All-Decade Team

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

Drungo should weigh in here, but I believe it would be a very early decade.    The reason is that WAR is relative to the players playing at the time, so the more variance there is between the quality of the best and worst players, the higher the top WAR players will be.     In general terms, the quality of players has homogenized over time.     Obviously you can still get outliers like Trout, but in general I think a group of 10-15 top WAR players from an older decade should typically be higher than in more recent times.    Maybe this weekend I’ll noodle around on this.   

I should have clarified, modern era only.  That way we can keep @DrungoHazewood out of the conversation when he tries to inform us with obscure stats from Jim Bob Cooter of the Federal League in 1801.  

(Them's just jokes, Drungo, I know the Federal League wasn't around in 1801.)

I agree, I think it would be an early decade as well.  For some reason the 50s came to mind immediately even though decades earlier seem to make more sense.  

[Frobby]

Just now, Moose Milligan said:

I should have clarified, modern era only.  That way we can keep @DrungoHazewood out of the conversation when he tries to inform us with obscure stats from Jim Bob Cooter of the Federal League in 1801.  

(Them's just jokes, Drungo, I know the Federal League wasn't around in 1801.)

I agree, I think it would be an early decade as well.  For some reason the 50s came to mind immediately even though decades earlier seem to make more sense.  

Of course, the 40’s are weird because of many top players going to WWII.    There are probably some very high annual WAR figures for the WAR years, but cumulative totals for the decade are probably lower.    

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

I’m sure that’s your only criterion.  

To humor you:

1B Votto 52.1 rWAR

2B Cano 54.2

3B Beltre 51.0 

SS Simmons 36.9

C Posey 42.2

OF Trout 72.5

OF Betts 42.0

OF MCutchen 41.2

DH Ortiz 25.3

P Kershaw 59.3

P Scherzer 56.1

P Verlander 56.1

P Hamels 46.2

P Sale 45.4

 

You’re welcome.

Found this list done by Axios.    Wish I’d googled it earlier before doing all the looking myself!    They have Encarnacion as DH rather than Ortiz.    Also, because they break down the OF by specific position, Brett Gardner ends up as the LF and McCutchen is out because Trout beats him in CF.    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.axios.com/mlb-wins-above-replacement-leaders-pitchers-c338e513-94c0-4f3c-971e-1c072636389e.html

[Frobby]

8 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I should have clarified, modern era only.  That way we can keep @DrungoHazewoodI agree, I think it would be an early decade as well.  For some reason the 50s came to mind immediately even though decades earlier seem to make more sense.  

Found this sporcle quiz on the top WAR players by decade.    It shows the top WAR total for each decade, topped by 106.6 in the 1920’s.    I think we can guess who that is!   Anyway the next two highest totals are 1900-10 and 1910-20.    So, that generally supports my thesis.  Top WAR totals actually were very low before that, maybe because they were playing fewer games?

https://www.sporcle.com/games/cjmulrain/MLBWAR

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

Found this list done by Axios.    Wish I’d googled it earlier before doing all the looking myself!    They have Encarnacion as DH rather than Ortiz.    Also, because they break down the OF by specific position, Brett Gardner ends up as the LF and McCutchen is out because Trout beats him in CF.    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.axios.com/mlb-wins-above-replacement-leaders-pitchers-c338e513-94c0-4f3c-971e-1c072636389e.html

I think I've gone soft on Big Papi cause I like him on the postseason broadcast team.  Also how his moment after the marathon bombing rallied the city and also a murder attempt will kind of strip away a lot of ill-will towards someone and put things into perspective.  

I think EE wins the DH role because he played the full decade, Ortiz didn't.  Now I know we're talking about WAR here but my initial reaction for the defining DH of the decade would be Ortiz despite the fact that he retired after the 2016 season.

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Found this sporcle quiz on the top WAR players by decade.    It shows the top WAR total for each decade, topped by 106.6 in the 1920’s.    I think we can guess who that is!   Anyway the next two highest totals are 1900-10 and 1910-20.    So, that generally supports my thesis.  Top WAR totals actually were very low before that, maybe because they were playing fewer games?

https://www.sporcle.com/games/cjmulrain/MLBWAR

Yeah, Babe Ruth kicks ass, even 100 years later.

I think it's both things you mentioned, they played fewer games but also the floor for a replacement level player back then was much lower than it is now.  I'm willing to bet that if Ryan Flaherty was transported back to the 1920s he'd be an all star.

[Moose Milligan]

7 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Found this sporcle quiz on the top WAR players by decade.    It shows the top WAR total for each decade, topped by 106.6 in the 1920’s.    I think we can guess who that is!   Anyway the next two highest totals are 1900-10 and 1910-20.    So, that generally supports my thesis.  Top WAR totals actually were very low before that, maybe because they were playing fewer games?

https://www.sporcle.com/games/cjmulrain/MLBWAR

This quiz was fun, I totally blanked on the 30s and 70s.  I always forget how far the player from the 30s played into the decade and the 70s was a complete whiff.  I kicked myself for missing that one.

[Frobby]

7 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

This quiz was fun, I totally blanked on the 30s and 70s.  I always forget how far the player from the 30s played into the decade and the 70s was a complete whiff.  I kicked myself for missing that one.

I didn’t read it carefully and, after guessing Ruth and Cobb, was trying to type in “Trout” for a decade that wasn’t even on the quiz and got frustrated and quit when the entry wasn’t accepted.    
 

Really impressive to me that Williams put up 68.8 in the 40’s despite missing 3 full seasons due to the war.     He was over 10 WAR in the two years before his military duty and in the season after, so it’s reasonable to conclude he would have been threatening the 100 WAR mark if he’d played those three years.    In his case, there’s WAR and then there’s War.    

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I didn’t read it carefully and, after guessing Ruth and Cobb, was trying to type in “Trout” for a decade that wasn’t even on the quiz and got frustrated and quit when the entry wasn’t accepted.    
 

Really impressive to me that Williams put up 68.8 in the 40’s despite missing 3 full seasons due to the war.     He was over 10 WAR in the two years before his military duty and in the season after, so it’s reasonable to conclude he would have been threatening the 100 WAR mark if he’d played those three years.    In his case, there’s WAR and then there’s War.    

I got Williams off the bat, but I agree that missing that amount of time is impressive, yet still leading.

80s was kind of a surprise for me when I guessed it right but that wasn't my first guess, admittedly (Schmidt).  But after thinking about it, that player made total sense.

[DrungoHazewood]

On 12/19/2019 at 11:54 AM, Frobby said:

Found this sporcle quiz on the top WAR players by decade.    It shows the top WAR total for each decade, topped by 106.6 in the 1920’s.    I think we can guess who that is!   Anyway the next two highest totals are 1900-10 and 1910-20.    So, that generally supports my thesis.  Top WAR totals actually were very low before that, maybe because they were playing fewer games?

https://www.sporcle.com/games/cjmulrain/MLBWAR

Yes.  Through most of the 1870s-80s the schedules were under 100 games,  although increasing over time.  By the late 1890s they'd gotten to 154ish, but were at 130 or so during the Orioles 1894-96 Championship run.

Cap Anson's career is a pretty good proxy for schedule length in that era, since he was a everyday starter pretty much from 1871 through the end of his career in 1897.  He first played 100 games in a season in 1884.

[Moose Milligan]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28358742/mlb-all-decade-team-made-our-squad-baseball-best-2010-2019

@Frobby

[Frobby]

15 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28358742/mlb-all-decade-team-made-our-squad-baseball-best-2010-2019

@Frobby

Thanks for tagging me.    This article is all kinds of awesome.