Some players start hot, others warm up with the weather, while still others charge to the finish. And, a very select few play at another level, besting their contemporaries most all the time.

This series looks at the players at each position having the best calendar months in a season.

Take a look and see how your favorites fared.

Here are this year’s top OPS scores for the just completed month of May. Miggy and Chris Davis have continued the torrid pace they established right out of the gate. More thoroughbreds follow them in the top 10. The next 10 include two Blue Jays (Lind, Bautista) who started stone cold but are now rounding into form. The Phillies’ Domonic Brown is impressing in his first season as a regular.

But, how do these months stack up with the best May performances of the live ball era?

For this analysis, I’ve identified the top 3 OPS scores since 1920, for each position and month of the season. I would have preferred to use OPS+ but that isn’t available with searchable splits. Thus, there are a a lot of  performances from the recent past, as well as from the 1920s and 1930s. But, other eras have not been shut out – there are noteworthy performances identified across all of the live ball period.

To qualify, a player must have had 80 PAs in a calendar month. The exception is April where the standard is 50 PAs to accommodate pre-expansion seasons that began in mid-month. Of course, March and October results are tacked on to April and September, respectively.

A player’s position is the one he played in more than half of his games in that month. But, his stats include all of his playing time for the month. Players are excluded if they failed to play a majority of their games in a month at any one position.

So, let’s get started. The top monthly performances overall are all by outfielders, particularly a select few whom I’m sure will be no surprise to most of you.

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Did Ruth or Bonds ever have a bad month? Well, they’re only human so I suppose they must have. But, they and Ted Williams clearly dominate among this group, with Barry and Ted doing so in (among other years) their age 38 seasons.

• Hank Greenberg shows up “out of position” with a late season drive to the 1940 AL pennant for the Tigers. Leading the majors in SLG and OPS, Greenberg claimed his second MVP crown in his only season patrolling the outfield on an everyday basis.
• Albert Belle (and also Frank Thomas in Part 2) had one of the great “what might have been” years in strike-shortened 1994. Projected to 162 games, Belle’s .357/.438/.714 clip looks like 138 runs, 225 hits, 53 doubles, 55 homers and 154 RBI. For his 3-year peak in 1994-96, Belle bested even Bonds, 335/320 in runs, 507/430 in hits, 125/75 in doubles, 134/112 in HR, and 375/314 in RBI.
•  As mentioned, Teddy Ballgame had an age 38 season for the ages in 1957. With a .388/.526/.731 slash, the Splinter’s OPS (1.257) and OPS+ (233) were the second best of his career, trailing only slightly his marks as a 22 year-old in his famous .400 season in 1941. Among those aged 38+, only Barry Bonds had a higher OPS+. Among everyone, only Bonds and the Babe had a higher OPS+ at any age. 

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By the way, Ruth tended to roam about the outfield, playing for a few weeks in one field, then for a few weeks in another pasture. Don’t know if it was a case of Huggins saying “Babe, you just play wherever you’d like to” (probably not) but it is curious how Ruth would seldom stay in the same position for extended periods.

Nice assortment of centerfielders, including many of the all-time greats, plus a couple of guys (Miller, Hidalgo) who were having career months.

• Joe D’s monster sophomore campaign is represented, the last of 11 seasons (until Sammy Sosa in 2001) of 140 runs and 160 RBI.
• Mantle shows up in his 1956 career year and also in his 1961 duel with teammate Roger Maris to eclipse the Babe. Often remarked upon in that 1961 season was Mantle recording just 16 doubles. Yet, Mantle was never a doubles hitter – he had 17 doubles the year before and would get 15 the next year. The Mick had just one 30 double season and had 16 seasons with fewer doubles than HR, behind only Killebrew (18) and McCovey (17).
• The Duke shows up not in Flatbush, but leading the Dodgers to their first Tinseltown title. It would be Snider’s last season hitting .300, cracking 20 homers or even reaching 100 hits. Alas, the ridiculously short fence (250 feet) at the LA Coliseum was down the left-field line, and not in right where the Silver Fox could have done some serious damage.
• Cy Williams shows up as the NL’s career HR leader, albeit over 100 taters behind the Babe. Williams had moved into the NL’s top spot with a 41 HR outburst as a 35 year-old in 1923, following Rajah as the NL’s second 40 HR man. 90 years on, Cy still makes the top 20 in HR aged 35+, having been passed on that list most recently by Raul Ibanez, earlier this week.
• We tend to forget what a fine (and, sadly, unfulfilled) talent Carl Evertt was – for the 1999 and 2000 seasons, he out-OPSed such notable centerfielders as Ken Griffey, Jim Edmonds and Andruw Jones.
• The Say Hey Kid is missing but not forgotten – he shows up frequently in these lists, but often just outside the top 3.

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Did I mention that Ruth played all the outfield positions? Actually, Ruth played right field slightly more than left field (although his LF totals are recorded as “incomplete”).

• Ted Williams shows up here in his rookie season of 1939, the only year he played anywhere other than left field. Williams’ debut game was against the Yanks, the only time he and Lou Gehrig appeared in the same contest.
• There’s Sammy Sosa in his aforementioned epic 2001 campaign. It could well be a long time before we see another season of Runs and RBI totaling 300, and those two plus walks totaling 400 (among contemporaries, McGwire matched the second feat once, and Bonds did it four times, but neither ever accomplished the first feat; A-Rod came tantalizingly close to both in 2007)
• Frank Robinson makes the list for his very first month in the majors – hard to top that for a making the right first impression.
• Manny’s 1999 season was probably his best, leading the AL in SLG, OPS and OPS+, and leading the majors in RBI. Ramirez has surprisingly little black ink for such an accomplished player – other than that 1999 season, he had one HR and one batting title, two other seasons leading in SLG and OPS, and 3 seasons leading in OBP.
• While the Yankees were running away with the 1927 AL pennant, Harry Heilmann took the AL batting crown with a .398 mark, one of four seasons hitting over .390, tied for the most ever with Rajah, Ed Delahanty and teammate Ty Cobb.
• Long before joining the YES broadcast crew, NYC native Ken Singleton was a damn good ballplayer. From 1973-80, Singleton had 4 WAR in 6 of 8 seasons, tied with Reggie Jackson for the most among right-fielders, and especially impressive considering his -11.2 dWAR over that period. Singleton had his big month in 1981 despite leading the majors in that strike-shortened season with 21 GIDP. Kenny is one of just 13 players having more walks than strikeouts, with 1200+ of each.

Watch for Part 2 when I look at the best batting seasons by infielders.