Sunday, January 30, 2011

2010 NL Central in Review

Chicago Cubs

W-L:  75-87 (5th place in NL Central)

Pythagorean W-L (pW-pL):  73-89

Payroll:  $124.9 million (2nd in NL)

R/G:  4.23 (10th in NL)

ERA:  4.24 (13th in NL)

Defense Efficiency Ratio (DER):  .679 (12th in NL)

Team MVPs:  Geovany Soto, Carlos Marmol, Ryan Dempster

Team LVPs:  Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez

Defensive Stars:  Marlon Byrd, Alfonso Soriano, Derrek Lee

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Best Center Fielders by Team

I started with a simple question:  What team has had the best center fielders (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history?  The following is my best answer to the question.  See the first post in the series for a full explanation.

The best center fielders by team:

10.  Toronto Blue Jays

Lloyd Moseby, Devon White, Jose Cruz, Jr., Vernon Wells

Nothing spectacular here, but a lot of consistently good work.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Best Left Fielders by Team

I started with a simple question:  What team has had the best left fielders (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history?  The following is my best answer to the question.  See the first post in the series for a full explanation.

10.  Tampa Bay Rays

Carl Crawford

Monday, January 17, 2011

Best Third Basemen by Team

I started with a simple question:  What team has had the best third basemen (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history?  The following is my best answer to the question.  See the first post in the series for a full explanation.

10.  Baltimore Orioles/St. Louis Browns

Jimmy Austin, Harlond Clift, George Kell, Brooks Robinson, Doug DeCinces, Cal Ripken, Melvin Mora

Best Shortstops by Team

I started with a simple question:  What team has had the best first basemen (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history?  The following is my best answer to the question.  See first post for full explanation.

10.  Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins

George McBride, Roger Peckinpaugh, Joe Cronin, Cecil Travis, Pete Runnels, Zoilo Versalles, Leo Cardenas, Roy Smalley, Greg Gagne, Cristian Guzman

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Best 2B by Team

I started with a simple question:  What team has had the best first basemen (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history?  The following is my best answer to the question.  See Previous Post for full explanation.

10.  Los Angeles Angels

Bobby Knoop, Sandy Alomar, Jerry Remy, Bobby Grich, Gary DiSarcina, Adam Kennedy, Howie Kendrick

Best 1B by Team

The question I started with here was:  Which team has had the best first basemen over its history?  So, with the help of Baseball-Reference.com, I decided to try to answer that question.

First of all, two caveats in this “study.”  One is that I wasn’t interested so much in a collection of names as a collective contribution.  In other words, I’m not going to highly rank a team like the Mets that has had a lot of Hall-of-Famers – when they were past their prime.  I’m more interested in production than name recognition.

Secondly, I decided to weigh my rankings to give some credit to expansion franchises.  The Giants and Cardinals have a lot of great players in their histories, but that’s partly because they’ve been around for 100-plus seasons.  So a franchise’s age is taken into account when looking at a list of players.

So who had the best first basemen of all time?  Here’s my own personal Top 10, in reverse order.  Note that the players listed under each team are just some of the highlights in team history.