The Pecan Park Eagle

Will Mike Piazza (L) and Jeff Kent separately have the most career home runs by a catcher and a 2nd baseman, but will either live to see their inductions into the Hall of Fame?

Weekends and early summer mornings are not too different for many of us longtime baseball history fans today than they’ve always been, but we do have to concede this much and more to the new digital age in which we now live. – The tools we have for research today are sure better, faster, more comprehensive, more decisive, more accessible, and more fun to play with than at any other time in history. The Pecan Park Eagle is simply grateful to have been born no earlier than e were. We would have hated missing out on the start of the best, if more complex, times in research and communication history.

Today’s quick look at the best offensive position sets by career bating average and home run totals is quite interesting as a Sunday morning project, we think, especially as we consider the very different picture for Hall of Fame induction for each Tha batting average boys, made up mostly from early 20th century careers, include 7 of 9 as Hall of Famers. The two HOF-missing starters include the long-banned Joe Jackson in left field and the still active, and thus ineligible catcher, Joe Mauer.

The home run team, on the other hand, includes only four HOF members and five (for various reasons) non members, including steroid-suspicion of several.

My criteria for these selections was simple. I don’t like to complicate Sunday mornings:

(1) There no pitcher selections.

(2) We picked the leaders for each of the eight field positions and the DH as the 9-offensive players.

(3) To be eligible, except for DH, a player had to play all or most of his career at the position for which he was selected.

By including the DH here, we were able then to include a couple of great players, Tris Speakers in the BA camp and Willie Mays in the HR group and ut them on the field as the two greatest center fielders in history as we moved out Ed Delahanty and Babe Ruth to the DH spots.

Interesting to note too is that active player Joe Mauer is still building on the best career batting average for a catcher at .323. Mauer would have to fall below Mickey Cochrane’s career .320 BA to lose his spot among thee all-timers.

Thanks to Baseball Almanac for being the ever ready resource for research of this nature. Check out the record files four own enlightenment and amusement, if you haven’t done so already:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/himenu.shtml

Here’s how our two teams finally shook out by position:

Tags: career BA and HR teams by position

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