What team is the greatest starting lineup in history?
garnettstyle
Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭✭
in Sports Talk
My vote goes to the 1976 Cincinnati Reds.
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
2
garnettstyle
Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭✭
Comments
Baseball teams only
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
1995 Cleveland Indians, not the Best All-Time but pretty darn good in the Modern Era.
Nobody remembers 2nd place.
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
2019 Twins ;-)
The "Big Red Machine" gets my vote also. They had team batting average.....they had power.....they pitching...........
AND they had SPARKY "the hook" Anderson!
How many hall of famers were on the 76 Reds?.
(hide behind sofa emoji)
Nobody remembers 2nd place.
wow, garnett is back and ready to prove that he can be anal in more than just College Football. what is the sense in starting a thread where you have chosen what the only correct answer will be by "shaming" any answer not meeting your pre-determination??
another garnett classic is born.
All of them should be.
Is that relevant to the question? http://www.thehypertexts.com/1976 Cincinnati Reds Greatest Baseball Team of All Time.htm
I don't think there's a post-war lineup that comes close.
The Reds team in the 70's was the best I've ever seen. What about the murderers row Yankees teams? the post says all time. different era, but still ????
I think that's the only possible debate, but nowhere near the quality of player at every single position IMHO.
1993 blue jays
The nuance will become apparent as this thread gyrates to 200 posts.
Please be patient.
the 93 Jays did have a strong lineup, as I well remember them playing against my Phils in the WS. I just don't remember the bottom being as strong. Top 5 had 3 HOF but the REDS were still better. IMO
Big fan of the Big Red Machine from back then. Hard to argue against their greatness. My gambling Uncle told me at the time the Reds were 30-1 odds to sweep the Yankees in the WS. But have to mention Oakland and their 72-74 3 peat. Maybe not as great HOF material as the Reds, but were a great team. When you can go 3 WS in a row that is quite a feat.
please don't sell that 1995 Cleveland Indians Team short. they finished the season with a .291 Team batting average and for a good part of the season, on into August, they would field a starting line-up batting over .300 or close to it. sure, they didn't win the World Series when they ran into one of the best rotations in MLB history, the Atlanta Braves.
that Cleveland Team batted 20 points higher than the vaunted Reds, but pitching always wins in the end, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smolyz are all in the HOF for good reason.
if you check, the 1995 Indians probably had better stats across the board than the 1976 reds, across the board!!! I think that is what we're talking about, right??
The A's teams were really good and exceptionally well managed. Dick Williams pushed all the right buttons. Only one HOF position player on those teams, but all good solid fundamentally sound players from top to bottom. And they had Rollie Fingers at the back end to close games, not just one inning like closers today but 2 or more.
Do you remember, I think it was the first title in 72, when it was late in the game and later in the series, it looked like they were going to walk Bench I believe . count was 3-2, catcher calls for the pitch wide and Fingers delivered a slider that caught the outside corner. Caught Bench off guard and got the A's out of that inning.
The 1976 Reds were the only team in MLB history to lead their league in every major offensive category: PA, AB, R, H, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, BB, BA, OBP, SP, OPS, OPS+, TB and stolen bases.
The 1976 Reds were the only team in MLB history to lead both leagues in every major hitting category: PA, AB, R, H, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, BB, BA, OBP, SP, OPS, OPS+, TB. This is despite AL teams having the advantage of the designated hitter.
Position by Position (Cle first vs Cin second)
C: Tony Pena (.262/5/28, 75 OPS+) vs Johnny Bench (.234/16/74, 109 OPS+). Advantage: CIN
1B: Paul Sorrento (.235/25/79, 116 OPS+) vs Tony Perez (,260.19/91, 118 OPS+). Advantage: CIN
2B: Carlos Baerga (.314/15/90, 108 OPS+) vs Joe Morgan (.320/27/111, 186 OPS+). Advantage: CIN
SS: Omar Vizquel (.266/6/56, 78 OPS+) vs Dave Concepcion (.281/9/69, 107 OPS+). Advantage: CIN
3B: Jim Thome (.314/25/73, 157 OPS+) vs Pete Rose (.323/10/63, 141 OPS+). Advantage: CLE
LF: Albert Belle (.317/50/126, 177 OPS+) vs George Foster (.306/29/121, 150 OPS+). Advantage: CLE
CF: Kenny Lofton (.310/7/53, 110 OPS+) vs Cesar Geronimo (.307/2/49, 125 OPS+). Advantage: TIE
RF: Manny Ramirez (.308/31/107, 147 OPS+) vs Ken Griffey (.336/6/74, 140 OPS+). Advantage: CLE
DH: Eddie Murray (.323/21/82, 129 OPS+). Advantage: CLE
If we ignore DH, I have Cincinnati winning, by position, 4-3-1. If pushed, I'd give CF to Cleveland, so make it 4-4. However, that doesn't tell the full story. CIN has massive advantages at 2B and SS and is relatively close even on the positions they lose.
My verdict, between these two teams?
Cincinnati.
You also got 3rd base wrong......Advantage CIN. Also CF goes to CIN.
Nope.
the only problem is that these players, from both Teams, can't start every game and play every inning. there has to be depth to let them rest, an important facet of every Team. that was the point of my post. I will agree that the stats posted show some great individual players, but if you look past these starters to the overall Team depth it tells another story.
This.
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
You admitted in your post they arnt the best. lol
You are a Indians fan, correct?
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
There have been better teams than the 1976 Reds, but a big part of what made them better was their pitching and the 1976 Reds ace was Pat Zachry (i.e., they had no pitching).
Then there are a handful of teams with a starting 8 who were, cumulatively, as good or maybe better than the 1976 Reds, but they were dependent on one or two players playing at a superhuman level (Ruth & Gehrig, for example) and had some real holes elsewhere. The Reds worst starting player (in 1976, not overall) was HOFer Tony Perez, and their worst hitter was Concepcion with an OPS+ of 107. The 1973 A's are worthy competition, and they win the head-to-head matchup with the Reds 4 out of 8, but they get trounced so badly at 2b (Morgan-Green) and in LF (Foster-Rudi), that the 4-4 tie isn't really as close as it might look.
So in the spirit of how I think the question was asked, I also vote for the 1976 Reds.
Those A's teams had like four 20 game winners on the staff.
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
You admitted in your post they arnt the best. lol
no, I didn't. what you read as an "admission" is a cut/paste of your post.
I have to go with the '76 Reds also. Wasn't Urban Meyer the Reds batboy back then?
Maybe he still is....
Joe Rudi was one of the most underrated players in the game. Foster was the slugger but Rudi was really a clutch hitter and a great situational hitter. I realize that doesn't matter in this day and age, but the way the game was played back then, it made the A's lineup that much more formidable. I realize we're only considering offense here, but Rudi was also an outstanding outfielder, head and shoulders above Foster.
No disrespect intended towards Rudi, and if the comparison being made was to the '72 or '74 A's his name wouldn't have come up. But Rudi had an off year in '73 and he was nowhere near the player Foster was in '76.
Rudi was also not an outstanding outfielder. I know he won several Gold Gloves so I'm not going to convince anyone of this, but he (like Foster) was about average. As is always the case, the best outfielder on the A's was the center fielder, Bill North; he deserved a couple of the Gold Gloves Rudi won.
I respectfully disagree about his defense. Rudi was not fleet of foot but always got great jumps on balls and caught everything, also had a good arm. I just remember him always making catches or throws at critical times in games; did it constantly. IMO
Ha!
Like I said, just a clutch player
All true, but Bill North's biggest advantage over Rudi and Foster was that he was a better outfielder, which involves a heck of a lot more than height and speed. Jose Canseco was 6' 4" and fast, and a brutally bad outfielder. Glenallen Hill was 6' 3" and pretty fast, and possibly the worst outfielder to ever play the game. Curt Flood was 5' 9", not at all fast, and was possibly the best outfielder of all time, certainly head and shoulders better than Rudi, Foster, or North.
I am quite certain that what we have proven with our posts is that there are great outfielders who are short and great outfielders who are tall, and there are terrible outfielders who are short and terrible outfielders who are tall. It would take a lot more examples than we've provided to draw a broader conclusion, but there is no evidence before the court that height is even correlated with defensive ability in the outfield. And since that was my point, and everyone here but you understood that, I'm 100% confident that nobody with greater intelligence than a flea thought my post was jibberish (sic). But you did, which means that you also don't understand why everyone here is laughing at you. Again.
The post had nothing to do with comparing due to height or speed, but just about the agility of Rudi, who happened to be a larger man. Don't know how it evolved into a discussion about short and tall OF's.
1998 Yankees
Their 125-50 is the best record ever posted by a team that won the World Series. Not all Hall of Famers, obviously, but a pretty great collection of baseball players that could win games a lot of different ways. Versatile offense.
Chuck Knoblauch (2B)
Derek Jeter (SS)
Paul O’Neill (RF)
Bernie Williams (CF)
Tino Martinez (1B)
Daryl Strawberry (DH)
Scott Brosius (3B)
Jorge Posada (C)
Tim Raines (LF)
Alternates - DH Chili Davis, OF Ricky Ledee, Chad Curtis, C Joe Girardi,
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The post said Rudi had an "advantage" because he was taller, not that he "happened to be" taller. In other words, the post was very clearly not " just about the agility of Rudi", it was also about his height. So I'm with you in not understanding, at all, why anyone would bring height into a discussion of outfield ability, but someone did, and someone deserved to be made fun of for doing so.
My larger point, and why I brought the shorter North and the magnificent, and shorter, Curt Flood into it, is that the greatest outfielders - ALL OF THEM - played center field. So maybe it's just a semantic point that's confusing the issue. Was Joe Rudi a great "left fielder"? Well, no, he wasn't, but he was a better than average left fielder. But the statement that I took exception to was that Rudi was a great "outfielder", and of that I am quite certain that he was not. Had he been, he would have played center field. When presented with the opportunity to play Rudi in center, his managers chose to play not just Bill North there instead, but also Rick Monday, Steve Hovley, MIke Hershberger, Jim Gosger, Billy Conigliaro, Gil Flores, Bruce Bochte, Rick Miller, Bobby Clark, Reid Nichols, Dwayne Murphy, and even Reggie Jackson. If Rudi had some hidden talent in the OF that I'm not seeing, don't blame me; he hid it so well that not a single one of his managers ever saw it either.
Rudi was about an average outfielder, and a somewhat above average left fielder. I state those facts for the record; it is not required that anyone accept them. It is a free country.
Hard to go against the 70's Reds. But era for era, the 1920's Yankees were pretty formidable. How many Pennants and World Series did they win from 1921-early 1930's?
76 reds were better.
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
He does. What he doesn't believe is that you know how to tie your own shoes. You clearly don't know how to construct a valid analogy.
Well, the point is that, throughout baseball history, guys who are great outfielders play CF. The exception is when they have teammates that are even better in CF (Ichiro in Seattle when Mike Cameron played CF). CF is a significantly more valuable position so the next guys play there. LF is far and away the easiest of the three positions. If a guy is playing LF, and the guy in CF isn't great, it's probably a safe bet that the guy in LF isn't great either.
I find it incredibly sad that this concept had to be explained at all, but you explained it well. And a great outfielder does occasionally get "trapped" in RF because there is an even better outfielder who, obviously, plays CF. Ichiro is one example, and Clemente is another (Bill Virdon in CF). I am not aware of any great outfielder who played LF (possible exception for Fenway where left field requires unique skills). The outfielders that jump to mind as really bad - Dave Kingman, Rico Carty, Greg Luzinski, etc. - all played LF, or sometimes some LF and some RF; they never set foot in CF.
Conversely, there are outfielders who can't hit who can hang on for years and years if they're good enough to play CF really well, like Ken Berry, Omar Moreno, and Tony Scott. Players who hit like Berry/Moreno/Scott are gone in a week if they play LF, no matter how well they play it.
This made me laugh. It made Lou Brock, Jose Cruz, Tim Raines, Rickey Henderson, Lonnie Smith, and Barry Bonds laugh, too. Allowing that the person with the quickest speed is not always the same person as the one with the weakest arm, what you posted is as good a definition of a left fielder as you can get.
Outfielders need three basic skills: speed, arm strength, and what I'll call "instinct" (getting a jump on the ball, knowing when to stop chasing and wait for the bounce off the wall, etc.). The outfielder with the greatest total combination of these skills will be the center fielder - there are no meaningful exceptions to that rule. Rarely, if ever, has a center fielder been significantly deficient in any one of those three skills. Once CF is filled, RF is then generally filled with the remaining outfielder with the strongest arm. And since arm strength is the least important of the three skills needed, the RF will often have the strongest arm on the team. The best remaining outfielder goes to LF. It is possible for the LF to be an overall better fielder than the RF, but with a weaker arm. It is not possible, absent a really, really bad manager, for the LF to be an overall better fielder than the CF. (Again, allowing for the possibility of an exception in Fenway, where LF is unique.)
I'm confused as to what stolen bases or fielding percentage have to do with anything.
Don't forget completely ignoring the (repeatedly) stated exception for Fenway.
Forget? He would have to have understood it and remembered it before he could forget it. My guess is that 1970s brain is several crinkles short of the ability to process something as complicated as an exception to a rule. That he tried to refute my general point with a single exception, and that single exception was the one I had already identified as an exception was either terribly funny or terribly sad. I'm still leaning towards terribly funny, but I have to admit that pointing out his cognitive challenges is getting a bit too easy to be much fun anymore.
If there is anyone else who disagrees with the general proposition that CF=best overall, RF = best arm after CF is filled, LF = whoever is still available after LF and RF are filled (with the Fenway exception), by all means say so and provide some reasonable data to refute it. I'm happy to have an intelligent debate and learn something, but I think I'm done with 1970s, in this thread at least.
The 72 A's were better than the 72 Red's...….but the 76 Red's were better than the 72 A's. IMHO
The 76 Red's were better than the 76 A's. The 72,73 and 74 A's would of beat the 76 Red's . A's had a better all around team .
LOL. You're the one arguing the best outfielder doesn't play CF but I don't understand baseball? That's hilarious.