I agree, although my heart still wants to put Murph in centerfield. Nothing like being a kid and sitting in those bleachers (before Mt. Davis) and watching his hat fly off his 'fro as he ran down those long fly balls.
I am going to arbitrarily decide that a player is only eligible for the team that he the most appearances. For the Red Sox that leaves out guys like Foxx, Grove, Speaker, and Cy Young. Given that, DudleyGarrett’s list is pretty close to my opinion. I’d pu Doerr at 2nd and swap Lynn and Rice (since Lynn was a center fielder). Yaz made 765 career appearances at 1B so I think we can sneak him there. 
Hurst was a fine pitcher for a few years but it’s kind of crazy that he’s the best LHP we can come up with. I assume (and hope) that Lester takes that spot in a few years.
Yep. 25-man rosters, plus a 5 man taxi squad, times 32 franchises.
Made up rules as to who qualified, and also had rules designed to skew the rosters towards more recent players (IIRC, 5 or 6 pre-WWII players per team, and 10 or 12 pre-divisions). Nobody could be on 2 teams, and players had to have a minimum number of games played for the team (the minimum changed depending on the age of the franchise).
Lotta time spent with the ol’ Baseball Encyclopedia, I’ll tell ya that.
Oh, it’s cool and all; I did that once with Earl Weaver Baseball. It’s just that there’s only 30 franchises.
I’m sorry, but . . .
really . . .
I sincerely hope you were about as serious with this as I was with my final Orioles pick.
If one plugs in Teddy’s expected stats for the years he missed in WWII and Korea, he is probably the second greatest ballplayer ever. Even without those years . . . Wait, Mike Greenwell? Hah, hah, hah. Good joke.
Uuhmm…Mel Parnell??
That’s interesting, considering that you’ve got Lajoie and Speaker, two dead ball era players, on your list.
It was horrible that blacks were barred, but the effect of their absence on the quality of play is not that great.
Babe Ruth.
89-46 in three seasons as a full-time starter and two as part-time. He would have won the Cy Young in 1916 if it had existed then, and would have had a shot at it in 1917 as well.
oh yeah. on my list he was the on the oakland 's all-time. he was one of the great defensive CFs of his era and hella fun to watch.
as i said i prefer to break up the comparisons, using 1947 as the break. but the poster who put the lineup together including philly A’s did a great job. but i really believe Murphy would be in the running for an all-time A’s 25 man roster if they were to have a "mythical tryout’ of all the great A’s.
and remember tony armas was in RF and rickey was in LF at the same time for a few years. i read an article one time way back stating that group would be in the running for the most balanced/best outfield playing together at the same time – ever. the point was a lot of teams in history had one or two greats, but the third guy might have been very average.
those three together rocked.
I don’t know…we always hear about how great some of those Negro Leaguers were, it seems to me that they could have made a difference had they been allowed to play. If Robinson and Doby hadn’t come in and been so successful in their first full seasons, I might tend to think that their absence from the game was overrated, but they proved they belonged.
But I can’t discount all those players. I’d never suggest Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb weren’t great players. And anyone who can get the team to be named after him (Lajoie) deserves recognition.
Doing a thread like this kinda requires an unwritten rule that no one is going to come in and foul it up with the Colorado Rockies. Honestly, what’s the point of doing this exercise for a 16 year old franchise?
Arizona Diamondbacks
C - …er…um…
Okay, I’m going about this the wrong way.
RSP - Curt Schilling
LSP - Randy Johnson
With that out of the way… (Note: When you deal with such a short history, you kinda have to go with the best season at a position instead of a better overall average career with the team. Also, I’m excluding people who were one year wonders that were better known for being on other teams as opposed to the DBacks, like Troy Glaus)
1 - RF - Justin Upton (his half season this year is better than any full season at this position for the snakes, ouch. Hey, it’s a pretty good season so far though!)
2 - 2B - Jay Bell (maybe better known on other teams, but spent 5 years in Arizona and his 1999 was exceptional. Hit 91 HRs in Arizona over five seasons, and 38 came in 1999. Second best season for power in his 18 seasons? 20 HRs in 1998. HMM!)
**3 - LF - Luis Gonzalez **(career average HRs per season over 19 seasons? 22. Hit fifty seven in 2001. HMM! Also, only automatic, no-brainer among the position players)
**4 - 3B - Matt Williams **(definitely better known as a Giant, but had six seasons in Arizona, won a ring, and was third in MVP voting in his only good Arizona season: 1999, when he hit almost half of his 91 homers in an Arizona uniform. HMM! No, wait, he had power before. Nevermind)
**5 - CF - Steve Finley **(No competition among other DBacks’ CFs.)
6 - 1B - Chad Tracy (Is it bad when you are seriously considering Travis Lee? Connor Jackson could go here, but Tracy had the best single season.)
7 - SS - Stephen Drew (Womack had the steals, but Drew is the better hitter and fielder)
8 - C - Chris Snyder (Snyder didn’t have the best single season for averages, but was the only one of the group to play well for a full season.)
Bench: Craig Counsell (utility extraordinaire), Tony Womack (for his speed), and Connor Jackson (plays multiple positions, and could free Tracy up to also play multiple positions)
**Closer: Jose Valverde. **The only other candidate was Byung-hyun Kim, but he loses major points for nearly single-handedly blowing the 2001 World Series. I’m surprised BK wasn’t caught wearing a Yankees jersey underneath his DBacks uni.
I know this was pretty pointless, but it was really fun, so you’ll all pardon the effort, right?
And yet you freely discount the great accomplishments of Vean Gregg as dogmeat, er, as someone you “have a hard time taking seriously”. Gregg had 3 great years with Cleveland, hurt his arm and was never the same, and you throw him away just because blacks weren’t allowed to play back then.
I wish SABR had some good data about whether and if so, by how much, baseball’s prejudice reduced the quality of play, but we don’t have that data (and if I’m wrong and we do have that info, kindly point me towards it because I’m sure it would be fascinating) so it seems arbitrary and capricious to me to ridicule the accomplishments of the players who did play as if they were nothing or as someone “you have a hard time taking seriously.” Seriously.
What does any of that have to do with the win-loss record as a measure of greatness?
When is someone going to do the Seattle Pilots?
Take it easy. All I’m saying is that it was a much different game back then. Pitchers threw spitballs and scuffed the ball with emery boards. They used the same ball for the entire game, until it started to unravel. There were ballparks that went over 500 feet to center field. For somebody in that era to put up great pitching numbers is not that impressive.
Gregg had a very good season in 1911. He led the league in ERA and WHIP (which I would argue are the best indicators of how good a pitcher is). In 1913 he led the league in walks and hit batters, and yet he had a 2.23 ERA, won 20 games, and only gave up 2 home runs the entire season. The most HRs given up by a pitcher that year was 9. In terms of walking batters, 41 of the top 50 highest single season walk totals by a pitcher occurred before 1920. It was a strange era.
Doesn’t count. You know why, too.
Yeah, good point. In my mind I was giving Hurst too much credit for his playoff appearances but Parnell we pretty solid almost his entire career. Plus he was a Sox lifer.
The era wasn’t strange, it was just different. Moidalize, all I said was i that I’d take Vean Gregg over C.C. Sabathia and/or Sudden Sam McDowell as Indians LH SP. We’re not talking about a very deep pool of candidates here, considering that until Sabathia the immortal Rick Waits had the most wins as Indians’ lefty. Sam was worst in the league in walks 5 times in 10 years and CC was second worst in the league twice in 7, so saying Gregg was worst in the league in terms of walks once in 3 full years doesn’t disqualify him from the discussion. McDowell led the league in ERA once, like Gregg. Taking into account how the mid-to-late 1960s was a pitchers’ era, Sam only put it all together one year, in 1970, before his unfortunate tendency to abuse alcohol got the better of him. Gregg has got to be in the discussion.
Frank, I was using **Deeg’**s own criteria of " a player is only eligible for the team that he the most appearances" when responding to him about the fact that he could only think of Bruce Hurst as the Sox best left handed SP.
One of the problems with this thread is there’s no clear rules on the eligibility of players for a particular team. Deeg’s criteria is obviously different from others in this post, so there are going to be different options for different people. And where do you put these players? Personally, I tried to select players that not only played that position, but also, if they did played multiple positions, select their primary one for which they are known for. For example, even though Yaz was superior to George Scott, I considered Yaz only for the left fielder slot, not first base. Some people may just want to create their team without restrictions on where players actually played. In that situation, Yaz would definitely be the left fielder with Williams being the DH.