No sport draws us to the allure of historical figures as much as baseball does. Whenever we see a budding superstar or a hall of fame bound ballplayer, we can't resist but compare him to a player from yesteryear. Many hours have been spent on barstools and broadcasts comparing the greats of today with the legends of the past and we will try to do the same with our Shocker Fantasy Baseball League and the major league ballplayers that came before.
Studs like Pujols, Miggy, Trout, Verlander, and Kershaw have given us fantasy seasons to remember but it's been hard to know exactly how great these individual seasons compare to the all-time greats. Thanks to a lot of much smarter and much more dedicated baseball nerds than us, we can comb through the endless historical stats and figure out this quandary once and for all. So lets gather up the Greatest Of All Time Shockers and bounce them up against the GOATs of MLB history.
When this thought first entered my brain, I had a tough time figuring out how we would quantify the "best" seasons ever. I love our historical categories but trying to summarize them into one number is something I couldn't figure out. I don't entirely trust our Player Rater and definitely can't use that metric when looking at historical data, which meant we'd have to think outside the boxscore to figure this out. Another run to the Keurig machine helped jostle my brain a bit and I decided to switch from our 6x6 categorical stats and instead sum our stats up into one cumulative number. If you haven't played in a fantasy baseball points league, it's pretty simple and similar to a fantasy football league. If your player does good things, he gets points. If he does bad things, points are taken away from him. Taking the common stats used in fantasy baseball, I came up with a scoring structure to calculate the final number we will judge our players and see how they stack up. Below are the scoring tables for batters which will be used to figure all of this out.
Studs like Pujols, Miggy, Trout, Verlander, and Kershaw have given us fantasy seasons to remember but it's been hard to know exactly how great these individual seasons compare to the all-time greats. Thanks to a lot of much smarter and much more dedicated baseball nerds than us, we can comb through the endless historical stats and figure out this quandary once and for all. So lets gather up the Greatest Of All Time Shockers and bounce them up against the GOATs of MLB history.
When this thought first entered my brain, I had a tough time figuring out how we would quantify the "best" seasons ever. I love our historical categories but trying to summarize them into one number is something I couldn't figure out. I don't entirely trust our Player Rater and definitely can't use that metric when looking at historical data, which meant we'd have to think outside the boxscore to figure this out. Another run to the Keurig machine helped jostle my brain a bit and I decided to switch from our 6x6 categorical stats and instead sum our stats up into one cumulative number. If you haven't played in a fantasy baseball points league, it's pretty simple and similar to a fantasy football league. If your player does good things, he gets points. If he does bad things, points are taken away from him. Taking the common stats used in fantasy baseball, I came up with a scoring structure to calculate the final number we will judge our players and see how they stack up. Below are the scoring tables for batters which will be used to figure all of this out.
Pretty simple. There will be more excel tables and I'll chime in from time to time to help summarize the best I can. Some of these tables are pretty wide so hopefully viewing them on your phone isn't too much of a challenge. I highly recommend you use something other than a phone but if you must, rotate that sumbitch sideways in order to absorb all the historical data you can. Let's start with the men behind the dish.
I thought it would be fun to compare stats, one category at a time, which is why you are seeing a lot of numbers here. The main number to focus on is the Total Points (%) column as that shows the total points they accumulated that season and the percentage you see is how many points the Shocker GOAT scored compared to the MLB GOAT. So as you can see, Mauer scored 89% of the points that Piazza scored, which is actually going to be the smallest margin we see for any position for this whole thing. Piazza is probably the best hitting catcher of all time, it's a joke that he's not in the hall of fame right now, and it says something impressive that Mauer was so close to matching him in 2009 when he played for Jeff Meyer.
Gehrig was a member of 1927 Murderer's Row and he was committing rawhide homicide all season long. Look at these friggin' stats, man. 173 RBI's is incredible but it's more insane that the Iron Horse was able to leg out 52 doubles and 18 triples. The cavernous gaps at Yankee Stadium are probably responsible for some of that. Albert Pujols's 2009 season for Granger was the best we've seen in our league's history so we're bouncing up the best Shocker Fantasy League season against one of the best offensive seasons in MLB history, which is another example of why these comparisons give us baseball nerd boners.
Rogers Hornsby may have been a cantankerous biggot but by golly, could the man hit a baseball. I don't see how any second baseman is ever going to top the fantasy points Hornsby put up in 1922 and you can see that Cano doesn't stand a chance in his attempt when he played for Maydew in 2010. Hard for anyone to compete against a player that hit .401 no matter the era.
Alex Rodriguez has turned almost everyone off with his antics over the years but when he just stuck to baseball, he was incredible. A-Rod put up stats that any DH or First Baseman would kill for and A-Rod did it at the most physically demanding defensive position. Granted, it was probably done with the help of anabolic steroids but a 1.021 OPS is something we probably won't see from a shortstop for the rest of our lives. Hanley is 1/4 of the shortstop that A-Rod was in the field but he did smack the crap out of baseballs in 2009 for DeFelice in impressive fashion.
Hey, our buddy Alex is back to say hello. A-Rod's monster 2007 season was a joy to watch as a Yankees fan as you can see how much of the boxscore A-Rod filled up throughout the year. Miguel Cabrera is a pretty lousy third baseman but defense didn't mean squat for Suer in 2013 when Miggy was spraying balls every which way in Detroit. Cabrera is one of the best overall hitters we'll ever see and the fact that he scored 88% of what A-Rod did just six years later means we've been treated to some big stats from the hot corner lately.
Poor Jacoby never stood a chance. Even though Jacoby had our most impressive season from an outfielder in 2011 for Kevin Petty, he's no match for the best baseball player of all time. An 1.359 OPS from the Babe is .431 better than Ellsbury's and the 58 run and 63 RBI difference between the two is astonishing. I'll give you a minute of silence to just view and appreciate Babe Ruth's 1921 season.
In 2001 Barry Bonds got on base against major league pitchers at a better rate than Shaquille O'Neal made free throws. Barry's 1.379 OPS is the second highest of all time (behind 2004 Bonds) and whether you like it or not, 73 homers is the most we've ever seen. If Bonds wasn't pitched around constantly he probably would be close to Ruth's fantasy point total, too. As much as I hated watching him blow past the home run record on steroids, it was still very impressive to watch him get about two good pitches to hit every night and then knocking the tar out of them. Mike Trout will stamp his name on plenty of records before he's done and even though he hit 46 fewer homers than Bonds did and walked 67 fewer times for Meyer in 2013, it's still the second best fantasy season we've seen from an outfielder in our Shocker history.
Stan Musial can be somewhat of a forgotten man when people talk about greatest hitters of all time but his 1948 campaign is something we should all appreciate. Musial struck out 34 times in the entire 1948 season, which is generally what Chris Carter does in a month. Musial did it all in '48 and did it with a quiet confidence that endeared him to the "Best Fans in Baseball" in St. Louis. Jose Bautista came out of nowhere to be a fantasy force for Kevin Petty in 2011 and even though he hit more homers and walked more than Musial, Stan the Man is a clear cut winner in this matchup.
Jimmie Foxx couldn't sustain the stats that would've put him in the same class as Ruth or Gehrig but his peak was about as tall as anyone else's in the game. Double X's 1932 season saw him threaten Babe's home run record and threaten the well being of opponents if they got in front of one of his scorching line drives. Like Foxx, Miguel Cabrera is also built like a brick shithouse and even though Miggy was spectacular for Zach in 2011, Miggy played during the dawn of this new-found pitching era while Foxx was able to feast on pitchers who made Jaime Moyer look like Aroldis Chapman.
Finally, lets close with the top offensive fantasy seasons of all time.
Finally, lets close with the top offensive fantasy seasons of all time.
I highlighted the leaders for each stat in orange and you'll see a total points column that stacks these all timers against each other. Goddamn, was Babe Ruth a beast. He also won 94 games from the mound in his lifetime, which is pretty neat. All of these names should be familiar except for Chuck Klien who had a crazy good season for the Athletics in 1930. Most of this list contains guys that now live in Ray Kinsella's cornfield in Iowa and will always be mentioned when people talk about the greatest men to ever swing a wooden stick.
If you ever find yourself at a bar arguing about the best fantasy baseball seasons of all time, I want you to first call me to meet you at this bar. After you hang up, I then ask that you open up the browser on your phone and reference this post and help settle the score. I hope you guys had a little fun walking through our smaller version of Cooperstown and we'll be back later to compare today's pitching stalwarts against the GOATs.
If you ever find yourself at a bar arguing about the best fantasy baseball seasons of all time, I want you to first call me to meet you at this bar. After you hang up, I then ask that you open up the browser on your phone and reference this post and help settle the score. I hope you guys had a little fun walking through our smaller version of Cooperstown and we'll be back later to compare today's pitching stalwarts against the GOATs.