The Rebuttal

In his recent article about Carlos González, my colleague Roger highlighted Car-Go’s 2010 numbers as an example of a Hall-of-Fame-type campaign from a player who stands little to no chance of earning a plaque of his own. He also took the fun step of revealing an all-time starting nine of players who similarly delivered such unlikely performances over a 154- or 162-game stretch, and urged yours truly to come up with my own lineup of super seasons from non-immortals.

To which I plant my flag and declare, “Challenge accepted!” After all, what self-respecting baseball nerd doesn’t already have a sense of such outlier performances derived from hours of staring at stats while work or chores lie undone?

Following the established ground rules, this lineup is off-limits to active players, as well as those who obviously fashioned Hall of Fame-caliber careers regardless of the BBWAA results (Barry Bonds, Álex Rodríguez, etc.). Additionally, I will be treating this as a fantasy draft of sorts and not select anyone already mentioned by Roger. I’ve also decided to round out my roster with the inclusions of designated hitter and reliever.

Enough explaining – onto the lineup!

C: Rudy York, 1938

York was primarily a first baseman in the Majors, but he put up an impressive .298/.417/.579 slash line with 33 homers and 126 RBI as a catcher in 1938. He actually had more dingers in fewer at-bats the year before, and was forging his own argument for Cooperstown with 277 long balls and seven All-Star selections through his age-33 season before completely falling off a cliff. 

1B: Derrek Lee, 2005

I’d almost forgotten how utterly dominant Lee was in 2005: An MLB-best 50 doubles, .335 average, .662 slugging and 1.080 OPS, to go with 46 homers, 120 runs and a .418 OBP. So how exactly did he finish only third in the NL MVP voting? Because Albert Pujols was in his prime and center field vacuum Andruw Jones went off for 51 dingers. Fair enough, but Lee’s season-long brilliance is worth a salute.

2B: Bret Boone, 2001

It’s a toss-up as to who was better between Jeff Kent in 2000 and Boone the following year, so as a tiebreaker I’ll go with the guy who stands the lesser chance of making it to the Hall via the Veterans Committee. Boone actually had a pretty solid career, but 2001 was by far his best: His 141 RBI are the most for any second baseman not named Rogers Hornsby, and his impressive all-around line included 118 runs, 206 hits, 37 homers, a .331 average and a .578 slugging percentage. While he wasn’t going to beat out rookie sensation Ichiro Suzuki for MVP that year, it’s worth noting that Boone had a higher bWAR (8.8 to 7.7) than his heralded teammate.

3B: Vinny Castilla, 1998

Let’s throw in a Coors Field-aided showing just for the fun of it. Castilla’s 1998 performance was the best of his eight-plus seasons in Colorado, as he stuffed the traditional portion of the stat sheet with 206 hits, 46 jacks, 144 ribbies and a .319 average. We can conveniently overlook the numbers that indicate his campaign wasn’t quite as spectacular as it seemed, including the relatively ho-hum .362 OBP and 127 OPS+.

SS: Vern Stephens, 1949

There were some banner seasons by a crop of non-Hall shortstops in the early 2000s, but I’m going with Stephens’ .290-39-159 campaign of 1949, the RBI still a record for shortstops. Yeah, I know that statistical category has been devalued as a barometer of greatness, but it’s my party and I’ll RBI if I want to.

LF: Kevin Mitchell, 1989

Sandwiched between the rabbit-ball year of 1987 and the offensive boom of the following decade was Mitchell’s monster MVP campaign in ’89. Although the .291 average obviously isn’t special, he was light-years ahead of the rest of the pack with 47 homers, a .635 slugging percentage and a 1.023 OPS, translating to outstanding 192 OPS+. Mitchell was hardly a one-year wonder, as he was an All-Star again the following year and produced a 185 OPS+ in a strike-shortened 1994, although he never again pulled off a catch like this from his charmed season.

CF: Fred Lynn, 1979

There were a lot of fun choices for center, from Eric Davis’s 37-homer, 50-steal campaign of 1987 to Brady Anderson’s out-of-nowhere 50-homer explosion in 1996, but I’m going with Lynn’s superlative showing in 1979. While not as famous as his dual MVP-Rookie of the Year-winning season of 1975, this year saw Freddie at his finest before injuries slowed what was looking like a Hall of Fame career: MLB-best marks in OBP (.423), slugging (.637), OPS+ (176) and bWAR (8.9), to go with an AL batting crown (.333) and personal bests in runs (116), homers (39) and RBI (122).

RF: Roger Maris, 1961

There are probably some better all-around performances that could go in this slot, but it’s hard to top the symbolic value of a guy surpassing what was then perhaps the most famous record in sports, set by the most celebrated player in baseball history. Beyond the magical 61 homers, Maris also paced the Majors with 132 runs and 366 total bases, tied for the AL lead with 141 RBI, and posted career highs in walks (94), slugging (.620) and OPS (.993).

DH: Travis Hafner, 2006

For about three years in the mid-2000s, Pronk was right up there with the biggest of baseball’s big boppers. The best of those years – and maybe the best year of any non-active, non-Hall of Famer with significant DH experience – came in 2006, when he posted an eye-opening .308/.439/.659 slash line to go with 42 homers, 117 RBI and an MLB-best 181 OPS+.

SP: Dwight Gooden, 1985

I spent about 30 seconds trying to find a possible alternative to Gooden’s masterpiece of a 1985 season, but why bother? The raw numbers are staggering enough, including an MLB-leading 24 wins, 268 strikeouts and a did-I-read-that-correctly 1.53 ERA. But the real kicker is the 12.2 bWAR, which is tied for the fifth-best mark for pitchers since 1893 and stands as the highest since Walter Johnson’s 15.3 in 1913. Was this really the best season by ANY pitcher in the past 112 years? Lefty Grove, Sandy Koufax and Pedro Martínez might have something to say about that, but there’s a compelling argument to be made in Doc’s favor.

RP: Eric Gagné, 2003

A fair number of flamethrowers have enjoyed periods of near-invincibility since the emergence of the one-inning closer in the 1980s, but I’m not sure any of them were more fun to watch than Gagné. Despite looking more like a weekend warrior than a pro athlete with his doughy build and goggles, Gagné utterly overpowered hitters with his devastating heater-split change-curve combo. A three-year run of dominance had its apex in 2003, when he posted a 1.20 ERA with 137 strikeouts and just 37 hits allowed in 82.1 innings, enabling him to convert all 55 save opportunities (and eventually push that mark to an MLB-record of 84 in a row).

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.