One fun feature of the Player Rater that I’ve been playing with is the historical seasons. This is just so much fun. Nostalgia rules. Since I’m on vacation, I thought a trip down memory lane would be somewhat entertaining. At least more entertaining than, like, not having anything right?
I’m going to highlight the best player per decade, and then a super fun random outlier season you may have forgotten, then some lessons I learned about this silly game we love.
2010s: Obviously this was dominated by Miguel Cabrera and Paul Goldschmidt, first round picks in every league, every format, for quite some time.
| # | Name | Year | Team | Halls | Awards | Pos | MVPos | $ | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | $R | $HR | $RBI | $SB | $AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Miguel Cabrera | 2012 | DET | MVP | 1B/3B | 3B | 34.6 | 622 | 109 | 44 | 139 | 4 | 0.33 | 6.4 | 9.4 | 9.9 | 0.9 | 7 | |
| 4 | Paul Goldschmidt | 2017 | ARI | 1B | 33.7 | 558 | 117 | 36 | 120 | 18 | 0.298 | 8.3 | 4.5 | 7.2 | 7.7 | 5.1 |
These are quite good seasons, correct? Of course, you drafted these guys in the first, so you expected such wonderful juiciness. These two guys accounted for half of the top ten seasons of all first base seasons from the decade. But what is the best, most fun outlier season that happened?
| # | Name | Year | Team | Halls | Awards | Pos | MVPos | $ | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | $R | $HR | $RBI | $SB | $AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chris Davis | 2013 | BAL | 1B/OF | OF | 36.9 | 584 | 103 | 53 | 138 | 4 | 0.286 | 6.2 | 15.2 | 12.1 | -0.8 | 3.1 |
For a glorious season, waiver wire darling Chris Davis randomly popped on the scene and hit 53 HR with 138 RBI. At the time, my favorite team was in the middle of a rebuild and MASN was on my TV. I experienced the weirdness of this season. Everyone kept waiting for the bottom to drop out on the player and the team. That happened the next season as he was drafted in the consensus first round……and flopped to a .196 average in a time before people thought Joey Gallo was valuable. Just a crazy story, because in 2015 he popped off again! Then his career died. What a weird and wonderful game we play. Valuing Chris Davis appropriately could have won you a league, then lost it, then won it again. Imagine a dynasty owner.
Davis is the reason I shy away from the low-contact and high-K batters. I’ve noticed a severe difference in their floors which are somewhere inside the crust of the Earth. Call it the Crash Davis Rule.
2000s:
This was the Pujols decade. He was the first pick in every draft that had intelligent drafting, or at least the top 3. All of his seasons ended up in the top 20 1B of the decade. I hated every second of it, but for sure can appreciate the greatness we witnessed. Probably the best hitter I’ve ever seen and possibly ever will.
Who is my random outlier?
| # | Name | Year | Team | Halls | Awards | Pos | MVPos | $ | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | $R | $HR | $RBI | $SB | $AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Derrek Lee | 2005 | CHC | 1B | 1B | 32.1 | 594 | 120 | 46 | 107 | 15 | 0.335 | 6.9 | 8.8 | 4.5 | 4.9 | 6.1 |
Where did this come from? 50 doubles too, 46 HR? Was a truly magical 6th round pick from 2005. Was a ton of fun and I think I owned him in my Sandbox league (remember that?) Never did this before, and never did it again. Also gave Cubs fans something to root for in some truly terrible seasons.
DLee was considered a low-upside boring bat. People be acting like guys have no upside if they’ve been in the league a while. This is simply not true. Everyone has upside. Drafting the steady guy can get you a higher floor and sometimes a fluky MVP season
1990s:
Everyone’s gonna think it’s Mark McGwire as the top season. People don’t realize how good Jeff Bagwell was:
| Name | Year | Team | Halls | Awards | Pos | MVPos | $ | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | $R | $HR | $RBI | $SB | $AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeff Bagwell | 1994 | HOU | FM | MVP | 1B | 1B | 44.3 | 400 | 104 | 39 | 116 | 15 | 0.368 | 9 | 11.9 | 10.2 | 4.5 | 7.7 |
MMMM. Here’s the thing with the 90s. It was almost pre-internet, so for a good portion of these seasons we didn’t do the game. So would Bagwell, who did this in a strike-shortened season, have been a league winner? Just a freaking crazy good player and deserved Hall of Fame player.
| Name | Year | Team | Halls | Awards | Pos | MVPos | $ | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | $R | $HR | $RBI | $SB | $AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cecil Fielder | 1990 | DET | 1B | 1B | 36.1 | 573 | 104 | 51 | 132 | 0 | 0.278 | 7.1 | 16.1 | 10 | 0.3 | 1.7 |
And he did this pre-steroids! Fielder was such a fun watch, even though back then it was hard to get games. The MLBTV package wasn’t available. MLB TV actually wasn’t invented yet. And the internet wasn’t in that many houses. But man was Fielder fun to follow through box scores from The Sporting News.
1980s:
So many fun names from my Topps and Donruss sets here. No, I never finished a whole set. And no, there was no Fleer for me. I was definitely a Topps loyalist. Through most of the 80s, I performed what amounted to slave labor for my parents for the honor of taking 35 cents to the gas station and picking out a pack. Think I’ll take fifty cents and buy a pack now, right? The cost of cards can’t have gone up that much, or has it?
I remember the Rated Rookies the most. And Will Clark was the best of the bunch
But he wasn’t an official Rated Rookie? My brain doesn’t work the way it should. I guess my knowledge of 80s baseball cards doesn’t go as far as it should. But look at his 89 stats. Great numbers from a very good player.
| # | Name | Year | Team | Halls | Awards | Pos | MVPos | $ | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | $R | $HR | $RBI | $SB | $AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | Will Clark | 1989 | SF | M | 1B | 1B | 26.8 | 588 | 104 | 23 | 111 | 8 | 0.333 | 6.4 | 3.3 | 6.4 | 2.1 | 7.8 |
That’s enough of the decade by decade breakdown. I’m mainly not doing that anymore because I wasn’t alive in any of the previous ones. Well, I was for three years in the 70s, but I was a severely overweight baby at the time and only wanted to eat baseballs. Most of my knowledge from these times is from Strat-O-Matic Baseball.
Twitter was a bit behind in the late 20s-early 30s era. In fact, noted telegram blogger Fay Galbright sent out numerous telegrams to get his takes known in public, but they took 3 weeks to get there by the Pony Express so all the sample sizes were small and outdated. Fay (was quite the manly name back then, don’t worry) was all over the Gehrig/Foxx debate as for who to take and when. He experimented with carrier pigeons but in the end, just wrote everything in a moleskin notebook.
| # | Name | Year | Team | Halls | Awards | Pos | MVPos | $ | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | $R | $HR | $RBI | $SB | $AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lou Gehrig | 1931 | NYY | FM | 1B | 1B | 55.2 | 619 | 163 | 46 | 184 | 17 | 0.341 | 10 | 22.6 | 12.6 | 4.9 | 4.3 | |
| 2 | Lou Gehrig | 1927 | NYY | FM | 1B | 1B | 53.5 | 584 | 149 | 47 | 175 | 10 | 0.373 | 9.4 | 22.6 | 11.8 | 2.2 | 6.5 | |
| 4 | Jimmie Foxx | 1932 | PHA | FM | MVP | 1B/3B | 3B | 50.2 | 585 | 151 | 58 | 169 | 3 | 0.364 | 8.8 | 22.6 | 10.9 | 0.5 | 6.6 |
| 5 | Jimmie Foxx | 1933 | PHA | FM | MVP | 1B | 1B | 48.4 | 573 | 125 | 48 | 163 | 2 | 0.356 | 7.2 | 22.6 | 11.1 | 0.5 | 6.2 |
Simply crazy numbers. Would have been a gold mine of content for people covering first base in the 1930s.
Like I said, I’m on vacation and had this one written as an evergreen-type article. I hope you enjoyed it and had your nostalgia itch scratch. No, this doesn’t help your team much this year but I’m in Maine so I win.
