hitting that total once more. It is not a surprise that no one threw more innings than the Phillies’ ace. It also not surprising that he won 20 games (or more) in each of those seasons. Roberts was more than a just a horse, though. His ERA+ for the decade was nearly 120, and twice he bettered 140.

Warren Spahn, meanwhile, was no slacker in the innings pitched department, throwing more than 2,800 across the 10 years. Like Roberts, Spahn also actually performed in those innings. Despite being nearly 40 by decade’s end, he was still outstanding, winning 64 games with a 2.91 ERA in the last three years. It was also in 1957 and ’58 that Spahn helped pitch the Milwaukee Braves to the World Series, including a brilliant, though losing, effort in the ’58 World Series when he started Games One, Four and Seven and put up a 2.20 ERA.

Compared to the huge inning totals raked up by the likes of Roberts and Spahn, Billy Pierce might seem unimpressive. He never topped 275 innings in any season in the '50s and his total of less than 2,400 innings through the decade puts him closer to the inning total of Lew Burdette (11th in '50s innings) than the average of his rotation mates. This might seem like an insult but in fact it is a testament to just how well Pierce pitched to earn this spot.

Among those pitchers with at least 1,000 innings pitched, only Hoyt Wilhelm and Whitey Ford posted a better ERA+ than Pierce, and he remains one of just 10 pitchers—along with names like Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez and Bob Gibson—to post a season with ERA+ better than 200 while throwing at least 200 innings.

Early Wynn is almost inevitably described as “glowering,” and from this I had somehow always imagined that he was of the Bob Gibson, brush-‘em-off-the-plate type. In fact, though Wynn threw more than 4,500 career innings—he is still in the top 25 all time—he hit just 64 batters in his career, and never reached double-digits in a single-season. I guess the glower did the work for him. Whatever it was, at his peak Wynn was a tremendous pitcher, twice leading the AL in wins during the '50s and anchoring the staff of the 1954 Indians who won 111 games.

In some ways, the last starter spot was the hardest choice for any on the team. On the other one hand, you could argue it should go to Bob Rush, who pitched more than 2,000 innings in the decade, highlighted by his 1954-55 seasons when he totaled 10.7 WAR. (And went a combined 26-26 thanks to the ineptitude of the Cubs.) One could also make a strong case for either Don Newcombe or Whitey Ford. Both were brilliant when they took the mound throughout the decade, but missed two full seasons due to military service.

In the end, though, the spot goes to Sal Maglie. Though it took until he was 33 to become a regular starter—which means he was essentially finished as an effective pitcher by 1957—“The Barber” put up a 126 ERA+ for the decade and threw a shutout in nearly 10 percent of his starts. Others may have a good case, but the last rotation spot goes to Maglie.

Relief pitcher: Hoyt Wilhelm
I haven’t looked it up, but I’m guessing no player to this point played on as many teams during the decade as Wilhelm, who plied his trade for the Giants, Cardinals, Indians and Orioles. Despite bouncing around, “Old Sarge” was excellent at nearly every stop. He led the league in ERA for both the Giants (1952) and Orioles (1959). Though his 58 saves rank him tied for fourth in the decade, he was more effective than any other pitcher on the saves list outside of Ellis Kinder, who pitched substantially fewer innings in the decade.

Manager: Casey Stengel
Many managers have had a great decade at the helm of a team. In the 1920s, Miller Huggins won six pennants and three titles. In the 1990s, Bobby Cox took the Braves to five pennants and one title. Despite this, no manager ever had a better decade than Casey Stengel. Managing the Yankees, of course, “The Old Professor” won eight of the 10 pennants in the decade. Cementing Stengel’s status as owner of the best managerial decade ever, the Yankees won six of those World Series, losing only in 1955 and 1957.

The Yankees won fewer than 92 games just once during the decade—even during the 1954 season when they did not make the World Series, they still won 103 games. Stengel most assuredly had talent to work with, but his success cannot be disputed.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Richard Barbieri 2013-06-13T07:04:15+00:00 The all-decade team: the ‘40s http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-40s/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-40s/#When:07:08:15 Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, the 1940’s were already an unusual decade in baseball history. Though the game continued through the Second World War, numerous players missed part or all of multiple seasons. Five different teams won the pennant in each league, including the Boston Braves (making their last World Series appearance in that city) and the Chicago Cubs, making their last World Series appearance to date.

The question has to be raised then, with the parity prompted by players missing time and the Yankees going through—by the standards of the surrounding ones—an off decade, would that produce a less talented team?

Before we get to answering that question, let’s do a brief once-over of the rules for picking players: to qualify for any non-pitching position, a player must have played at least 500 games there during his career—though not necessarily during the decade in question. For starting pitchers, to appear on the team requires at least 200 starts in a given decade. Until we hit the more modern usage patterns, relief pitchers will be selected at my discretion, with no game or inning requirements.

Catcher: Walker Cooper
A seven-time All-Star during the decade, Cooper wins the position in a narrow race over Ernie Lombardi. Lombardi was a superior hitter—he won the 1942 batting title and put up an OPS+ nearly 10 points higher—but was a catcher in name only for much of the decade. Meanwhile, Cooper was well-regarded defensively, a fact backed up at least in part by his strong caught stealing numbers—better than league average for his career. Also, Walker’s brother Mort made the team as the fifth starter, and I will admit the idea of a brother battery appeals.

First Base: Johnny Mize
Mize was known as “The Big Cat,” (a nickname later passed on to Andres Galarraga), and put up a .954 OPS for the decade. Only three players put up a higher number during the decade, all of them teammates on the decade squad. Mize’s overalls numbers in the decade, 217 HR, and 744 RBI, may seem relatively low but it must be remembered that he spent three full seasons of baseball in military service. Despite that, Mize still slugged the second most home runs of any player in the 1940s and was in the top 10 for RBI.

Second Base: Joe Gordon
The first “Flash” Gordon, Joe made his debut in 1938, and by the time the 1940s had rolled around, was into his prime. In 1942 he won the American League MVP, and though Ted Williams was probably the best player in the league that year, Gordon was still excellent. He posted a .900 OPS, good for fourth in the league and did so while playing a strong second base.

Great hitters get honors, like a Stan Musial statue(US Presswire)

After returning from wartime service—Gordon missed the 1944 and 1945 seasons—he struggled in 1946 and the Yankees sent him to Cleveland for Allie Reynolds. Gordon rebounded in Cleveland, posting two of the best seasons of his career, and helping the Indians win the World Series, along with a player we’ll hear more about shortly.

Third Base: Bob Elliott
The subject of this 2010 column by your humble correspondent, and recipient of one of my all-time favorite nicknames—Mr. Team—Elliott led third basemen in every major offensive category throughout the decade except home runs. Elliott won the 1947 MVP, a year in which he batted .317 with 35 doubles, both good for second in the league. Overall, no one drove in more runs during the ‘40s than Elliott’s 903.

Shortstop: Lou Boudreau
And here we meet Gordon’s teammate referenced above. Boudreau timed his career nearly perfectly for the purposes of the team, playing his third season—but first full one—in 1940. That season he finished fifth in the MVP voting, the first of eight top 10 MVP finishes he would post during the decade. The best of those seasons came in 1948 when Boudreau batted .355 and posted a WAR of 10.4—still one of the five or 10 greatest shortstop seasons of all-time.

Even more impressive was that Boudreau accomplished all that he did as a player-manager—in fact, he won nearly 1,200 games for his managerial career and remains the last player-manager to win a title.

Left Field: Ted Williams
I’m just going to go ahead and say this now so no one has to act surprised later: the outfield for his team is just insanely talented. I haven’t done all the outfields yet, but the chance of a decade topping this one is basically none.

While this is good for the team, it makes my life difficult. There’s not a lot of insight one can offer on Ted Williams that hasn’t already been said. The man could be an indifferent defender but was an astonishing hitter. Despite missing three full seasons thanks to military service, Williams led Major League Baseball in home runs, runs and walks during the decade.

Center Field: Joe DiMaggio
Like Williams, “The Yankee Clipper,” lost three seasons of the decade to wartime service. And like Williams, though it held his totals down, he still ended up with numbers most players would be thrilled to have. For the decade, despite playing just seven full seasons, DiMaggio won two MVP awards, a batting title, and a home run title.

Of course, DiMaggio put up those numbers playing the cavernous original Yankee Stadium and did it all while patrolling center field in a brilliant manner. There are a lot of great center fielders, but Joe DiMaggio deserves to be on the short list for the greatest of all-time.

Right Field: Stan Musial
I’m aware that no one really thinks of Stan Musial has a right fielder. And it is true he played far more games at first base (1,029) and in left field (929) than he did in right (785). The rules say, though, that a player is eligible at any position in which he played 500 games. As great as Musial is, he would not push Ted Williams out of left field. And though Musial is a superior player to Mize—something that tells us more about Musial than Mize—there’s no reason to knock The Big Cat off the team. So instead The Man slots into the right field.

For this decade, Musial put up an OPS over 1.000, won three batting titles, the 1948 Triple Crown award and three MVP awards. Musial might be slightly out of position in right field, but with offensive production like that, I imagine the team can live with it.

Starting Pitchers: Hal Newhouser, Bob Feller, Dizzy Trout, Mort Cooper, Dutch Leonard
I suppose there must be some fans who know Hal Newhouser only as the Astros’ scout who resigned in protest when the team drafted Phil Nevin over his preferred choice of Derek Jeter. At least he got the last laugh. Nonetheless, Newhouser deserves to be remembered more for his feats on the mound. Four times a 20-game winner, he was brilliant through the decade, winning the MVP award back-to-back in 1944 and ’45, years during which he went a combined 54-18 with a 2.01 ERA while averaging 313 innings.

Or a Ted Williams stamp (US Presswire)

During the decade 2000-09, only four players (Andy Pettitte, Randy Johnson, Jamie Moyer and Roy Halladay) won more than 137 games. That happens to be the exact total Bob Feller posted during the 1940s. And that was despite Feller serving during the 1942 through 1944 seasons and pitching in only nine games during the ’45 campaign.

Of course, the game has changed a fair amount but Feller’s greatness—he led the AL in strikeouts in all but one of his full seasons—is worth remembering.

The number two pitcher behind Newhouse on many of the great Tiger teams of the decade, Trout here slots in to the number three spot in the rotation. For the decade, he won 126 games and his brilliant pitching in the 1945 World Series—just one earned run in nearly 14 innings—helped the Tigers to the title.

Brother of Walker, Mort Cooper threw 31 shutouts during the decade, a number bettered by no pitcher. Cooper’s feat is even more impressive when you consider the rest of the top five in shutouts for the decade (a list that includes Newhouser, Feller and Trout) averaged more than 250 starts, while Cooper had just 210.

Recently played by former Major Leaguer CJ Nitkowski in 42—though the actual Leonard was a righty—“Dutch” spent time with four times over his 20 year career. He spent most of the 40s with the Senators, winning as many 18 games and making the All-Star team three times on the strength of his knuckleball.

Relief Pitcher: Hugh Casey
This is the first decade in which there are multiple good choices as a reliever who were well and truly relievers. In addition to Casey, there was Johnny Murphy, the choice of the last decade who remained effective until his final Major League season in 1947. There’s also Joe Page, who twice finished in the top five in MVP voting and was christened “The Gay Reliever,” thus reminding us that meant something else back then.

Casey spent all of the 1943-45 seasons in military service, but still managed to record 54 saves in the decade, second only to Page. He was particularly brilliant in 1946; returning to the game, Casey threw an eyelash shy of 100 innings with a 1.99 ERA and finished 27 games for the Dodgers.

Manager: Billy Southworth
Possibly because his greatest success came during 1942-44, a period when baseball was viewed (correctly, to some extent) as weakened by players serving in the Second World War—and the country was a little more focused on that anyway—Southworth is largely forgotten in popular baseball history. When it comes to managing in this decade though, no one had more success. During that ’42-44 period, Southworth’s Cards won either 105 or 106 games, and overall he posted a .615 winning percentage for the decade—the equivalent of a nearly 100 wins in a modern schedule. Of course, Southworth wasn’t just winning games, he also took teams to four World Series during the ‘40s, twice ending the year as World Champion.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Richard Barbieri 2013-05-16T07:08:15+00:00 Tales from the scorebook http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/tales-from-the-scorebook/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/tales-from-the-scorebook/#When:07:20:15
On short notice I could only come up with, of course, a smart-ass answer. (“Whatever I do with it, you’re watching me do it right now.”) This did get me thinking that I’ve now had this scorebook for nearly four full years, and brought it along to nearly 50 games. So in the spirit of doing something “with it” besides keeping score, we’ll look through the scorebook and find a few highlights to discuss:

Best Game: Tampa Bay Rays 2, New York Yankees 4

Full disclosure: It’s my scorebook, so any best game is going to be a Yankee victory. I’m afraid that’s just the way things are. Still, this was a pretty great game, even for a neutral. Tampa Bay scored two quick runs in the first but were shut out by a Yankees’ cast-of-thousands bullpen performance which included the likes of Alfredo Aceves, Jonathan Albaladejo and Brian Bruney (but not Mariano Rivera) allowing no runs in six innings of work. Meanwhile, Rays’ starter Jeff Niemann held the Yankees in check for seven innings.

Best Mustache: This guy

In the eighth, Alex Rodriguez led off with a single, ending Niemann’s night. After another single, and a run-scoring error, Robinson Cano struck out bringing up Brett Gardner’s spot in the order. Instead Joe Girardi sent up Jorge Posada to pinch-hit. Posada drove a pitch from Grant Balfour deep into the Bronx night, good for a go-ahead three-run home run. The combination of Bruney and Phil Coke retired the Rays in the ninth for the win.

As if that were not enough excitement, in the seventh inning, Derek Jeter (already 2-for-3 on the day) tied Lou Gehrig’s franchise hit record. Jeter would come up in the eighth with a chance to break the record but would end up drawing a walk.

And, of course, a game is not merely the play on the field. It was a beautiful night and I attended the game with my best friend. While it is true she spent much of the game mocking my scorekeeping—a system which involves black, blue and red pens causing her to dub it the “coloring book”—it was still a very good time.

In that spirit, I decided not to do a “worst game,” because really, any day at the ballpark can never be that bad. But it can be strange…

Strangest Game: Southern Maryland Blueclaws 11, Newark Bears 4

I’ve written before about my experiences watching independent league baseball, but this was an entirely different thing. While the Long Island Ducks, described in that column, could make a good case for being crown jewel of the Atlantic League, the Newark franchise was not as successful. In fact, the winter before I attended this game the franchise had filed for bankruptcy. They are still playing but have moved from the Atlantic to Can-Am League.

In any case, this game started nearly an hour late, owing to a Noah-level rainstorm. The Bears (as their bankruptcy filing indicates) have never drawn well, but the rain storm drove off all but a handful of the crowd. At the time of first pitch, there were probably only 250 people in attendance. The Bears’ stadium is not a large one—capacity is listed at 6,200—but still looked rather sparse.

And this was before the Bears surrender an improbable 11 runs in the sixth inning to the Blueclaws (which is an outstanding team name, by the way) obliterating a four-run lead and ruining the evening for the collection of former Major League talent in the Bears’ employ, including manager Tim Raines and both Jacque Jones
and Carl Everett.

(I had come to the game with the notion of heckling Everett, but there was no way I was doing that with so few people in the stands; especially since Everett is no longer welcome in the Venezuelan Winter League on account of attacking fans in the stands.)

Coco Crisp, hitting his second home on August 24th (US Presswire)

By the time the game ended, there were perhaps two dozen people left in the crowd. Somewhere in my apartment, presumably, is the official Atlantic League baseball that I acquired after it was fouled off and I simply walked over and picked it up.

While I don’t wish the franchise any ill, I’ve not been back to a Newark Bears game since. The whole experience was just so surreal; going back would only serve as a disappointment in one way or another.

Best Performance, Hitter: Coco Crisp, vs. Yankees, August 24, 2011

Ugh. I can’t say I enjoyed this very much, but I have to give Crisp his due. In the first inning, Crisp hit a solo home run to give the A’s the lead. He would later walk and have two singles, the latter driving in the go-ahead run in the eighth inning. In the bottom half of that inning the Yankees tied it up on a Mark Teixeira home run and the game headed to extra innings.

Facing Rafael Soriano with two runners on and two out in the tenth, Crisp his second home run of the game, providing the decisive blow. For the day, he was 4-for-4, with 2 HRs, 5 RBI and a walk. It was just the second two-homer game of Crisp’s career—he’s since had a third—and represented a career-high in RBI as well. Combined with the clutch nature of his performance, this spot belongs to Crisp.

Still, ugh.

Best Performance, Pitcher: Livan Hernandez, vs. Nationals, May 26, 2009

I’m as surprised as you are. Truthfully, though this scorebook has seen a number of very talented pitchers—including the likes of Pedro Martinez, Roy Halladay and CC Sabathia—it is shockingly low on truly great starts. So Hernandez takes the cake. Livan pitched masterfully to record this victory, throwing a complete game (the first in CitiField history) while allowing just one run and striking out eight.

Worst Performance, Pitcher: Oliver Perez, vs. Phillies, August 23, 2009

This is an easy one. Over the course of his start, Perez retired just two hitters, allowing two home runs and six runs overall before being lifted—hilariously—after going to a 3-0 count on Pedro Martinez. Yes, the pitcher.

Luckily for Perez, his poor performance was soon forgotten as it was at this game that Eric Brunlett turned a game-ending unassisted triple play, the first in National League history and the inspiration for another column of mine.

As I said, there are still more than 50 blank pages in my scorebook waiting for games to fill them. I’m sure we’ll have a chance to revisit this topic when that has happened.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Richard Barbieri 2013-05-02T07:20:15+00:00 The all-decade team: the ‘30s http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-30s/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-30s/#When:07:03:15
Before we find out, a quick digression to discuss the Negro Leagues. As several commenters have pointed out, these teams do not feature any Negro League players. Obviously, there is no denying the talent of many in the Negro Leagues—or the injustice of their exclusion from the major leagues. Nonetheless, rating Negro Leaguers is difficult and somewhat subjective at best, even for those with a strong knowledge of Negro League history. (That's a group which, regrettably, does not include me.)

Presented with the rock-and-a-hard-place choice of making badly educated guesses, or no guesses at all, I choose the latter. This should not be taken to mean that the best of the Negro Leagues would not qualify for these teams, but is a reflection on the difficulty of evaluating their quality and—above all else—my ignorance on the subject.

Let’s quickly review the rules used to select the players. To qualify for any non-pitching position, a player must have played at least 500 games there during his career—though not necessarily during the decade in question. For starting pitchers, to appear on the team requires at least 200 starts in a given decade. Until we hit the more modern usage patterns, relief pitchers will be selected at my discretion, with no game or inning requirements.

Catcher: Bill Dickey.
A six-time All-Star during the decade, and 11-times overall, Dickey was the backstop for seven World Series winning teams. During the 1930s he hit .320 with a .902 OPS, and led all catchers in home runs, runs, hits, doubles, triples and RBIs. Though the decade saw some other excellent catchers—not the least Hall of Famers Mickey Cochrane and Gabby Hartnett— there is no question this position belongs to Dickey.

First base: Lou Gehrig.
No, wait, Jimmie Foxx. No, never mind, it’s Gehrig. Really, there is no “right” answer here. For the decade, Gehrig and Foxx each put up a 1.091 OPS. It is true that The Iron Horse did it in a tougher hitting environment (his OPS+ is 181 to Foxx’s 173) but then, Double X played in more games.

Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey and others at the 1937 All-Star Game (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

The difference between the two is razor thin. WAR says that the difference between the two was less than half a win for the course of decade. WAR also ranks the best season of the decade for each as equally valuable. For each point in favor of one player, there is a point in the other’s favor: Foxx hit more home runs, but Gehrig drew more walks and so on. In the end I flipped a coin in my (Yankees fan) head, and it comes up heads. Gehrig gets the spot.

Second base: Charlie Gehringer.
Gehringer—as I’ve probably said before—,has one of my all-time favorite nicknames: The Mechanical Man. It was so coined by Lefty Gomez, based on Gehringer's consistency. The 1930s were the Mechanical Man’s best decade, including his brilliant 1937 season. That year he hit .371 to lead the league and won the MVP award. He might have been even better in 1934 when he led the league in runs and hits and was edged out for the MVP by teammate Cochrane.

Third base: Harlond Clift.
Poor Clift is the only non-Hall of Famer in the infield. I hope the other guys don’t make him feel bad. If we’re being honest, Clift is the best of a relatively uninspired collection. Other prominent third baseman in the decade include Red Rolfe and Stan Hack—certainly above-average players but not Hall of Fame quality.

For his part, Clift posted an .886 OPS during the decade, in large part thanks to his slugging 123 home runs. No other third baseman reached even 90.

Shortstop: Arky Vaughan.
Another good battle for a position here between Hall of Famers, with Vaughan narrowly outdoing Joe Cronin. Vaughan did not debut until 1932 but was a brilliant player almost instantly, posting seasons with a WAR better than six and a half in five of his first seven seasons.

Cronin was nearly as good—and he played every year of the decade. He probably deserves some credit for not only playing a brilliant shortstop but also managing for most of the decade. (He led the Senators to the World Series in 1933 and would finish under .500 just twice in the decade.)

Despite this, ultimately the position must go based on what each man did on the field and since we already have a manager—more on him coming shortly—shortstop belongs to Vaughan.

Left field: Joe Medwick.
And here we are at another close-run thing between two Hall of Famers. In one corner is Joe “Ducky” Medwick, winner of the 1937 MVP. That year Medwick won the Triple Crown while leading the league in doubles for the second of three consecutive years. Despite not playing 100 games in a season until 1933, Medwick was third in the decade in doubles. Plus, he’s got that awesome nickname—shortened from “Ducky Wucky”—based on his style of walking.

In the other corner is Al Simmons. The 1930 and ’31 batting champion (he hit a combined .385 those years), Simmons led the decade’s left fielders in runs, hits, home runs, doubles and RBIs. While he can’t compete with Medwick in the nickname department, it is also true that his given name was “Aloysius,” which has to count for something.

While Simmons and Medwick are close in overall value, in the end of the position has to go to Medwick, who accumulated the same value in almost 225 fewer games.

Center field: Earl Averill.
Known as “The Earl of Snohomish,” one of the great nicknames in baseball history, Averill spent most of his career in Cleveland. The topic of this 2011 column I wrote, Averill was a six-time All-Star and nearly won the 1936 batting title, falling short despite a .378 average. Averill made his debut at age 27, though he was probably ready before that; he hit nearly .350 at age 24 for the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League.

Because he started late, Averill’s career numbers are understandably low. Despite being a .318 career hitter, he had just over 2,000 hits, but he nonetheless earned Hall of Fame election through the Veterans Committee in 1975.

Right field: Mel Ott.
As with Averill, I wrote a whole column on Ott, a truly great player whose greatness has faded somewhat into obscurity. At one point, Ott was the Bryce Harper or Mike Trout of his time. In fact, until Harper’s season last year, Ott could lay claim to the greatest age-19 season in baseball history. Trout’s brilliant season last year also knocked Ott off the top of the list for greatest players through age 20.

Joe McCarthy with Giants' skipper Bill Terry (Library of Congress)

Of course, Ott was a great player past age 20, leading the league in home runs five times. In the 1930s, no National League player had more homers, runs, RBIs or walks than “Master Melvin,” which gives him this spot with little question.

Starting pitchers: Lefty Grove, Carl Hubbell, Mel Harder, Lefty Gomez, Dizzy Dean

There are a lot of choices for the greatest pitcher of all time. Walter Johnson certainly has a case, as do modern pitchers like Tom Seaver and Greg Maddux. Whoever’s on your short list for that title, however, Lefty Grove has to be one of them. Grove led the league in ERA an incredible nine times, including six times during the 1930s. Over his career, he won exactly 300 games, against just 141 losses. No pitcher with at least 400 decisions has a better winning percentage. Perhaps most incredibly, Grove led the league in strikeouts in each of his first seven seasons in the league. When he retired after the 1941 season, only Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson had more strikeouts, and both did it with more than 4,500 innings, while Grove pitched fewer than 4,000 in his career.

Known as the “Meal Ticket,” Hubbell was the ace of the great Giants teams that went to three World Series in the ‘30s. During the decade, Hubbell led the National League in wins, strikeouts and ERA—essentially a pitcher’s Triple Crown for an entire decade.

Mel Harder is something of an obscure name on this list. The career-long Cleveland Indian was nonetheless an often excellent pitcher during the decade, winning 158 games and shining for some often-mediocre Tribe teams. A four-time All Star, Harder’s had his prime from 1933 to 1935 when he won 57 games with a 2.96 ERA.

If Harder has fallen into obscurity, Lefty Gomez is perhaps the best remembered winner of 189 games in baseball history. Of course, Gomez worked hard at being remembered. He is, at least according to widely accepted legend, the man who said that Jimmie Foxx has “muscles in his hair.” More than anything else, Gomez is remembered for his wit at his own expense: “One rule I had was make your best pitch and back up third base. That relay might get away and you've got another shot at him,” and so on. Of course, despite the self-deprecation, Gomez was pretty good, twice the American League’s ERA winner and owner of a 2.86 ERA and 6-0 record in the World Series.

And speaking of people better known for their talking than the pitching, here’s Dizzy Dean. At his prime, Dean was an overwhelmingly dominant pitcher. From 1932 through 1936 Dean struck out 970 batters, while other pitcher topped 800. For good measure, he also led the league in both wins and saves during that period. Dean was injured in the 1937 All-Star Game and out of the major leagues by the 1942 season. It was then that Dean began his broadcasting career, in which he would be (in)famous for his exaggerated struggles with the English language.

Relief pitcher: Johnny Murphy.
Firpo Marberry may have been the first man regularly used a reliever, but the role did not truly stick. After Marberry’s 22-save season in 1926, there was not another season of greater than 20 saves until 1949. That does not mean the idea was totally forgotten. During this decade, “Grandma” Johnny Murphy—supposedly so nicknamed from his “incessant complaining about meals and accommodations”—recorded more than 50 saves, a total greater than the 39 games he started during the decade.

Murphy’s performance out of the bullpen earned him three trips to the All-Star game in the decade, and he posted a 1.10 ERA with four saves in eight postseason appearances.

Despite his feats on the mound, his greatest fame came later. In 1967 he took over as the general manager of the Mets and served in that role through their title as the “Miracle Mets” in 1969. He died of a heart attack early the next year.

Manager: Joe McCarthy.
In his career, McCarthy never managed a season with a team under .500, winning nine pennants, and seven World Series titles. One could argue that McCarthy had the most successful decade of any manager in baseball history during the 1930s. After one season during which he posted a .573 winning percentage with the Cubs, McCarthy took over in New York. For the next nine seasons, the Yankees averaged more than 98 wins. They never finished worse than second and won all five of the World Series in which they appeared, including four in a row from 1936 to 1939.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Richard Barbieri 2013-04-18T07:03:15+00:00 The all-decade team: the ‘20s http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-20s/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-20s/#When:07:04:15
As a quick reminder, to qualify for any non-pitching position, a player must have played at least 500 games there during his career—though not necessarily during the decade in question. For starting pitchers, we require at least 200 starts in a given decade. Until we hit the more modern usage patterns, relief pitchers will be selected at my discretion, with no game or inning requirements.

Those requirements aside, all that matters is greatness. So let’s proceed:

Catcher: Wally Schang

Overhis career, Schang won four World Series (1913, 1918, 1923 and 1930) with three different teams (Athletics, Red Sox and Yankees). He was also part of three other pennant winning teams. On the other hand, Schang was part of the 1916 Phillies (losers of 117 games) and St. Louis Browns teams that lost more than 90 games in back-to-back seasons.

For his part, Schang was a pretty good player, able to contribute to World Series winners, but not so good as to make up for the failings of his less talented teammates on losing squads. Schang was six times a .300 or better hitter, and at the time of his retirement, he was one of just five catchers with over 100 stolen bases. He remains eighth all-time in catcher steals.

Three members of the all-'20s team, honored in Yankee Stadium (Richard Barbieri)

First base: Lou Gehrig

There’s not much to say about Gehrig that hasn’t already, so instead I’ll talk a bit about Joe Judge who was the second best first baseman of the 1920s. Just for the record, the distance between Gehrig and Judge is predictably large, nearly a win per year.

Like Gehrig, Judge was born in New York City and grew up on the Upper East Side. Also like Gehrig, Judge established himself as a regular at age 22, playing 103 games in 1916 for the Senators. His numbers somewhat held down by the hitting environment of Washington’s Griffith Stadium—in 1917 Judge’s 140 OPS+ translated to just a .783 OPS—Judge was still never a truly great player. Nonetheless, he was consistent, dropping below a 2.5 WAR just three times from 1917 through 1930, while never topping 3.9 WAR in those years.

Judge’s finest moments came in the 1924 World Series, when he batted .385 with a .907 OPS, helping the Senators win their only World Series in Washington.

Second base: Rogers Hornsby

Hornsby's domination over the other second basemen of the '20s is notable. While Gehrig is almost a win per season higher over Joe Judge, Hornsby’s competition includes Hall of Famers like Frankie Frisch, Eddie Collins and Tony Lazzeri. When it comes to this decade, Hornsby simply laps the field. By WAR, he was almost four wins per year better than any other second baseman in the decade. Even cutting that number in half gives Hornsby a ridiculous advantage over some truly excellent players for a decade.

Third base: Pie Traynor

This is a close thing. Willie Kamm, who spent the decade playing for the White Sox, was almost as great a player as Traynor by some measures, and did it despite not debuting until 1923. Nonetheless, those measures give Kamm a large amount of defense credit, which I am not fully confident about given the nature of the statistics.

“Pie” is not a given name, of course. Traynor earned the nickname as a child—it was originally “Pie Face”—because of his constant requests for pie from a local shopkeeper. A lifelong Pirate who settled in the city and stayed long after his career ended, Traynor led third basemen in the '20s in runs, hits, RBI, triples and batting average.

Shortstop: Joe Sewell

Like Rick Cerone and an unfortunate handful of others, Joe Sewell earned his starting job replacing a player—in this case, Ray Chapman—who died in the midst of his career. There’s not really a nice way to put this, but it must be conceded that the Indians were lucky to have Sewell waiting. Just 21 when he made his debut, he was a major league caliber player and would end up with a Hall of Fame career.

Joe Sewell, by the way, is the best of the Sewell Clan, which had three others in the major leagues: brothers Luke and Tommy and cousin Rip. Rip Sewell, a two-time 20-game winner for the Pirates and three-time All-Star, was the second best, followed by Luke Sewell (an All-Star in 1937 but otherwise a relatively mediocre player) with Tommy Sewell—owner of just one major league at-batr—bringing up the rear.

Left field: Babe Ruth

You’ve probably heard of this fellow. Ruth actually qualifies as both the left and right fielder for this team, but he slots into left because the second place man in right—about whom more momentarily, of course—is superior to the second place man in right. Also because we can’t have Ruth trying to man both outfield corners; even for the younger, thinner Ruth that’s probably a bridge too far.

Tris Speaker's 1911 baseball card (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

1920 was Ruth’s first full-season as a position player, and he predictably dominates the offensive leader boards for the decade. He hit 217 more home runs than second place Rogers Hornsby, which is the same as the gap from Horsnby to Bernie Freiberg, who hit the 38th most home runs in the decade. Ruth is also the decade leader in RBI, runs, walks and—by nearly 150 points—OPS.

Center field: Tris Speaker

Known as “The Grey Eagle,” apparently for his hair color, Speaker was a dazzling center fielder and outstanding offensive player. Eight times the league leader in doubles (he is still first on that list with 792—no active player is within 200 of that number) Speaker was a lifetime .345 hitter, good for sixth all-time. Perhaps the greatest testament to Speaker’s abilities is that while he was finished as a full-time player after the 1927 season, and did not play in the major leagues at all in 1929, his performance earlier in the decade was still good enough to earn him the spot on the team.

Right field: Harry Heilmann

Heilmann, as I mentioned above, slots into right field while Ruth mans left. Despite being nicknamed “Slug,” owing to his slow foot speed, Heilmann was a terrific player. A four-time batting champion, he hit a collective .364 in the decade, while recording nearly 650 extra base hits. Over his career, he logged 542 doubles, at the time of his retirement the third-most all-time behind only Tigers teammate Ty Cobb and all-'20s teammate Speaker. His doubles total remains in the top 30 all-time, while his career .342 average is good for 12th.

Starting pitchers: Dazzy Vance, Pete Alexander, Red Faber, Eddie Rommel, Urban Shocker

Prior to the 1922 season, Dazzy Vance had not appeared in the major leagues since 1918, having put an ERA of nearly five across parts of several seasons. He spent the 1920 and 1921 seasons pitching for the likes of the Memphis Chickasaws and New Orleans Pelicans. In 1922, he returned to the majors for Brooklyn, a team in need of pitching after giving most of its starts the season before to players with a worse than average ERA. It was a revelation. It would not be until 1928 that a player other than Vance led the league in strikeouts, and from 1922 through 1930 he averaged 18 wins and led the league in ERA three times. In 1955, he was voted into the Hall of Fame, an unlikely ending for a man who had seemed—less than 35 years earlier—doomed to a career in the minors.

I covered Alexander—brilliant on the mound, furiously and emphatically alcoholic off it—last month, so we’ll move on to Urban “Red” Faber. The career-long member of the White Sox was a terrific pitcher, twice the American League ERA leader during the decade and winner of nearly 150 games.

In 1921, Eddie Rommel—sometimes credited as the “father” of the modern knuckleball—led the league in losses with 23. The next season, he won 27 games to lead the league. In 1923, he lost 19 games to once again lead the league in losses. That’s a pretty remarkable three-year stretch. Even with his rough loss seasons, Rommel was a strong pitcher through the decade, finishing with 154 wins and an ERA+ of 123.

Urban Shocker is not, as I claimed in an earlier column this year, the all-time home run leader whose names starts with "U." He was still a terrific pitcher, though. From 1920 through 1923 the St. Louis Browns won 324 games. Urban Shocker accounted for more than a quarter of those wins, work for which he was twice rewarded with MVP support. Overall in the decade, he won more than 155 games, doing so while walking just two men per nine innings.

Relief Pitcher: Firpo Marberry

Marberry is the first time we have had a player in this spot who was, in any meaningful sense of a term, a relief pitcher. By 1926, Marberry owned both the single-season and career saves record. He would hold the dual title until 1945 and the single-season reason until 1949. At the time his retirement in 1936, his 101 saves were 44 ahead of second place Jack Quinn, and Marberry was the only player to appear in 500 games while starting fewer than 200.

Of course, Marberry would not have had a chance to earn all those appearances were he not effective in relief. In Washington’s World Series winning 1924, he recorded 15 saves while throwing nearly 200 innings (he also started 14 games) with a 132 ERA+ and allowed just one earned run in eight innings during the World Series while recording two saves.

Manager: Miller Huggins

Standing at either 5-foot-5 or 5-foot-6 and known as “Mighty Mite,” Huggins represents the first all-decade manager who never played for the team he managed. Over the decade with the Yankees, Huggins won the 1923, 1927 and 1928 World Series, as well as the 1921, 1922 and 1926 American League pennants. Six times the Yankees won 90 or more games.

Including an earlier stint managing the St. Louis Cardinals, Huggins won just over 1,400 games. His total still puts him in the top-25 all-time, but it is likely he would be far higher had he not died at age 50 while still Yankee manager. He was honored by the team by having the first monument installed in Yankee Stadium.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Richard Barbieri 2013-03-28T07:04:15+00:00 Five questions: New York Mets http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/five-questions-new-york-mets-2013/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/five-questions-new-york-mets-2013/#When:07:14:15
Will 2013 be the season when the Mets turn it around? We shall see, but given that I usually dabble in the realm of history, this column will present not just questions, but also my Official Prediction to make it easy for history to judge me and for all of you to see what the season will hold. Let’s begin:

What is there to look forward to?

We’ll cover this more in a bit, but I don’t think I’m spoiling much to say that when it comes to the actual on-field performance of the 2013 Mets, there is not much for fans to look forward to. Though teams do surprise—as any follower of the Baltimore Orioles can tell you—the Mets are unlikely to contend this year.

For the fans, therefore, what there is to look forward to in 2013 is primarily centered on the performance of individual players, both at the major league and, more importantly, minor league level.

In Flushing, the most interesting player to follow will be Ike Davis. After a truly brutal start (Davis was hitting barely over .200 at the All-Star break, in no small part because he recorded just eight hits in his first 18 games), the first baseman turned it on in the second half, slugging 21 home runs and putting up an OPS over .900.

This season will be a true test for Davis, who is entering his age-26 season and has to prove the injuries of 2011 and early struggles of 2012 were exceptions rather than the rule when it comes to his performance.

The face of the Mets' franchise (US Presswire)

In large part owing to some of their moves the last couple of seasons, the Mets farm system is well-regarded within baseball.

It is highlighted by three prospects acquired in trades: right-handed starter Zack Wheeler (picked up in the Carlos Beltran trade with San Francisco in July of 2011), catcher Travis d’Arnaud and right-hander Noah Syndergaard (both acquired in the R.A. Dickey trade with Toronto).

Wheeler and d’Arnaud—who both played in Triple-A last season—are ahead of Syndergaard, who has not pitched above High-A. Nonetheless, Baseball America ranked all three as “A-” prospects heading into this season.

For the moment, the Mets’ announced plans are to start Wheeler and d’Arnaud in Las Vegas, home of the team’s Triple-A affiliate, though strong performances could earn both a trip to Queens by midsummer.

For those who like their baseball heavy on the symbolism, there is a chance Wheeler and d’Arnaud could be debuting at Citi Field around the same time the All-Star game is taking place, perhaps portending a bright future for the pair.

Thus we come to my Official Prediction that while those players breaking camp with the Mets this season are unlikely to be the source of much excitement, for fans willing to track those players toiling in Las Vegas, Binghamton and elsewhere, there is much to look forward to.

David’s contract: the Wright move?

(We also would have accepted David’s Contract: Wright-Sized? or David’s Contract: The Wright Stuff?)

After much Sturm und Drang this offseason, Wright signed an eight-year, $138 million contract that takes him through the 2020 season (though the contract contains an amount of deferred money that will keep Wright on the Mets’ books through 2025). The third baseman will be 37 at the end of the deal, and it seems likely it will keep Wright in Flushing for the entirety of his career. The contract includes a full no-trade clause, though he will acquire 10-5 rights soon, anyway, and allows Wright to firmly establish himself atop the Mets' career leaderboards.

Nonetheless, that is quite a lot of money for a player who will be playing in his age-30 season during the contract’s first year. It is true that Wright had a strong season last year, batting over .300 for the first season since 2009 and—aided by the new dimensions of CitiField—hit half-again as many home runs as he had in 2011.

If 2012 is representative of the type of season Wright puts up over the life of the deal, then the Mets will be pleased with the results. On the other hand, he is still just a year removed from his 2011 season when, battling injuries, he missed 60 games and was unable to produce when on the field, producing the lowest OPS of his career.

Signing any player in his 30s—even one whose peak is equal to that of Wright’s 2007-08 prime—to a long contract is a risky move. Despite this, my Official Prediction is that, while Wright may not be “worth” his contract in the pure value for dollars sense, Mets fan will not mind.

To lose their franchise player would have been the ultimate sign that the Wilpons were unable to run the team as anything more than a shell of itself. Whatever production Wright gives them over the life of the deal, the Flushing Faithful will be happy to have a position player who will be as inexorably linked to the history of the franchise as Tom Seaver is on the mound.

How low can they go, part I: attendance

As recently as 2008, the Mets were drawing more than 49,000 fans per game and were within 3200 per of the Yankees. That was always going to change when the Mets moved into smaller Citi Field, but the drop in attendance nonetheless has been shocking.

Last year the team drew just 27,689 fand per game, the second-lowest attendance of any New York baseball team in the millennium. (They were beaten, so to speak, by the 2003 Mets, the worst and least interesting Met team in recent memory.) Last season, the Mets were significantly closer in attendance to the New York Red Bulls than they were to the New York Yankees.

Travis d’Arnaud asks Fred Wilpon when payroll will be going up (US Presswire)

Of course, this is to be expected. Since 2009, the Mets have lost an average of 87 games and seen the likes of Francisco Rodriguez, Jose Reyes, and Beltran leave the team, with Dickey heading out of town this offseason.

It is an open question as to just how poor Mets attendance will be in 2013. The Mets have not drawn fewer than 25,000 fans per game since 1997, so a drop below that level is profoundly unlikely.

Even so, a drop of just less than 950 fans per game would be enough to make this the least-watched Mets’ team in 15 years.

(And this is aside from the issue of how many of those fans are actually showing up at Citi Field. The likely answer is “not many,” given that last year the Wall Street Journal sent a reporter with a decibel meter to a late-season Mets game and determined it was generally in the same volume range as “washing machine” or “electric toothbrush.”)

Even though the team has attempted to woo additional season ticket holders with the promise of All-Star game tickets—an attempt accompanied by a ham-handed rise in ticket prices—my Official Prediction is that the 2013 Mets will go down as the least-watched New York baseball team of the millennium, averaging approximately 26,650 fans per game.

How low can they go, part II: record

There’s no nice way to put this, so I might as well just say it: there’s a real chance the Mets are bad, really bad. Not 1962 Mets bad, but perhaps 1993 Mets bad.

As of right now, the team’s projected outfield, left to right, is Lucas Duda, Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Mike Baxter. Last year, in nearly 1000 plate appearances, the three totaled—totaled!—a negative WAR. Duda is actually a decent hitter, but his defense is miserable, while Nieuwenheis and Baxter are severely stretched in full-time roles.

Meanwhile, having traded away Dickey, the Mets now have just one pitcher on their roster who threw more than 120 major league innings last season, and the ZiPS projection for their pitching staff was characterized (in perhaps a bit of an undersell) as “discouraging.”

It is true that there is more hope than an ordinary projection would suggest, largely on the back of Johan Santana, who was excellent in his first 11 starts (3-2, 2.38 ERA, with a strikeout per inning) before going to pieces (3-7, 8.27 ERA) and being shut down thereafter.

As noted above, the team’s greatest hope (and strength, candidly) lies in the minor leagues. Of course, minor league players—even ones with the pedigree of d’Arnaud or Wheeler—sometimes require an adjustment to the major league level. So while their arrival may herald better things in the future, it is an open question if it will meaningfully improve things at Citi Field.

A rebound season from this man would do a lot to help the Mets in 2013 (US Presswire)

Last season, the Mets went 74-88, good for fourth place in the National League East.

Since that time, they have lost two of their five hitters with a WAR over 1.0 (Scott Hairston and Andres Torres), the reigning Cy Young winner and added no major league players of any consequence.

As such, my Official Prediction is that the team will match, but not worsen, the record of the aforementioned 2003 Mets and finish at 66-95.

For Met fans put off by that prediction, they can at least take comfort in knowing that just three seasons after that pathetic year, the team went 97-65 and all the way to Game Seven of the NLCS. Which leads us to our next question.

Is there any hope?

I know this seems, on its face, very similar to the question about what there is to look forward to. I am thinking not so much of 2013, or 2014 or farther along, but rather in a general sense. Ever since Adam Wainwright froze Beltran with his curveball to end the just-mentioned 2006 NLCS, it seems the Mets franchise has been cursed.

The curse sometimes has seemed tragic—twice missing out on the playoffs with defeats on the season’s last day—and sometimes comic, such as Luis Castillo’s infamous drop of a routine pop-up to lose a Subway Series game. Perhaps worst of all for the franchise and its fans, the team’s ownership found itself caught up in the Bernie Madoff scandal, forcing a slashed payroll.

In fact, the shadow of Madoff looms large over the Mets. The indefatigable Howard Megdal has been following the story of the Wilpon’s financial issues since it broke and recently published a piece noting that despite Fred Wilpon’s claim to the contrary, debts of both a personal and business nature continue to plague the team. By 2015, the Wilpons will need to either pay back or otherwise account for nearly a billion dollars in debts.

With that kind of financial burden, it seems to be a reasonable question if the Mets will be able to create a winning team without the kind of extreme cleverness that the Tampa Bay Rays and other low-payroll teams have used. For a franchise which as recently as 2009 had the second-highest payroll in baseball, that is a sad state of affairs.

The 2003 campaign marked the first full season that the Wilpon family were sole owners of the Mets, having bought out Nelson Doubleday during the previous year. Since then, the Mets have played ten seasons. Only one of them ended with a playoff appearance, while more than half have seen a losing record, including three seasons of 91 or more losses.

All things being equal, it is clear Wilpon is willing to spend, but all things are not equal right now, and, of course, mere spending does not equal success. (After all, the 2009 Mets with the National League’s highest payroll were one of those 90-loss seasons.)

With that in mind, and knowing what we do about the Wilpons’ financial situation and their apparent willingness to attempt to mislead the Mets’ fans about it, my Official Prediction is that, while the team may improve and may even reach October in the future, until the Wilpon family is no longer in control of the team, the Mets have little chance of establishing themselves as the dominant force that their status as a team in the nation’s biggest media market demands.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Richard Barbieri 2013-03-18T07:14:15+00:00 Pack a year habit: 2013 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pack-a-year-habit-2013/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pack-a-year-habit-2013/#When:06:10:15
Dillon Gee: The back of Gee’s card notes that the Mets’ righty was “unhappy with the way his body reacted” to his first full Major League season and therefore took up Pilates in order to build core strength. This is an odd detail to put on the card because, in 2011, Gee threw more than 160 innings, but in 2012 failed to top 110 due to injury. In fairness, the injury was a blood clot in his pitching shoulder, so presumably unrelated to core strength.

Nonetheless, for a pitcher who spent significant time on the disabled list, it is an odd fact to include. As such, I’m inclined to believe they choose it as an excuse to run this quote from Gee, regarding the Pilates: “strapped into this weird machine… it should be easy, [but] it’s hard.” Even in context that’s pretty bizarre, but if you just read it without knowing more, it sounds like a line that got edited out of 50 Shades of Grey.

Dillon Gee, core strength and all (US Presswire)

Daisuke Matsuzaka: Being that I like doing these columns early in the year, the cards I buy are what Topps dubs “Series 1.” Series 1 is Topps’ way of gentling breaking the news to weirdos like me that, because we demand our baseball cards rightthisveryinstant , certain players will be listed with their former teams. In this case, we have Dice-K listed a member of the Red Sox.

With Matsuzaka now reunited with Terry Francona in Cleveland and competing for the fifth starter’s job, the hype that accompanied his arrival in the United States seems very distant. In 2006 he had won Most Valuable Player of the inaugural World Baseball Classic, winning three games and furthering the reputation he had developed after multiple strikeout and ERA titles for the Seibu Lions—as well the Sawamura Award, the Japanese Cy Young Award.

In total, the Red Sox paid more than $100 million for Matsuzaka’s service, counting both the posting fee and a contract that was signed during a flight to Boston that was tracked (via online systems) by trans-Pacific media. Despite his much heralded reputation, the hurler was ultimately disappointing in Boston. On the back of this Topps card, the only statistic listed for which Matsuzaka ever led the league was walks (94, in 2008). Even his comment—which, like all Topps comments, is loathe to say anything bad about the player—can only note that he will be hoping to regain the form that allowed him to rank second in wins for the 2007-08 period.

Jake Arrieta: And speaking of the comments on the back of the card, Topps sometimes subscribes to the “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” theory, such as on Bartolo Colon’s card, which discussed only his relative distance to Cy Young’s win record. (More on that momentarily.) In other cases, Topps follows my preferred technique, to wit, changing the subject.

That’s the tactic taken with Jake Arrieta, who, although just entering his age-27 season, has seen his ERA increase from a respectable rookie number of 4.66 in 2010 to a brutal 6.20 last year. With a career ERA figure of 5.33 and a lifetime record of 19-23, Topps wisely chose instead to discuss Arrieta’s love of mountain biking and note that he “often cycled nine miles from his residence to the ballpark in Spring Training.” I suppose that beats talking about his 7.55 ERA from May 8th forward in 2012.

Dice-K, presented in his actual 2013 uniform (US Presswire)

Jason Heyward: Topps finds room on Heyward’s card to list the statistics from the 12 minor league games he played in 2007, but it sadly lacks any Arrieta-style trivia. (Though I did learn that the Braves’ Gulf Coast League affiliate is named the “GCL Braves,” which I would mock for being uncreative except all the teams in the Gulf Coast League are so named, which suggests a genuine lack of imagination down there.)

One thing Hayward’s card does have is a line noting that, with 59 home runs, he is 703 away from Barry Bonds’ record. All of the cards have this in some form or another. Occasionally, as in Hayward’s case, it is interesting for the well, maybe… sense of the thing. The chance that Heyward (not really a home run hitter anyway) comes within 250 home runs of Bonds is essentially nil, but I suppose it is at least possible, were the nature of the game to radically change.

On the other hand, it seems rather cruel to point out that Bartolo Colon, now 40 and not exactly prompting a lot of “best shape of his life!” stories in Spring Training, is at 171 wins—and 340 wins from reaching Cy Young’s mark. I suppose this was easier than actually writing a personalized comment for each player, but it seems like a better plan would have been to note that Colon, at 171 wins, was just 29 away from 200 overall or 15 away from entering the top 150 in pitching victories.

Devin Mesoraco: Part of the issue with Topps’ perpetual sunshine approach to comments is that for players like Mesoraco—who has CHASING THE DREAM printed on the front—I can’t tell if they are legitimate prospects, or merely future organizational filler getting their moment of baseball card glory. As it turns out, Mesoraco is the Reds’ catcher of the future (assuming all goes to plan) ranking as the number 14 prospect by Baseball America last season. Mesoraco struggled somewhat in 2012 with the Reds—batting just.212—but is still just 25 and has a real chance at a bright future.

Now, you’d never know this from the card, which is instead centered primarily on a joke based around how Mesoraco is from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. In fact, I believe the card is more referencing the Groundhog Day movie, but since it lacks any kind of italics, the whole thing is a bit of mystery.

Of course, with all my complaining, I’ll be back in 2014 buying my pack-a-year, per usual.

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I don’t quite attend a ballgame every day, but I do attend quite a few. When you attend this many games, you inevitably start to notice certain things about the game experience. Being that I primarily attend Yankee games, one of the things I have noticed is that the staff at Yankee Stadium is very fond of putting up facts on the scoreboard which are—how can I put this?—somewhat unusual.

In honor of Spring Training, which means the season is just around the corner, we’ll review some of my favorite scoreboard facts, and try to provide a little context to some of them.

Ok, so this one is cheating, technically, because it comes not from Yankee Stadium, but rather from Boston’s Fenway Park. I do like it though. Wikipedia reports that the name is “Italian for "jump over" (salta) "the thicket" (la macchia, a kind of tall shrub)” which I suppose I believe if only because it seems too crazy to be made up.

To spare you the misery of counting, the name is 14 letters long. That allowed “Salty” to take over the position from players like Todd Hollandsworth, Steve Wojciechowski and (a personal favorite) Tim Spooneybarger. Another 13-letter player of note in this story is William Van Landingham. In addition to the 13 letters in his last name, the first name counts at seven, which ties him with Salty (whose first name is six letters, of course) for the longest name in baseball history at 20 letters.

(And yes, before you all comment, I’m aware that full names like Cornelius McGillicuddy clock in at more than 20 letters, but for the purposes of this exercise we’re using a nom de baseball.)

Of course he is. If anyone knows who the other two players are, please let me know. I’m usually pretty good at tracking down baseball trivia, but this one is entirely stumping me.

A couple of thoughts on this: first, although it may seem entirely random, if you look closely, you can see that the Yankees were on this day facing Cleveland’s Ubaldo Jimenez (against whom Ibanez is 1-for-12 with no home runs) so there is at least a certain logic to putting the graphic.

Second, I feel very badly for whichever Yankee or Elias Sports Bureau intern was tasked with reviewing the Raul Ibanez home run log to determine just how many pitchers whose last name ended with “z” he had homered against.

Finally, I was wondering if Ibanez is the all-time leader in home runs hit by a player whose last name ends in “z,” off of a pitcher who last name ends in “z.” Fourteen is, after all, an impressive number of pitchers. But it is not the best all-time. Instead, that title falls—I believe, though I will admit I haven’t checked every possible permutation—to Ibanez’ ex-teammate Alex Rodriguez, who has homered against 18 pitchers whose name ends in “z.” For A-Rod, that ranges from Wilson Alvarez (#1) to Livan Hernandez (#7), Livan’s half-brother Orlando Hernandez (#8), Clay Buchholz (#14) to the Henderson Alvarez (#18).

World War Z, indeed.

First off, I love that this graphic includes the bit about Yogi Berra’s “birth name.” Heaven forbid Yankee fans feel one of their idols is being slighted on a ridiculous on-screen graphic. Of course, this would be the time for me to admit that, when I saw the list, my first thought was “Yogi Berra must have more than 72 home runs.” Oh, well.

Anyway, you know where this heading, so here we go, the home run leaders for each letter—at least insofar as first names go:

Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Carlos Delgado, Dave Winfield, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, George “Babe” Ruth, Hank Aaron, Ivan Rodriguez, Jim Thome, Ken Griffey, Jr., Lou Gehrig, Mark McGwire, Norm Cash, Orlando Cepeda, Paul Konerko, Quilvio Veras, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, Ted Williams, Urban Shocker, Vladimir Guerrero, Willie Mays, Xavier Nady, Yadier Molina (as noted in the photo), Zack Wheat

Urban Shocker was a pitcher, but as far as I can tell, he is the only “U” player with a home run—and he only has one. If Yadier Molina can hit over 100 home runs (he ended 2012 with 77) he would leave “U” and “Q” as the only letters without a 100 home run player. If I had to guess, I would say “Q” will get there first, but unless Quintin Berry develops some really unexpected power, it will be a long time before we see either of those letters climb the list.

Naturally. Alcides went just 1-for-5 in this game, with his only hit coming in the eighth inning of a game Kansas City had long since made a blow-out. I cannot help but wonder if he was, nonetheless, motivated to perform—not only by this ridiculous graphic, but also by the guy sitting behind me who bellowed “stick to ping-pong!” after his outs.

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We will be following the same rules laid out for previous weeks: to qualify for any non-pitching position, a player must have played at least 500 games there during his career—though not necessarily during the decade in question. For starting pitchers, to appear on the team requires at least 200 starts in a given decade. Until we hit the more modern usage patterns, relief pitchers will be selected at my discretion, with no game or inning requirements.

Besides those rules, we are only seeking quality. So let’s see which players rose to the challenge:

Catcher: Chief Meyers
Meyers was called “Chief,” because he was Native American. Of course. I miss the old school quality nicknames as much as the next person—more, probably—but I suppose we are obliged to remember every now and then that sometimes they could be just as unoriginal as modern nicknames, with the added benefit of light racism.

On the field, Meyers was one of the first great hitting catchers in baseball history. He was the only catcher to post an OPS+ higher than 140 for the first two decades of the century—excluding Art Wilson, who accomplished the feat in the far less competitive Federal League. Though he did not debut in the Major Leagues until he was 28, Meyers played nine full seasons and twice finished in the top five in MVP voting, including third during his excellent 1912 season.

First Base: Stuffy McInnis
On the other hand, if we’re talking about excellent nicknames, there’s “Stuffy” McInnis, born as John. The nickname came, so the story goes, from his play as a young man when fans would shout “That’s the stuff!” I had always imagined that to be a modern expression, but apparently not.

Through his career, there were many reasons for McInnis’ fans to shout his praises. He never hit less than .272 in any season throughout the decade, and batted over .314 five times. For good measure, McInnis also played on four pennant winning teams during the decade, winning the 1911, 1913 and 1918 World Series—though he did struggle in the postseason, hitting just .176/.232/.216 in the Fall Classic.

Home Run Baker (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Second Base: Eddie Collins
As with the previous decade, there is real quality at second base. A four-time World Series winner (twice as a teammate of McInnis) Collins was also the 1914 American League MVP. For the decade, Collins was second in runs and walks, and third in hits. He was also first in sacrifices for the decade, which is logical given that Collins remains the all-time leader in that statistic.

Though arguments can certainly be made for other players (Joe Morgan chief among them) there is also one to select Eddie Collins as the greatest second baseman to ever live. He is still tenth all-time in hits—though Derek Jeter is just a dozen hits away from taking that spot.

Third Base: Frank "Home Run" Baker
Though the nickname actually came during the 1911 World Series when he hit a go-ahead and game-tying home run in consecutive games (which is a pretty good trick these days, let alone back then) Baker certainly could have earned it for his home run prowess in the decade. He led the league in home runs 1911-1914, and might have done it again in 1915 had he not sat out the entire season. Baker would never again led the league in home runs, though he would hit another 48 after returning to the game in 1916, including 32 in the 1916-1919 period. For the decade, he was third in home runs, which is pretty good for a man who missed a full season during that time.

Shortstop: Art Fletcher
If you want an idea of how great Honus Wagner is, incidentally, he nearly won this spot despite not playing in the Major Leagues after 1917, and playing 130 or fewer games in four of the seasons he did play. However, the place goes to Art Fletcher. The shortstop for the Giants most of the decade, Fletcher was a part of four pennant-winning teams (with no titles, unfortunately) including three straight from 1911 to 1913.

For his part, Fletcher was the perfect John McGraw player—inevitably, and invariably described as “fiery”—and was well-regarded for his defense though he could be a useful offensive player as well, seven times posting an OPS over .700 or higher.

Left Field: Zack Wheat
The 1918 batting champion, Wheat spent all but a single season of his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Though he finished the decade just four hits shy of being at exactly .300, he was still a reliable performer for what were often very mediocre Brooklyn Dodger teams—they finished in the second division eight times during the decade, though they did make it into the 1916 World Series. (He also can claim to have played for the Brooklyn franchise while they were known variously as the Superbas, Dodgers, and Robins.)

For the decade, Wheat finished in the top 10 in hits and triples, was just outside in both doubles and home runs. When considering those numbers, it should perhaps be no surprise that he was sixth for total bases in the teens. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1959.

Center Field: Ty Cobb
As mentioned previously, I have a fairly enormous collection of baseball books. And Cobb is a figure of such stature that they (and me) have written about him extensively. Here is a representative sample of phrases used, presented to you, Zagat’s review style:

“For something like half a century” this “strangest of all our national sport idols” was “considered the game’s greatest player.” True “it isn’t that stories of Ty Cobb has a violent racist are false” but one must also consider history has somewhat turned him into a “caricature villain.” Fellow players might have thought he was a “prick” and he considered them all “damn Yankees” but you tolerate that from the man who “led the American League in slugging percentage and hits eight times, in steals six, in runs five, in triples and RBI four, in doubles three, and in homers once.”

Right Field: Joe Jackson
How many great players are known primarily for something other than their greatness? I’m not talking about someone like Joe Morgan who is almost certainly more widely known now as a broadcaster than a Hall of Fame talent. I’m also not speaking of those players touched by the PED scandals; in that regard their greatness—and how much of it was driven by PEDs—is the heart of the question. Rather, I’m thinking of players who were great, Hall of Fame-level great, but are not remembered as such. Off the top of my head, I can only think of three: Jackson, Pete Rose, and Jackie Robinson. Robinson is a different category than the other two, of course, but other than that they are all the same. Their legacy is defined entirely by something which is parallel to what they did on the field.

In any case, Jackson was unquestionably on a Hall of Fame path at the time of his banishment. He led the league, variously, in hits, triples, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and total bases. At the time of the ban, Jackson was a lifetime .356 hitter, a number behind only Cobb and Rogers Hornsby all-time.

Hippo Vaughn, looking--by modern standards, anyway--rather svelt (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Starting Pitchers: Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander, Eddie Cicotte, Hippo Vaughn, Babe Adams
Depending on your view of adjusting for era (and performance enhancing drug use, I suppose) Walter Johnson might be the greatest pitcher of all-time. At the very least, he is seriously in the conversation. Winner of 417 games, The Big Train led the league in ERA four times, and threw 74 shutouts in the teens—a large portion of his all-time leading 110.

The gap from Johnson to Alexander is a large one, though that tells you far more about the Senator ace than it does about the man born Grover Cleveland Alexander. For his part, Alexander also led the league in ERA four times during the decade and was one of just two pitchers—the other is Johnson, of course—to win more than 200 wins in the decade. As for Eddie Cicotte, well, you don’t have to admire someone to put him on the team. One of the ringleaders of the 1919 Black Sox World Series fix, when he was on the level he was one of the best pitchers in the league, putting up a 2.29 ERA for the decade, including a league leading 1.53 ERA in 1917.

Five-time a winner of 20 games, Hippo Vaughn had the misfortune of arriving in Chicago just as the Cubs’ great dynasty was falling apart. Those 20-win seasons are a testament, largely, to Vaughn’s own performance rather than that of his team. In 1917, he went 23-13 for a Cubs’ squad that was otherwise 51-67. For many years, Babe Adams held the all-time record for games pitched; a fact which makes sense when you consider not only his performance but also that one of Adams’ last teammates was Joe Cronin—who was born nearly six months after Adams made his MLB debut. For the teens, Adams, long noted for his fine control, won almost 120 games and did so while posting a BB/9 behind only Christy Mathewson. Adams was particularly brilliant in 1919 when he led the league in BB/9, WHIP and K/BB, all while winning 17 games for an otherwise below .500 Pirates team.

Relief Pitcher: Slim Sallee
Sallee is listed on BaseballReference as 6’3” and 180, which I suppose counts as slim. Pictures certainly make him appear to be all arms and legs, anyway. You have to admire that the team features both someone named Hippo and someone named Slim.

Sallee actually appeared as a reliever nearly 175 times over the course of his career, and recorded 36 saves. Three times he was the league leader in saves and no pitcher recorded more saves over the course of the teens.

Manager: John McGraw
Besides seeing which players emerge as the best of the decade, these columns are also interesting to track the way the game evolves. In the first two columns, the manager was also a full-time player. McGraw represents the first all-decade manager who never took the field. And what a decade it was. The Giants won four pennants and finished second four other times. The Giants averaged nearly 89 wins through the decade, an accomplishment all the more impressive with the shorter schedule.

Though Connie Mack can match McGraw’s pennants in the decade—and beat him twice in the World Series for good measure—Mack the manager was undercut by Mack the owner, who deprived his Athletics’ teams of their talent and averaged (averaged!) nearly 101 losses from 1915 to 1919. It is probably true that while Mack was doing the best he could with the talent he had, such poor performance means McGraw is the man for the decade.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Richard Barbieri 2013-02-07T08:41:15+00:00 The all-decade team: the early aughts http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-early-aughts/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-decade-team-the-early-aughts/#When:09:15:15
Last week I began with a team from the best players of the period prior to 1900, which will not be eligible for comparison purposes. Nonetheless, it followed the same rules as all future teams will. To wit, to qualify for any non-pitching position, a player must have played at least 500 games there during his career—though not necessarily during the decade in question. For starting pitchers, to appear on the team requires at least 200 starts in a given decade. Until we hit the more modern usage patterns, relief pitchers will be selected at my discretion, with no game or inning requirements.

Other than that, the only rule is that quality is king. So let’s see who sits on the throne for the decade:

Catcher: Roger Bresnahan
This might have been the easiest choice of any position. When it comes to catchers in the Aughts, Bresnahan towers over his contemporaries. He is the decade leader in, among other things, home runs, hits, runs, doubles, triples, walks, batting average, OPS—by nearly one hundred points—and stolen bases.

To some extent, Bresnahan’s place atop those lists comes from his ability to man positions besides catcher (at one time or another in his career, he would play every position on the diamond) and his willingness to use equipment like shin guards while catching which allowed him to catch a far greater number of games than many contemporaries. Nonetheless, he is unquestionably the best backstop of the decade, and well-deserving of this place.

First base: Frank Chance
Though he doesn’t quite do enough to earn managerial honors—about which more in the Fred Clarke section—fans of the Peerless Leader can at least take comfort in knowing his place at first base is secure. Here’s something I did not know about Frank Chance until I started writing this column: the man had good speed. He led the National League twice in stolen bases—1903 and 1906—and finished his career with more than 400 steals. He was behind only Honus Wagner as the decade’s most successful stealer of bases (at least in raw totals, caught stealing was not recorded at the time) and among those who played at least two-thirds of their games at first, he remains the all-time and single-season SB leader.

The Peerless Leader (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Second base: Nap Lajoie
Lajoie was one of the great second baseman to ever play the game, and comfortably one of the 50 greatest players to ever live. A three-time batting champion, Lajoie was nearly a .340 career hitter, and led the American League in doubles during the Aughts, was second in Major League OPS, and third in hits. Lajoie was one of the first true stars of the then-new American League, and his influence was tremendous. His .426 average in 1901 remains the post-1900 record and helped him earn him election to the Hall of Fame in its inaugural 1937 class.

Perhaps no sign of Lajoie’s status is greater than that after his arrival in Cleveland—itself something of an ordeal involving multiple court orders—the team was almost instantly renamed the “Naps,” in Lajoie’s honor.

Third base: Bill Bradley
No relation, I imagine, to the forward/Senator Bill Bradley. Third baseman Bill Bradley was, according to Bill James “a quiet, well-mannered and popular player.” He was also a strong defensive player and solid hitter. No third baseman in the decade had more hits, and as an added bonus he appeared in the Federal League late in his career, meaning I get to mention there were actually teams called the Kansas City Packers and—even better—Brooklyn Tip-Tops.

Shortstop: Honus Wagner
The Aughts team does not have a great player at every position, but it will take some serious talent for any decade to outdo the middle infield combination of Lajoie and Wagner. In the all-Month series I said that Wagner “stands alone as the greatest” shortstop in history. That still holds true, of course. As for this decade, he is the leader in hits, runs, RBI, stolen bases, doubles and OPS and put up offensive numbers like that while manning shortstop.

Left field/manager: Fred Clarke
At the tail end of 1899, Fred Clarke was traded to the Pirates as part of a trade involving 16—16!—other players and $25,000 which was quite a lot of money in those days. The deal had some real talent involved, including Wagner, Rube Waddell, Jack Chesboro, Chief Zimmer and Tommy Leach. During the decade, Clarke ranked second in runs, fourth in triples and was in the top ten in hits.

It was perhaps a harder decision to make Clarke the manager than the left fielder. During the same period, Frank Chance only managed just four full seasons, but recorded a World Series victory, two additional pennants and averaged more than 106 wins in those seasons. John McGraw had more 90-wins seasons in the decade than Chance had full years managing and led the Giants to two consecutive pennants.

Nonetheless, the position goes to Clarke. Managing the Bucs through the whole decade, Clarke won four pennants, including the 1909 World Series. The Pirates won 90 or more games eight times during the decade, and never had a winning percentage below .568—equivalent to 92 wins with the current schedule.

Center field: Roy Thomas
Some players—all across the spectrum of quality—are clearly illustrated by their statistics. If one sees that Victor Zambrano once led the league in walks, hit batsmen and wild pitches, that gives a pretty good idea of what kind of pitcher Zambrano was. Roy Thomas is another such player. Thomas led the National League in walks seven times during the decade—with over 100 six-times. For the decade, Thomas drew 912 walks; no other player even drew 750.

The huge walk totals, however, were strictly a matter of being able to work the count, as Thomas was, even by the standards of the time, not a player with any kind of power. For his career, he recorded just 160 extra-base hits, a total far below his 244 stolen bases. No player with as many trips to the plate as Thomas—more than 6500 across his career—had fewer RBI. Indeed, he is the only player with at least 6500 plate appearances to fail to record 300 RBI.

Honus Wagner (Chicago Daily News negatives collection, courtesy of Chicago History Museum.)

Statistics can never tell you everything about a player, but when it comes to someone like Roy Thomas—owner of 1537 career hits and 1377 career singles—they can tell you an awful lot.

Right field: Sam Crawford
Widely known, of course, as “Wahoo” Sam Crawford, which was the name of his hometown. Wahoo is still around, incidentally, about 35 miles west of Omaha, and named, apparently, for a kind of shrub. Its other claim to fame, of course, was as the “Home Office” of David Letterman’s Top Ten during the NBC days.

Back to Crawford, though typically overshadowed in history by his Detroit outfield mate Ty Cobb—with whom he had a relationship that might be charitably described as difficult—he was an indisputably great player in his own right. Still the all-time leader in triples (he also led the league six times for good measure) Crawford was also, by the standards of the day, a home run threat. Only two players hit more home runs in the decade, and he twice led the league in home runs while ranking in the top five in homers eight other times. At the time of his retirement, Crawford was the home run leader among post-1900 players.

Starting pitchers: Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Rube Waddell, Eddie Plank, Vic Willis
I covered Young in the pre-1900 section, so I won’t say much about him other than that it is a testimony to both his greatness and longevity—particularly the longevity—that he made the starting rotation for two different decade teams. There have been a number of great World Series pitching performances, but Christy Mathewson’s absolute domination of the Philadelphia A’s in the 1905 World Series—three complete game shutouts (13 H, 1 BB, 18 K) in six days—will likely never be topped. That was the likely pinnacle of a brilliant career by “Big Six” that also included 373 career wins and two pitching Triple Crowns and three other seasons leading the league in ERA.

Though nearly as brilliant a pitcher, it is hard to imagine someone more different from Mathewson than Rube Waddell. Which Waddell stories are fact, which are legend and which are somewhere in between is virtually impossible to say. Did Waddell truly spend his off-seasons as an alligator wrestler? Was he really prone to being distracted on the mound by opponents holding up puppies? Did he really lose track of how many women he married? Whatever the case, Waddell was unquestionably a great pitcher, particularly during his 1902-05 prime: 97-52, 1.88 ERA (158 ERA+), 1312 IP.

Speaking of different but equal, there’s Eddie Plank, Waddell’s real-life teammate for the A’s. Described by Bill James as “a thin, gentlemanly left-hander” and by another source as the “tortoise to Waddell’s hare,” Plank was remarkable consistent. He won 17 games during his rookie season in 1901 and would drop below 15 just once (in 1908, he went 14-16) before his final season. By the time his career was over, Plank won 326 games.

Vic Willis lacks the instant name recognition of many of his all-Aughts teammates—he did not even earn Hall of Fame election until 1995, nearly 50 years after his death. In part this is because he had a relatively short career—he won just 249 games. When it comes to this decade though, Willis’ spot is well-deserved. He threw 43 shutouts, more than men like Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, Plank and Ed Walsh. It is true that Willis twice led in the league in losses (he went 30-54 for two dreadful Boston teams) but he closed the decade winning nearly 90 games in four seasons for the Pirates and Fred Clarke. There may be “sexier” names for the last spot, but on actual merit it belongs to Willis.

Relief pitcher: Joe McGinnity
I concede it seems odd to use the man known as “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity, a pitcher who threw 400 inning seasons back-to-back for the Giants as a reliever. Nonetheless, he is actually a strong choice. Though his legend as a workhorse grew primarily from his exploits as a starter—notably by starting both games of a double-header—he was often used by John McGraw in relief. In fact, McGinnity thrice led the National League in saves, including during his brilliant 1904 season. Though he is no doubt the equal of some of the men in the starting rotation, for the Aughts team, McGinnity’s best role is in the pen.

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