Fantasy Baseball Advice

The Fantasy Baseball Hall of Fame has spent an unhealthy amount of time identifying the best fantasy seasons, careers, All Stars, and Hall of Famers of the fantasy era. The Fantasy Era began in 1980, and thus many great players of the 1980’s fall just short of enshrinement since their careers commenced in 1979 or earlier. This, along with the fact it’s just plain fun, has led us down the path of looking back in time, decade by decade, for the best fantasy players in baseballs history. We’ll be following reverse chronological order with the 1950s now taking center stage.

Previous Decades: 1970s, 1960s.

Famous for its pitching splendor, the 1960’s brought runs scoring back down to levels not seen since the deadball era of the 1910’s. Many casual fans do not realize the trend actually began a decade earlier, in 1951, which ushered in a 20-year era that mostly belonged to the starting pitcher.

The image below charts the average runs scored per game in Major League Baseball from 1903 to present. Runs scored declined almost 30% between the high point in 1950 (4.85 r/g) and 1968 (3.42 r/g).

With relief pitchers not yet stereotyped solely into late inning roles, and starting pitchers routinely going the distance, the fantasy game was nothing like we see today. The best batting stats of the decade seem rather typical:

AVG:   .365 – Mickey Mantle (1957)
RS:    132 – Mickey Mantle (1956)
HR:    52 – Mickey Mantle (1956)
RBI:   145 – Al Rosen (1953)
SB:    56 – Luis Aparacio (1959)

However, the effect of the era is apparent once we move to the pitching side of the equation:

W:     28 – Robin Roberts (1952)
ERA:   1.97 – Billy Pierce (1955)
WHIP:  0.95 – Warren Hacker (1952)
SO:    263 – Herb Score (1956)
SV:    27 – Ellis Kinder (1953)

Wins are up significantly and saves are down to the lowest levels we’ve come across. Not shown here are the incredible innings pitched totals as well. No pitcher since 1980 has reached 300 innings pitched, while the 1950s alone had seven.

(An interesting side note, though not germane to a discussion on the 1950s, is the fact 300 inning occurrences increased through 1969, before declining into non existence about a dozen years later.)

Finally, before getting to the players, below is our customary graph of the basic fantasy batting stats. As expected, batting averages declined throughout the1950s, starting off at around .265 and ending 10 points lower. Stolen bases increased significantly, starting at one stolen base ever 130 at bats, and ending at a stolen base every 92. Home runs were fairly constant, though occurring at a higher rate in the earliest part of the decade.

Keep in mind that this decade was the last in which every year featured the 154 game schedule. In 1961 baseball expanded to 162 games, more than a 5% increase, allowing season totals forever after too look a bit better than those that came before.

Top-10 Players of the 1950s

10) Eddie Mathews, 3B
Peak Avg in Decade: 12.1
Overall FBHOF Score: 71.7

Mathews smacked 25 home runs in his 1952 rookie year and 16 “fantasy worthy” seasons later ended his career well past the 500 HR plateau at 512. He reached 40 or more four times in the ‘50s and is currently ranked as the 3rd best third bagger of all time, behind Mike Schmidt and George Brett

His fantasy finest season came in ’59. Batting .306 / .390 / .593, he also added 118 R, 46 HR, and 114 RBI in his stat line, and finished the year as the 5th best batter in baseball. A cross decade star, Mathews has four 11+ FBHOF points seasons to his credit in the 1950s, and two 13 point seasons to start the 1960s.

9) Minnie Minoso, OF
Peak Avg in Decade: 12.4
Overall FBHOF Score: 68.0

A very good major leaguer, Minoso was even better as a fantasy baseball player. The seven time all star had the same number 10+ point seasons in the decade and was a rare 5-tool star. I am reminded of a modern day Bobby Abreu at his peak, only with a longer period of success.

During his career Minoso scored 90+ runs nine times; batted over .300 eight times; stole 17 or more bases seven times; and hit 19+ home runs or drove in 90 or more runners five times. His best season came in 1954:.320 AVG, 119 R, 19 HR, 116 RBI, 18 SB, 13.4 Points.

8. Stan Musial, 1B
Peak Avg in Decade: 13.3
Overall FBHOF Score: 71.9

“Stan The Man” is sold short by when analyzing his tenure within the 1950’s only. His career actually spans three decades and a few of his great seasons came in the 1960’s. Musial was pure hitter, one of the best baseball has ever seen. Including batters from the 1800s, Musial is among the all time greats in many career statistics:

.331 AVG – 30th
.417 OBP – 23rd
.559 SLG – 21st
.976 OPS – 14th
1949 RS – 9th
1951 RBI – 6th
725 2B – 3rd
6134 TB – 2nd

Fantasy wise, Musial was incredibly consistent in the 1950s, recording five seasons between 12.8 and 13.9 points. His 5 year peak during the decade was .341 AVG, 116 R, 29 HR, 109 RBI.

7) Hank Aaron, OF
Peak Avg in Decade: 13.5
Overall FBHOF Score: 98.8

You may recall Aaron was ranked as the 2nd best player of the 1960s as well, and now that we’ve completed the review of the 1950’s, his career stat line is complete. It’s pure gold. Aaron is the second best fantasy baseball player we’ve ever seen, and he currently owns the all time mark for total career points.

In a span of 11 years, the outfielder has an unheard of ten seasons of 15 or more FBHOF points. I would be surprised if any player, even going back through the 1920s, could duplicate this feat. Six of Aaron’s best seven seasons occurred in the 1960s, the one outlier being 1959: .355 AVG, 39 HR, 116 R, 123 RBI, and 8 SB.

Aaron became fantasy eligible in 1954. One year later he reached 11 FBHOF Points and only dipped below 10 points eighteen years later in 1972.

6) Ernie Banks, 1B
Peak Avg in Decade: 13.6
Overall FBHOF Score: 77.4

“Mr. Cub’s” three best seasons came while he manned shortstop, but for his career he played more games at first base (1534 vs. 1050) than short and thus is considered a corner infielder for our purposes. I fibbed a bit as well; in fact, he was eligible at shortstop over the course of his six best season, a consecutive year stretch from 1955 through 1960.

During this time he averaged 41 HR, 101 R, 116 RBI, 5 SB, and batted .294. He was also a top-5 batter four times.

5) Warren Spahn, SP
Peak Avg in Decade: 13.7
Overall FBHOF Score: 74.7

The first pitcher on our top-10 list, Span was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, alongside Roberto Clemente, the only two voted in by the BBWA this year. Like Musial, Spahn’s career covered three decades but he Spahn at lease, was at his best in the 1950’s. His best season came in 1953: 23 W, 1.06 WHIP, 2.10 ERA, and 148 K in 266 IP. As with most of his peers, he didn’t maintain a high (by today’s standards) strikeout rate.

Interestingly, and perhaps unfortunately, Spahn also saved three games. In 1953, only four major league pitchers recorded 15 or more saves, and Spahn therefore gets an inordinate amount of credit for his three. This nuance will be typical with many of the pitchers of his era and earlier. No doubt, had fantasy baseball been invented in 1950, Saves would not have been a core scoring statistic. We’re stuck with it though, and Spahn’s 29 career saves make positively impact his overall score.

4) Mickey Mantle, OF
Peak Avg in Decade: 14.7
Overall FBHOF Score: 90.8

Moving from 5th place into 4th marks the beginning of a new tier of 1950s greats. The 8th through 5th slots are differentiated by just 0.4 FBHOF points. The jump into 4th is a full 1.0 FHBOF points. Deservedly so – Mantle was a hitting machine, and as we saw in the introduction, owns the best single season results in the decade in 3 of the 5 offensive fantasy stats.

Mantle was still great heading into the early 1960’s, but few in the history of the sport match his 19.0 point season in 1956.

His peak 5-year average during the decade: .322 AVG, 121 R, 39 HR, 99 RBI, 15 SB. His scores by year:

1951- 3.8
1952 – 10.8
1953 – 9.1
1954 – 10.9
1955 – 12.1
1956 – 19.0
1957 – 15.6
1958 – 15.8
1959 – 11.1

3) Duke Snider, OF
Peak Avg in Decade: 14.8
Overall FBHOF Score: 80.0

Snider typically falls short in his inevitable comparison to Mantle and Willie Mays. All three were of course New York centerfielders during the 1950’s and all three were no brainer Hall of Fame selections, but at least in terms of fantasy baseball, Snider can run with Mantle – during the 1950’s at least.

When lining their best years up side by side, in order of greatness as opposed to chronological, the similarities are striking:

Snider        Mantle
17.67          18.98
15.11           15.80
14.68          15.58
14.65          12.06
11.98          11.14
10.80         10.94
10.16          10.83
9.64            9.07
5.98            3.84
3.70

In one of the most underrated seasons of all time, Snider in 1954 batted .336 with 132 R, 42 HR, 126 RBI, and 16 SB. He was the best fantasy batter of the season, for the second consecutive year. Mantle and (mostly) Mays would take honors in five of the next six seasons.

2) Robin Roberts, SP
Peak Avg in Decade: 16.7
Overall FBHOF Score: 92.0

Really. In his New Historical Abstract, Bill James ranks Roberts as the 16th best pitcher of all time. He’s a Hall of Famer and a six time 20 game winner. He led his league 27 times in various important statistical categories. Yes, to this day, he gets little credit as one of the all time great pitchers.

Perhaps it was the era in which he pitched. Following Roberts good fortunes in the 1950’s came the greatest pitching era of all time. With this of course, came some of the greatest pitching names of all time – Koufax and Gibson plus significant single season performances of historical importance – Denny McLain’s 31 wins in 1968 and superb seasons out of Juan Marichal and Don Drysdale. Roberts never struck out 200 batters, never had an ERA under 2.50, nor a WHIP below 1.00.

What he did do was finish 6 of the 10 seasons in the Top-3, and four consecutive as the best overall pitcher in the game. From 1952-1955 he averaged 24 W, 1.07 WHIP, 2.90 ERA, 172 K’s, and 4 saves per season.

He’s on his own plane when looking at 4-year peak scores among starting pitchers of the 1950s:

17.4 – Robin Roberts
14.1 – Warren Spahn
11.8 – Early Wynn
11.7 – Billy Pierce
11.2 – Mike Garcia

1) Willie Mays, OF
Peak Avg in Decade: 17.5
Overall FBHOF Score: 102.3

Through the 1950’s, Willie Mays is the greatest fantasy player of all time. His stats speak for themselves. Please pay particular attention to the sheer number of double digit FBHOF Point seasons, identified in the “score” column.

The Fantasy Baseball Hall of Fame has spent an unhealthy amount of time identifying the best fantasy seasons, careers, statistics, Fantasy All Stars, and Hall of Famers of the fantasy era. As mentioned ad nauseam, the fantasy era began in 1980, and thus many great players of the 1980’s fall just short of enshrinement since their careers commenced in 1979 or earlier. This, along with the fact it’s just plain fun, has led us down the path of looking back in time, decade by decade, for the best fantasy players in baseballs history. We’ll be following reverse chronological order with the 1960s taking center stage today. As you may recall, earlier in October. Joe Morgan was crowned best fantasy player of 1970s.

The tail end of the 1960s is famous for its strong favoritism towards the pitcher. In 1968 the average NL batter had a slash line of .243 / .300 / .341. The AL batters were worse off still – .230 / .297 / .339 and the league’s runs scoring was at its lowest point in the 20th century. Throughout the decade, as one moves closer to the 1970s, stolen bases and batting average were on the decline, though home runs were on the rise:

This created an environment where the fantasy standouts were relatively low average power hitters with a good deal of speed. The word relative is key however, as a .300 batting average in 1968 is more like a .335 average in today’s batting environment. As we did with the 1970s, here are a few examples of Fantasy Era players and their FBHOF scores:

• 90+ Points: Only two players have ever amassed 90 or more FBHOF points: Randy Johnson and Barry Bonds
• 80-89 Points: 7 Players are in this grouping, think Roger Clemens
• 70-79 Points: 15 players score in this bucket, the most common. Think of them as the average FBHOF’er – Ryne Sandberg, Jeff Bagwell, and Curt Schilling types.
• 65-69 Points: 12 Players. The low-enders such as Don Mattingly and Jose Canseco
• 52-64 Points: Only pitchers can score as low as 52 and get elected, David Cone is a great example

The ten best players of the 60’s were all Outfielders, Starting Pitchers, and First Basemen. Before admiring this group, a few words on the best of the rest at each position.

Catcher – Johnny Bench had the highest average peak score of the 1960s, but only played in 1968 and 1969 and two years a dynasty does not make. When looking at the 1970s, his FBHOF score was a fine 68.61 and adding these two new seasons in jumps his score up to 76.7, 24th best all time regardless of position.

The best fantasy catcher of the decade was Joe Torre. His 68.6 FBHOF points is well within the range of Hall of Fame criteria and he was at his best in 1964 with 13.1 FBHOF points. He batted .321 with 20 HR, 87 R, and 109 RBI. Torre also has two other 10 point seasons and currently sits second all time at the position. This is a bit unfair though, since his best season was as a third baseman in 1971.

Second Base – There are no offensive stars here as only two times did a second bagger record 10-points in the entire decade. In 1961 as a rookie, Jake Wood stole 30 bases and scored 96 runs amassing 12.0 FBHOF points in the process. Two years later, Tony Taylor batted .281 with 102 runs scored for exactly 10.0 FBHOF points. Neither had noteworthy fantasy careers however, and the prize for best of the decade falls to Don Buford. While never a star, he did have four seasons of 7.7 or more points and his peak 5-year average of 7.5 points is easily best in the decade.

Third Base – No player at the hot corner meets FBHOF requirements but Ron Santo comes awfully close. The life long Chicagoan scored between 10.9 and 12.5 FBHOF points each year between 1963 and 1968, with an overall score of 63.6, 5th best all time from what we’ve investigated. He was routinely capable of 30 HR, 100 RBI, and 90 Runs Scored.

Shortstop – While not as weak of a position as their middle infield counterparts, the shortstops of the 1960’s weren’t very good either. The best of them was Maury Wills, he of the best fantasy stolen base seasons ever.

Closer – 32 saves was the highest recorded in a single season, and Hoyt Wilhem reached 152 on the decade.

Top-10 Players of the 1960s

10. Bob Gibson, SP
Peak Avg in Decade: 12.9
Overall FBHOF Points: 71.6

Though still great at the start of the 1970s, Gibson turned in his finest work between 1966 and 1969. In total, the pitcher had seven 10+ FBHOF points seasons, tied for 5th best we’ve seen. He recorded the 6th best pitching season of the decade in 1968 – 22 W, 0.85 WHIP, 1.12 ERA, 268 K.

9. Jim Bunning, SP
Peak Avg in Decade: 13.0
Overall FBHOF Points: 68.5

Bunning won at least 17 games six times between 1961 and 1967 and was incredible during the last two in which he averaged 18 W, 1.02 WHIP, 2.35 ERA, and 252 K’s

8. Orlando Cepeda, 1B
Peak Avg in Decade: 13.6
Overall FBHOF Points: 72.2

Went .311 with 46 HR, 105 R, 146 RBI, and 12 SB in 1961. Averaged a very good 31 HR, 93 R, 105 RBI, and .315 Average in his next best four years.

7. Don Drysdale, SP
Peak Avg in Decade: 13.8
Overall FBHOF Points: 71.7

Had three 14+ FBHOF seasons between 1960 and 1964. During these three years he averaged 19 W, 1.05 WHIP, 2.62 ERA, 238 K’s. During the decade Drysdale won 18 or more games four times; had an ERA under 3.00 seven times, and a WHIP better 1.20 eight times.

6. Lou Brock, OF
Peak Avg in Decade: 3.9
Overall FBHOF Points: 83.1

His career spanned 18 years and was very good in both the 1960’s and 1970s. In the earlier part of his baseball life from 1962 to 1969 he totaled 89.2 FBHOF points, and ended his career in 1979 with an additional 85.6 FBHOF points. Between 1964 and 1974 he recorded at least 10 FBHOF points per season for 11 straight seasons. 1967 was his finest – .299 AVG, 113 R, 21 HR, 76 RBI, 52 SB.

5. Juan Marichal, SP
Peak Avg in Decade: 14.8
Overall FBHOF Points: 79.4

A devastating pitcher in both 1963 and 1965, but was only an elite fantasy pitcher for a total of 5 seasons. His 5 year peak ranks 6th all time among starters, during this stretch he averaged 23 W, 1.00 WHIP, 2.29 ERA, and 225 K’s.

4. Frank Robinson
Peak Avg in Decade: 15.5
Overall FBHOF Points: 80.1

Played from 1956 through 1976 but his greatest seasons came in the 1960s. They are prolific enough to admire individually:

1962 – 17.8 Pts, .342 AVG, 134 R, 39 HR, 136 RBI, 18 SB
1966 – 16.4 Pts, .316 AVG, 122 R, 49 HR, 122 RBI, 8 SB
1961 – 15.9 Pts, .323 AVG, 117 R, 37 HR, 124 RBI, 22 SB
1965 – 13.6 Pts, .296 AVG, 109 R, 33 HR, 113 RBI, 13 SB
1964 – 13.6 Pts, .306 AVG, 103 R, 29 HR, 96 RBI, 23 SB

3. Willie Mays
Peak Avg in Decade: 16.4
Overall FBHOF Points: 88.5

Only two batters since the 1960s have recorded 5 seasons of 15.5 FBHOF points. Given that Mays’ career started in 1951 and has five Top-5 MVP seasons during the decade, it is safe to assume he’ll end up with more. His power was awesome, reaching 40+ home runs four times in the 1960s. Two others matched this accomplishment, but Harmon Killebrew batted .267 and Hank Aaron is next up on this list.

2. Hank Aaron
Peak Avg in Decade: 16.8
Overall FBHOF Points: 92.9

Aaron is the new single season record holder for most FBHOF Points in a season for a batter. In 1963 he went .319 with 121 R, 44 HR, 130 RBI, and 31 SB for 19.7 FBHOF points. He had eight additional seasons of 14 or more FBHOF points, reaching the 30-HR plateau an incredible eleven times. Like Mays, Aaron too had his share of great seasons in the unexplored 1950s and both have a great chance at being named the greatest fantasy player that ever lived when all is said and done.

1. Sandy Koufax
Peak Avg in Decade: 17.5
Overall FBHOF Points: 89.1

In 1994 Greg Maddux was masterful, and few pitchers have dominated batters as often and as easily as he did. In 202 innings batters were held to a .502 OPS (.207 / .243 / .259) and routinely looked silly getting bad wood on the ball. His ERA was 1.56 and his WHIP 0.90, only Doc Gooden had a better ERA during the fantasy era and nobody topped his WHIP until Pedro Martinez in 2000. The Mad Dog, in a strike shortened season, gave up 3 runs or less in 24 of his 25 starts (13 of which were 1 run or less).

He was unhittable. From a fantasy standpoint, the only knock on his season was a relatively low 156 strikeouts. This mattered little in real-life, but this K/9 rate of “just” 6.95 did hold back his fantasy scoring.

Keep this season in the back of your mind. Now picture the same thing only with the pitcher punching out 382 batters, almost two and half times as many, then picture that same pitcher doing it three times in four years.

Sandy Koufax’s FBHOF score surpassed 20 points, a new record in and of itself, three times – in 1963, 1965, and 1966. His fantasy lines:

No player in fantasy history (that we’ve seen) has been remotely as good as Koufax during their three year peaks. The Top-10 three year peak scores:

20.8 – Sandy Koufax
17.9 – Randy Johnson
17.5 – Hank Aaron
17.3 – Pedro Martinez
17.1 – Alex Rodriguez
17.0 – Joe Morgan
16.8 – Greg Maddux
16.7 – Frank Robinson
16.7 – Willie Mays
16.6 – Steve Carlton