Sports Illustrated writer Cliff Corcoran has authored an article with this provocative title. This is the team he chose.
I’ll leave you to consider Corcoran’s arguments. Let the debate begin.
Best 25-Man Roster in MLB History
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In terms of position players, I don’t have any big quibbles, other than the fact that there’s a clear bias towards older player. But starters??? Yeah, I know it’s hard to choose but he used ERA+ as his metric, Which would be fine if there weren’t lots and lots of better tools available. Obviously the biggest problem is the inclusion of Kershaw. Kershaw has 1901.1 IP and 57.2 WAR and 42.1 WAA. Let’s just compare that to Tom Seaver. From 1969-1975, Seaver threw 1918.2 IP with 52.9 WAR and 36.8 WAA. So a slight edge to Kershaw. Except that 52.9… Read more »
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The other odd thing about using the ERA+ yardstick is there are a bunch of pitchers with better ERA+ results than Johnson and Maddux. Of pitchers with 2500+ IP, Pedro ranks 1st, Johnson 11th and Maddux 14th. But, of the pitchers who were passed over with better ERA+ than Maddux, only Clemens and Whitey Ford pitched since World War II, and only Pete Alexander in the live ball era.
First of all, who HASN’T done this, from time to time? Second, I think Eddie Collins ahead of Joe Morgan is an absolute travesty. I would’ve also strongly, strongly considered Jackie Robinson for that spot, simply because he would be the greatest utilityman in the history of baseball; the only problem is that he was way, WAY too good to be merely a utility guy. I like the inclusion of Kershaw. I think these lists are always more fun when we sort of try to project forward. I also think that A.) no one would’ve had a problem with Sandy… Read more »
1) I think you can pretty much flip a coin with Collins vs Morgan. Both should be strongly considered, neither has a huge advantage over the other. 2) I would have a problem with Koufax and given how long it took for him to get inducted into the Circle of Greats, I’m guesing I’m not the only one. 3) Fair point re the inclusion of relievers. Particuarly since one of my pet peeves is when people say that closer is a position, It’s not, it’s a role and as you noted the top starters could fill it quite well. 4)… Read more »
I’m sure Corcoran wrote the piece with the aims of stirring interest and creating controversy, so I won’t fault him for his choices, even though I don’t agree with his taste in pitching much at all. I’m biassed against Hornsby, but otherwise his starting lineup is very arguable. I’d take Yogi B and J Bench platooning at catcher. The “bench” is a turkey shoot category. Fill in Foxx, Morgan, Musial, Brett, or any of a dozen others and it wouldn’t matter. The real problem I see is that the roster concept is flawed. It’s a fantasy team that is based… Read more »
Like others, I have trouble with the bullpen category here, but Corcoran builds that into the model he’s working with – he wants a roster structured like a contemporary one, and I don’t think it’s productive to argue with a premise of his project. If I were to do that, I’d argue that an ideal team has no DH. I’d make some different picks (and I like nsb’s idea of HHS folks making those picks by decade – although perhaps by “era” might be a more interesting and flexible way to approach it), but one thing Corcoran does very well… Read more »
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The performance by Randy Johnson in the 1995 tiebreaker or play-in or whatever you want to call it game against the Angels was pretty spectacular. CG, 3 H, 1 BB, 12 K, 1 R (in the 9th when they were up 8-0 at the time) is not too shabby. There really isn’t much difference between that game then and a wild card game now, other than one is a regular season game and the other is a postseason game. The consequences are the same. And if we’re talking about regular season-postseason combinations, I’ll take Bob Gibson. 9 starts, 8 CG,… Read more »
I thought of adding a comment on Gibson, alz9794. There are plenty of really gutsy post-season performers on a par with Koufax, but they aren’t in the “five best” conversation, and Gibson seems to me the best of them (and not far off a “five best” type list). I don’t think Koufax should be on that list either, but since his name was brought up in that connection in earlier comments, I thought he’d be a good contrast to Kershaw. As for Koufax’s unearned runs, most come from the fifth inning of his final game, when consecutive batters reached on… Read more »
Looking at straight WHIP ignores the fact that Gibson and Koufax were pitching in a historically low run era something of a little deadball era), while all of the others compared here pitched somewhere between a big part and nearly all of their career in some of the highest scoring years. Kershaw somewhat less so, but post steroid ball is still a lot higher scoring than the late 60s. Koufax also pitched in a relatively extreme pitcher’s park. Koufax’s numbers are so extreme that it’s still phenomenal even in context, but I’m not sure his postseason results are really all… Read more »
What’s strange is that Kershaw’s postseason numbers aren’t that different from his regular season ones:
-1.1 more hits per nine innings
-0.4 more home runs
-0.3 more walks
-0.8 more K’s.
And yet somehow his ERA is 2.21 runs higher. Which strikes me as mostly a sequencing/luck issue. (I checked his doubles and triples and they’re about the same per nine innings).
Another problem with this approach generally, if I can diverge from baseball for a moment, is the difficulty of overcoming biases. There’s always at least one assumption lurking in the background of lists like this. Most of us probably remember the craze 17 years ago for naming the 10 or 25 or 100 best whatevers of the Twentieth Century. In my view they all failed miserably in the areas where I have some interest and knowledge. Anyone, for instance, who really thinks The Great Gatsby is the best American novel of that stretch—or of all time!—either has not read the… Read more »
I don’t know anything about symphonies, so to me it’s unclear if Sibelius having 5 of the top 10 and Hovhanhess having many others lower down is reasonable, unreasonable, or just that someone likes Sibelius. It’s certainly possible that an extraordinary talent should dominate a list, and other greats make perhaps one appearance on a top 100 list, while others don’t crack it at all. There have been thousands of player seasons in MLB, even if one limits that to position players. Using WAR for position players, the top 100 seasons (really top 101 as there is a 13 way… Read more »
If you do know something about Classical symphonies and composers, you’d know that while Sibelius is certainly great and worthwhile, and might deserve a couple entries somewhere on a top 100 list, he’s hardly vastly superior to *many* other composers in general. He’s more of a borderline COGer than a Ruth. But of course, classical music is a lot more subjective than baseball, so it’s certainly possible that one particular listener feels he stands out far above the rest, and who are the rest of us to judge their taste? It’s *very* clear, however, that their taste (in this case)… Read more »
… but running dry for 30 years is not a surprise. There’s a great quote from David W. Barber, a music history humorist (one of the world’s greatest and oddest jobs) that goes something like, “Mozart set the standard for prodigies by dying young.” And there’s a lot of truth to that. Rather leave them wanting more than run dry.
The symphonies of Sibelius basically run in the 120-160 OPS+ range. Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler—the best ones go over 200 and the least make it to 150+. Saying that, by the way, isn’t meant to slight the great symphonies of Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Bruckner and one-offs of people like Berlioz which also score high, or the best works of Haydn and Mozart, which, because of their era, are smaller scale gems.
Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi, among others, predate the symphonic form. But I digress.
I think truly great baseball players share something with great composers and performers–you not only need tremendous talent, but intense efforts. Last year I wrote a piece for 3Quarksdaily–and I got a ton of off-line emails from musicians. http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2016/12/the-stradivarius-complex.html
It’s a lovely piece, Mike, and it was odd to think that your last name might actually not just be the letter “L.” Agreed with just about all you said. As a funny anecdote, I went to a Lutheran college, sang in I think 9 or 10 different choirs before I graduated, as many as 6 in one semester. Anyway, we had this big Christmas extravaganza every year – 200 vocalist choir, full symphonic orchestra, art on the walls and hanging from the ceiling of the chapel, poetry readings, dancers – the whole nine yards. It’s like a 2.5 hour… Read more »
Thanks, EPM. I was trying to make a point that some of the greats were willing to explore different structures and to innovate. My daughter sent me Op.131 to show that Beethoven does this a lot–he mixes genres, or cross-pollinates styles. He put a typical opera styles in his string quartets (movement 3 of op. 131) and again more famously, in the 4th movement of the 9th symphony. Also, Op. 131 just sounds different–not that “Beethoven-y” and textured in a way that feels almost modern, but not remote, like some modern music can be. Beethoven was willing to experiment. To… Read more »
Thanks, Mike. That’s a clear thought on Op. 131. Beethoven was mixing genres early, like his send-up of Italian opera in the adagio of Op. 31/1, but I really like your notion of the late quartets as “modern, but not remote.” I think Beethoven often has an unusually effective interplay of reanimated “classical” elements in a highly innovative context, something that “post-modern” composers now try to achieve, but generally with less success. (And with Beethoven, the late quartets and sonatas retain their modern/post-modern edge almost 200 years later!) In a baseball context, I’m not sure that there may not be… Read more »
I’d put a couple of those “smaller scale gems” from the classical period up with anything from BBM. Just because the lack the bombast and scale of the romantics and post-romantics doesn’t mean they aren’t every bit as worthy.
Also too on your point that looking at symphonic form only leaves out a WORLD of incredible music. If I were to make a top 100 of my favorite/considered-greatest musical works, at most 5-10 of them would be symphonies.
N S B “The desire, conscious or unconscious, to attribute extraordinary virtues to our favorites can be overwhelming, and the corresponding guilt of doing so often makes us give in to spreading the glory around indiscriminately to those we feel are preferred by other people, just to show our impartiality.” Men of merit exist in every generation but mankind, in general, prefer the meritorious of their own generation. But, tough to tell if “guilt” is responsible or it’s just bad opinions. My quibbles? I agree – give me 10 SP’s. Morgan over Eddie Collins. Ted Williams in LF; Frank Thomas… Read more »
I’d go with a starting rotation of Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax and Walter Johnson. 1245 complete games, there. Three relievers: Rollie Fingers, Hoyt Wilhelm and Goose Gossage. All can throw multiple innings. That frees up space for both Musial and Pujols. I’d keep three catchers: Bench, Berra, and the perpetually overlooked Ted Simmons. No Carter. I’d take Roberto Clemente, too.
I have a couple of small quibbles, mainly for including Bonds but not Clemens. He makes the case based on Bonds before 2001 to exclude PED years, but then includes the 48.5 war after that in his argument to get him on his all time roster. For THIS list, I’m not certain “favoring” peak does it. Give me Cobb, Aaron or Musial. If PED doesn’t disqualify then you have to include Clemens, with the third most pitching WAR, and just below Tom Seaver pre-2001. He also had a peak run of 7 seasons ave 8.2 war and a later mini-peak… Read more »
