OK, imagine we could play a game between the All-Tall lineup and the All-Short one. Who would win? Who would win a series (given a reasonable rest for the starting pitchers) or a season’s worth of games between these teams of nine players? (Let’s further assume that it’s 9 vs. 9, no DHs, no bench, no bullpen, no nothing.) One possible batting order for the shorties is
LF Tim Raines 5’8"
3B John McGraw 5’7"
2B Joe Morgan 5’7"
CF Hack Wilson 5’6"
C Yogi Berra 5’8"
1B Joe Judge, 5’8"
RF Willie Keeler 5’4"
SS Phil Rizzuto 5’6"
P Bobby Shantz 5’6"
and for the Tallies maybe the batting order would be
CF Aaron Judge 6’7"
RF Daryl Strawberry 6’6"
LF Dave Winfield 6’6"
1B Frank Howard 6’7’
SS Cal Ripken 6’4"
C Joe Mauer 6’5"
3B Scott Rolen 6’4"
2B DJ LeMahieu 6’4"
P Randy Johnson 6’10
Who would you take to win?
And how might we test out your hypothesis? Totaling up the WARs? Career WAR or Peak WAR? Or playing a board game (StratoMatic or APBA or some such) with the two teams? Running a computer simulation of the two teams for 10,000 games?
I’d go with the Tallies due to the pitcher being from a more modern era and having an better strike out record, along with a respectable fast ball/slider. That and the rest of team are more modern as well with some great hall of famers.
For a quick and dirty calculation I found the peak season WAR for each player. I went with the Fangraphs version because their site has the nice convenient column on the right to grab the numbers from.
Height is distinctly more an edge for pitchers than hitters. If you are going to fill out a whole team, bullpen and all, your tall team will get a significant advantage.
As a rule, sure. But putting together a team you can find a few short outliers that are excellent or at the very least competitive. Shantz in 1952 was about as good as it gets.
I think it would be fair for each position to have Tall and Short defined by the average height of players in that position.
2023 pitchers averaged 6’3", and 2Bs averaged 5’11", which means Joe Morgan is 4 inches shorter than average. We apply that to pitchers, you get a short pitcher being 5’11", giving us Pedro Martinez.
The shorties would obviously play Eddie Gaedel (the midget on the St. Louis Browns as part of a Bill Veeck stunt), who walked in his only major league AB, at DH. He’s got a 1.000 OB percentage.
