STARTING LINEUP
Batting 1st:
Lou Gehrig, 1B
Gehrig, a two-time MVP, is most known for playing in 2,130 consecutive games for the New York Yankees, a remarkable streak thought to have been unbreakable until Cal Ripken,
Jr. broke the record 56 years later. He was largely overshadowed by Babe Ruth, but Gehrig set the American League single-season RBI mark in 1931 (185) and then hit for the Triple Crown in 1934 (.363 with 49 home runs and 166 RBI). He also led the league in RBI and on-base percentage five times, runs four times, home runs three times and he scored over 100 runs and drove in over 100 runs for 13 straight seasons.
Batting 2nd:
Barry Bonds, LF
This pick will almost certainly stir asterisk talk due to Bonds’s ties to the Steroid Era, but his talent is also indisputable. Baseball’s record holder for most home runs in a season
(73 in 2001) was a seven-time MVP award-winner with eight Gold Gloves to his credit. From 1989-98 he was worth an average of 8.4 wins above replacement per 650 plate appearances and if you fielded a lineup of Bonds through all nine slots of the batting order you could expect to win over 81 per cent of your games, equivalent to a 132-30 record over a 162-game season.
Bonds never won a World Series ring, but don’t fault him. He has the most context neutral championship win probability added (0.75) of any major league player in baseball history.
Batting 3rd:
Willie Mays, CF
Mays, a two-time MVP winner with 12 Gold Gloves, is third all-time among position players in wins above replacement (156.2). From 1954 (a year after he served in the military) to 1965 he hit .318 with a .997 OPS (67% higher than the league average over that span) while averaging 43 home runs and 24 steals per 162 games.
Batting 4th:
Babe Ruth, RF
The Sultan of Swat shouldn’t need justification on this list but he ranks second to Bonds in wins above replacement (162.1) plus leads all position players in slugging percentage (. 690) and on-base plus slugging (1.164). He also hit the third-most home runs (714) in baseball history.
Not enough? Ruth led the league in slugging percentage 13 times, home runs 12 times, walks 11 times, on-base percentage 10 times, runs scored eight times and RBI five times. Still not convinced?
He won seven AL pennants and four World Series titles with the New York Yankees with the third-highest context neutral championship win probability added of all time (0.58).
Batting 5th:
Rogers Hornsby, 2B Hornsby is one of the greatest right-handed batters in baseball history. He won seven batting titles and produced two Triple Crown seasons (1922 and 1925, the latter earning him one of his two MVP awards). He led the National League in batting seven times, including an unbelievable five-year stretch from 1921 through 1925 in which he averaged .402.
Hornsby also led the league in onbase percentage and slugging in each of those five years.
Batting 6th:
Alex Rodriguez, SS Another player with the Steroid Era caveat, but Rodriguez is one of three players to finish his career with at least 600 home runs and 300 steals — Bonds and Mays are the others — and one of four players to hit at least 40 home runs and steal at least 40 bases in a single season.
According to Bill James’s powerspeed metric, which combines a player’s home run and stolen base numbers into one number, Rodriguez has the highest single season power-speed mark of all time (43.9 in 1998) and he ranks fourth all-time for his career (446.8) behind Bonds, Rickey Henderson and Mays.
Batting 7th:
Mike Schmidt, 3B Schmidt led the majors in home runs six times and earned 10 Gold Gloves and three MVP awards (1980, 1981 and 1986). On April 18, 1987, Schmidt became the 14th member of the 500 home run club and finished his career with 548. He also produced the most wins above replacement among third baseman.
Batting 8th:
Johnny Bench, C
Bench, a 17-year veteran, helped Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine win four NL pennants and two World Series titles from 1970 to 1979 by batting .267 with 33 home runs and 115 RBI per 162 games over that stretch. The 10-time Gold Glove winner also threw out 43% of would-be base stealers over his career compared to the league average of 35%.