Posts Tagged ‘hall of fame best’

A Baseball Hall of Fame Dart Game

August 18, 2013
The Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.

The Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.

If they would only let you, and they never will, you could go to the great hall of member plaques in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York and throw darts at those individual memorials you could not read from across the room. Chances are good that 25 dart strikes later, you would have put together a team roster that could play with or beat any of the top MLB clubs playing today in 2013.

It simply isn’t going to happen, but here’s another possibility.

Thanks to the great and varied ways that Baseball Almanac puts together interesting data, it’s now possible to draft a quick team based on best performer variables by position. I put together the following table this morning that identifies the “best”   regular position, pitching, and managerial candidates by two variables. This decision doesn’t mean that I actually agree with every choice the data provided, but I do think we could play a pretty good game or two with the 17 separate players the data chose for the nine spots.

A Two Variable Look at the Best Players by Nine Positions and a Preferred Manager:

POSITION # IN HOF BEST B.A. B.A. MOST HR HR #
Catcher 13 Mickey Cochrane .320 Johnny Bench 389
1st Base 18 Dan Brouthers .342 Harmon Killebrew 573
2nd Base 19 Rogers Hornsby .358 Rogers Hornsby 301
3rd Base 11 Wade Boggs .328 Mike Schmidt 548
Shortstop 22 Honus Wagner .327 Ernie Banks 512
Left Field 20 Ed Delahanty .346 Ted Williams 521
Center Field 18 Ty Cobb .366 Willie Mays 660
Right Field 23 Babe Ruth .342 Hank Aaron 755
POSITION # IN HOF MOST WINS WINS MOST “K”S “K”S
Pitcher 61 Cy Young 511 Nolan Ryan 5,714
POSITION # IN HOF MOST TIME YEARS MOST WINS WINS
Manager 19 Connie Mack 53 Years Connie Mack 3,731 Wins

As a matter of personal preference, I would take these nine guys from their primes as my preferred all time lineup and batting order:

Willie Mays, CF

Rogers Hornsby, 2B

Babe Ruth, RF

Josh Gibson, C

Lou Gehrig, 1B

Hank Aaron, LF

Honus Wagner, SS

Brooks Robinson, 3B

Satchel Paige, P

I don’t expect all of you to agree with my picks, That right to different opinions is one of the things that has always made talking baseball a lot of fun, but what the heck! I wouldn’t protest too much if I was forced to take Joe Jackson or Ted Williams over Hank Aaron in left – or the great George Sisler over Lou Gehrig at first, or Christy Mathewson or Walter Johnson over Satchel Paige as my starting pitcher.

Heck again! We could go back to throwing darts in the Hall and probably pick a club that was better than most.

Please post your own dart game results, or choices, if you have any.

Have a nice peaceful Sunday, everybody.

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