The illustrated all-time team

14 Replies

High Heat Stats contributor Graham Womack has published a wonderful piece on his blog, Baseball Past and Present, called the All-Time Dream Project. He logged more than 600 votes to come up with the top players at each position, and got an excellent team of writers to write something on each of the winners.

What’s that? You want more? Well he also commissioned artwork from Sarah Wiener for each of the winners, and you can even pick up a set of the trading cards.

Check out this wonderful post at the link above.

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Graham

12 years ago

Awesome, thanks for posting this, Andy.

One interesting fact for BB-ref lovers: Our picks actually line up 100 percent with the Elo Rater. We weren’t intending it, but it’s how the voting came out.

Hartvig

12 years ago

Always wonderful topic to start a discussion and one that I am happy to say I contributed my vote. There’s a good argument to be made for all of the winners although I don’t agree with every pick. Some of the also ran picks leave me scratching my head however. Arky Vaughn finishes in a tie for the 20th best shortstop of all time in a tie with Rabbit Maranville. Commenters on the site raised a ruckus about Rod Carew finishing in a tie for 8th at second base (which is about right) without mentioning that the guy he tied… Read more »

Graham

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

Thanks, Hartvig.

I may expand to a 25-man roster if I do a future rendition of this project. I don’t know if that will help forgotten greats like Eddie Collins and Tris Speaker get their due, but it’d probably boost others like Josh Gibson and Joe Morgan onto the bench at least.

This time around, I wanted people making the tough decisions. I figured it was most interesting forcing people to choose Mays or Mantle, Ruth or Aaron, etc.

Hartvig

12 years ago

Reply to Graham

I do understand that the way you designed the voting was to pick the best and not to rank the players overall as the their relative value. Maybe a weighted vote where you could rank 5 or more players at each position with 10 points for first, 7 for second, etc. would give better results for something on those lines if you ever decide to do that.

Kudos for bringing in so many dedicated baseball fans and figures on the voting and writing such an excellent summary of the results.

Great stuff.

Graham

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

Thank you!

Lawrence Azrin

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

Hartvig – I agree with you that a small sample size, and the choice of only one player-per-position, is going to produce some wacky results in the player rankings by postion. That still doesn’t explain how Grove, Seaver or Alexander are not in the pitcher’s Top-10. This is the comment that I left on Graham’s blog: “Great concept and presentation; the only suggestion for future such ratings would be what Alvy suggested above {in the Comments section}; a weighted Top-5 at each position (as with the MVP voting), and a Top-dozen for pitchers, should be the minimum number listed, so… Read more »

Hartvig

12 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Lawrence- I do understand Graham’s reasoning for doing it this way because it really does force you to choose but I do think a weighted vote exactly like you describe would be a great idea for some time in the future. One of my initial concerns- that more casual fan might skew the voting so much that more recent players would dominate the voting- proved almost completely unfounded and the results at least as far as the top 1 or 2 vote getters are totally reasonable. But I would love to see how a more nuanced approach turns out as… Read more »

Graham

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

The thing I don’t like about the weighted vote is that in small sample sizes, it can allow a small group of voters to push a player up the rankings. I don’t like anything that gives one voter more authority than others. Too much of the baseball blogosphere hews that way already. I prefer to have my projects be voter-driven and egalitarian.

Hartvig

12 years ago

Reply to Graham

I have to admit that there is no way I would leave Alan Trammell or Al Kaline off of my ballot- although I would probably have them listed 4th or 5th…

Graham

12 years ago

Reply to Graham

I voted myself and sacrificed a little on stats so I could have Jackie Robinson on my personal team. I kicked myself a little for not including Will Clark, who’s my all-time favorite player, but it’s hard to rationalize taking him over Gehrig or Pujols.

Neil L.

12 years ago

Graham, thanks to Andy’s post here, I have now added your site to my favorites and will check in regularly at baseball Past and Present. Well done!

Graham

12 years ago

Reply to Neil L.

Hey, thank you Neil. I look forward to seeing you over there and for you getting to interact with my readers. I have a smart crowd that’s great about adding to the discussion. It’s one of the things I like about this website as well.

Neil L.

12 years ago

Reply to Graham

Well the intelligence of the sire author will determine the IQ of the readers it attracts. Best wishes, you are an up-and-coming writer, Graham.

Graham

12 years ago

Reply to Neil L.

Right on, thanks again.