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

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

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.

2010 in Review

Time again to revisit my preseason predictions.  Sorry to say.

AL EAST PREDICTED:

New York Yankees (98-64) 96-100 win range

Boston Red Sox *WC* (94-68) 92-96 win range

Tampa Bay Rays (88-74) 86-90 win range

Baltimore Orioles (74-88) 72-76 win range

Toronto Blue Jays (66-96) 64-68 win range

And here’s what actually happened …

A Giant Step

Quick note:  The title of this blog refers to the underrated musical stylings of The Monkees, whose TV show I was a big fan of as a kid (and yes, I’m serious).  I should also note that, thanks to a typo, this was almost titled “A Giant Strep.”  Make of that what you will.

Question:  When was the last time the Giants had two pitchers as good as Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain?  (And I don’t just mean for one year.  I mean two legitimately excellent, still-in-their-prime pitchers for a fair amount of time).

Short Answer:  About 35-40 years.

And now for the long answer …

2010 NL East in Review

Note:  This article was completed before I learned of the trade sending Dan Uggla from the Marlins to the Braves.  Instead of starting this entry over, I’ll just say that the deal really helps the Braves while providing little other than money saved for Florida.

Atlanta Braves

W-L:  91-71 (2nd in NL East; NL Wild Card)

Pythagorean W-L (pW-pL):  93-69

Payroll:  $90.3 million (7th in NL)

R/G:  4.56 (5th in NL)

ERA:  3.57 (4th in NL)

Defense Efficiency Ratio (DER):  .687 (T-8th in NL)

Team MVPs:  Jason Heyward, Brian McCann, Tim Hudson, Tommy Hanson, Martin Prado

Hall of Fame Player = Hall of Fame Manager?

Since Lou Piniella’s retirement, it’s become clear that former Cub Ryne Sandberg is the favorite for his replacement.  This isn’t coming from the team so much as from fans and commentators.  In fact, the impression I’ve gotten from the relevant commentary is that it would be a huge blunder to offer the job to anyone but Sandberg.

The rationale behind Sandberg’s candidacy is that a Hall of Fame player is supremely qualified to be a major league manager.  At the risk of overusing my favorite word, I must call this rationale pure hogwash.

No Year of the Pitcher

There was an article in the morning paper today entitled "2010:  The Year of the Pitcher."  The article claims that, with Matt Garza notching the fifth no-hitter of the season this week, 2010 can be claimed as a new "Year of the Pitcher."  Their argument was that with those five no-hitters, not to mention several near-no-hitters (and one near-perfecto) there was a new dominance of pitchers after over 15 years of hitter supremacy.

Hogwash.

Booknotes (NBR): H.G. Wells

I just finished reading a collection of H.G. Wells' short fiction, called A Dream of Armageddon:  The Complete Supernatural Tales.  The following passage struck me; it's from a story entitled "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper."  One morning, instead of receiving a newspaper for the current year, 1931, he receives a paper from the future:  1971.  His maid accidentally throws it away, and so he can only describe bits and pieces of it to the narrator.  Here's the narrator's response after hearing that the idea of individual nations was more or less obselete in 1971:

Where Does Griffey Rank?

Since Ken Griffey, Jr. retired a few days ago, he’s been referred to consistently as a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.  I’m not so deluded as to disagree with this.  What I’d like to know is where he ranks all-time. 

Because of an injury-ridden second half of his career, I don’t really think we can call Griffey one of the best players of all time.  A more substantive question is whether or not Griffey is the best center fielder of all time.  He’s got some stiff competition for that title, but let’s take a look at the facts and see if we can’t shed some light on the subject.

I figured that a good point of comparison would be to rank Griffey against the center fielders currently enshrined in the Hall of Fame (excluding Negro Leaguers, for whom the statistical record is spotty).

Here is a list of the MLB Hall-of-Famers who spent most of their careers as a center fielder:

NBR: Pop Music IQ

I just took a quiz on Sporcle that asks you to listen to a series of short clips and then identify the song.  The songs are #1 hits in the US between 1958 and 2009.  They're in chronological order and offered a nice glimpse of my pop music IQ.  Here are the songs.  The ones I got right are in bold/italics:

Book Review: Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert

For his new book Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert, Timothy Gay chose the following subtitle:  The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson.  The text, however, doesn't really support the promise of a "wild saga."  Instead, Gay's retrospective on mixed-race baseball games serves more as an amusing scrapbook of a bygone era.

Play My Sporcle Quizzes!

If you haven't yet experienced the wonder that is Sporcle, I urge you to do so right now.  Sporcle allows users to build their own quizzes, allowing others to take them and test their knowledge on just about anything.  Think you can name the countries of the world?  Try it.  Want to try and name all of Shakespeare's plays?  Give it a shot.  Or maybe you'd just like to name the different flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans.  From the academic to the inane, it's all here.
By the way, don't blame me if you lose weeks -- perhaps months -- of your life to the wily temptress called Sporcle.  The word "timesuck" does not even begin to describe it.

As you might imagine, this offers no end of amusement for the baseball fan.  So I've listed below the quizzes I have created on Sporcle.  Have fun!

NBR: Conrad, Briefly

On Tourism ... and Imagination

"An outward-bound mail-boat had come in that afternoon, and the big dining-room of the hotel was more than half full of people with a hundred pounds round-the-world tickets in their pockets.  There were married couples looking domesticated and bored with each other in the midst of their travels; there were small parties and large parties, and lone individuals dining solemnly or feasting boisterously, but all thinking, conversing, joking or scowling as was their wont at home; and just as intelligently receptive of new impressions as their trunks upstairs." 

 *****

"The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought.  The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion."

-- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Soriano a Disappointment?

In this article, Dan McGrath reflects on the Cubs' disappointment in the performance of Alfonso Soriano.  This is certainly understandable -- Soriano's career hitting stats before joining the Cubs were 280/325/510.  Since joining the Cubs, he's hit 277/329/512.

Wait -- what?

Introducing the NBR (Non-Baseball wRiting)

The beginning of the baseball season is the leanest time for me as a baseball writer.  You'd expect the opposite, I guess.  But as someone who's more of an analyst than a scout, I'm much better at talking about what has happened rather than what's going to happen. Plus, I try to resist the temptation to draw sweeping conclusions from a week and half of baseball games, or less than ten percent of an actual season.
So let me take the opportunity to unify all of my various writing efforts in this one place.  Baseball will take up most of my time.  But I'd like to fill the gaps with a number of other projects, efforts and things that I just wanna talk about. I figured there's no sense in creating 8 separate blogs for my various interests; I'll just change my baseball blog to "baseball plus."  To make things easier for my readership (both of you), any non-baseball blog will be clearly labeled NBR:  Non-Baseball wRiting.
I'm working on my first effort, which should be up in a few days.

Happy Spring.  The Jason Heyward era has begun.

2010 Final Predictions

AL EAST

New York Yankees (98-64)

Boston Red Sox *WC* (94-68)

Tampa Bay Rays (88-74)

Baltimore Orioles (74-88)

Toronto Blue Jays (66-96)

AL CENTRAL

Minnesota Twins (86-76)

Chicago White Sox (82-80)

Detroit Tigers (79-83)

Kansas City Royals (72-90)

Cleveland Indians (67-95)

AL WEST

Los Angeles Angels (89-73)

Seattle Mariners (86-76)

Texas Rangers (84-78)

Oakland Athletics (74-88)

ALCS:  Red Sox over Yankees

WS:  Red Sox over Phillies

AL MVP:  Joe Mauer, Twins

AL Cy Young:  Felix Hernandez, Mariners

AL Rookie of the Year:  Neftali Feliz, Rangers

NL EAST

Philadelphia Phillies (96-76)

Atlanta Braves *WC* (92-70)

Florida Marlins (85-77)

New York Mets (80-82)

Washington Nationals (69-93)

NL CENTRAL

St. Louis Cardinals (92-70)

Chicago Cubs (83-79)

Milwaukee Brewers (81-81)

Cincinnati Reds (77-85)

Houston Astros (71-91)

Pittsburgh Pirates (64-98)

NL WEST

Los Angeles Dodgers (93-69)

Colorado Rockies (89-73)

Arizona Diamondbacks (83-79)

San Francisco Giants (78-84)

San Diego Padres (67-95)

NLCS:  Phillies over Braves

WS:  Red Sox over Phillies

NL MVP:  Chase Utley, Phillies

NL Cy Young:  Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers

NL Rookie of the Year:  Jason Heyward, Braves

A.L. East Off-Season: Team by Team

Baltimore Orioles

Dec. 9:  Orioles trade Chris Ray and a PTBNL (Ben Snyder) to the Rangers for Kevin Millwood and cash.
Are 75 wins really that much better than 70?  I’m not being sarcastic; I really wonder.  How much difference does it make having Millwood on the roster?  Does it help season ticket sales that much?  Is he really going to tutor the young pitchers enough to make it worthwhile?  Or is he there to take the pressure off of them?  If so, is that really practical, or is it just another one of those things people say?  Is that enough rhetorical questions for ya?

Dec. 18:  Orioles sign Mike Gonzalez to a two-year contract worth $12 MM.
I’m much more skeptical of this than I am of the Millwood deal.  Does a fourth-place team really need a B-level closer?  The team’s record with free agents relievers is discouraging.