FanPost

Perhaps the Best Lineup of All Time

What if you could play any hitters from any era in a game? Many video game simulators and other baseball related predictors have been run on this topic, but I'm gonna run another one anyway, using this online lineup analysis tool linked by VEB's own Craig Edwards: http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/LineupAnalysis earlier today.

My lineup would be this (using career average)...

  1. (1B) Lou Gehrig 1.079 OPS
  2. (P) Babe Ruth 1.164 OPS
  3. (OF) Barry Bonds 1.051 OPS
  4. (OF) Ted Williams 1.116 OPS
  5. (2B) Rogers Hornsby 1.011 OPS
  6. (CF) Mickey Mantle .978 OPS
  7. (SS) Stan Musial .976
  8. (3B) Albert Pujols .996
  9. (C) Ty Cobb .945
I did not include Trout because I feel that it would not be fair to the other players and their more extensive careers, so he was sort of disqualified because of age/possible flukiness. Also, I included Ty Cobb instead of Joe Jackson because he was a much better baserunner and had just enough better of an OBP to make it make sense, as well as his career being so much longer. I think just about anyone would rather have Joe Jackson as a teammate though.
So, I would imagine putting Ty Cobb in at catcher is entirely unrealistic, but if you want the absolute best hitting lineup, you have to make sacrifices. Plus, who the hell would ever want to have a collision with Ty Cobb at home plate? It would probably not be something one would look forward to unless they were Matt Holliday or someone.
I'll run a more realistic lineup, but with this one the run expectancy would be a robust 8.415 runs/game in the steroid era, and 8.357 in a more broad era (basically since '59). Ignore my sequencing above, here are the actual ideal lineups.
If you want a real catcher, then Mike Piazza is your guy, the best hitting catcher ever. And for shortstop, Honus Wagner, nuff said. This new lineup minus Cobb and Musial would score 8.131 runs/game and would be sound defensively to some extent.