from Amazon
Monday, November 09, 2009
Best Players born 1961-1970
As I’ve talked about in the past, the best way to get a sense of someone’s place in history is to compare the player to his peers. And typically, you get about 20-25 players elected to the Hall of Fame for every decade of birth years (with about one-third of those pitchers). Seeing that the best of the new crop of eligible players were born between 1963-68, I decided to list the best players born between 1961-1970. Here are the best non-pitchers, in alphabetical order, by position class (all have at least 50 WAR according to baseballprojection.com):
WAR born retroID player
Catchers:
59 1968 piazm001 Piazza Mike
Infielders (2B, SS, 3B):
64 1968 alomr001 Alomar Roberto
66 1965 biggc001 Biggio Craig
59 1968 kentj001 Kent Jeff
69 1964 larkb001 Larkin Barry
56 1967 ventr001 Ventura Robin
Outfielders:
172 1964 bondb001 Bonds Barry
67 1970 edmoj001 Edmonds Jim
80 1969 grifk002 Griffey Ken
65 1967 loftk001 Lofton Kenny
64 1968 shefg001 Sheffield Gary
60 1968 sosas001 Sosa Sammy
67 1966 walkl001 Walker Larry
Firstbasemen/DH:
80 1968 bagwj001 Bagwell Jeff
58 1964 clarw001 Clark Will
67 1963 marte001 Martinez Edgar
51 1963 mcgrf001 McGriff Fred
63 1963 mcgwm001 McGwire Mark
57 1968 olerj001 Olerud John
66 1964 palmr001 Palmeiro Rafael
76 1968 thomf001 Thomas Frank
66 1970 thomj002 Thome Jim
How many of those should (or will) make the Hall of Fame (based on your criteria, or those of the Holy Writers)? If we look at every 10yr birth class, the high was the 36 players born from 1898-1907. The low was the 13 players born 1924-1933. More recently, there were 21 players born 1938-1947 elected to the HOF. It’s fair to say that every ten year birth class should have somewhere between 20-25 players, more or less, with about 30% of them being pitchers, more or less. So, somewhere around 15 non-pitchers. The above list contains 22 non-pitchers.
If you can knock off about 7 players, the rest are likely to make the Hall of Fame. Is there anyone out there that is knocking out Alomar or Larkin? And how many of you are knocking out Edgar from the above list (and if you are, how many players are you left with)? Fred McGriff would seem to me to be the cusp-player.
UPDATE: Here are the best pitchers:
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 344 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date