Came upon an article this morning on ESPN about dream lineup so I thought we could have a little fun with this. Based on offense and defensive metrics and has to be in the last 25 years!
1) Henderson-LF.. 2) Cano-2B.. 3)Arod-SS.. 4) Miggy-3B.. 5) Manny- DH.. 6) Pujols-1B.. 7) Griffey- CF.. 8) Pudge-C..9) Ichiro-RF
SP- Pedro
SP- Maddux
Closer- Rivera
If we don't care that some players took steroids then this would be my full team and lineup:
1. Mike Trout OF
2. Ken Griffey Jr OF
3. Alex Rodriguez SS
4. Barry Bonds DH
5. Albert Pujols 1B
6. Manny Ramirez OF
7. Miguel Cabrera 3B
8. Robinson Cano 2B
9. Mike Piazza C
BNCH Chase Utley 2B/UTL
BNCH Ivan Rodriguez C
BNCH Chipper Jones 1B/3B
BNCH Ichiro Suzuki OF/DH
SP1. Pedro Martinez
SP2. Roger Clemens
SP3. Greg Maddux
SP4. Randy Johnson
SP5. Roy Halladay
SP6. Justin Verlander
RP Mariano Rivera
RP Trevor Hoffman
RP Aroldis Chapman
RP Craig Kimbrel
RP Billy Wagner
RP Francisco Rodriguez
RP Joe Nathan
Rickey Henderson was pushing 40 twenty five years ago. I’ll take Bonds in LF...
I should've put a few * in there.... steroid free Arod and I could not bring myself to put Bonds in there since his best seasons were tainted. I prob should have selected another LF. I went strictly by the position that the player played.Originally Posted by bkzwhitestrican
The premise of ESPN's article was supposed to be a team put together if you needed to win one game. In other words, not just the greatest players all-time, but the best under pressure in an elimination game.
In such a scenario, I'd have to go with Schilling over Pedro. No matter his politics (something we can all avoid discussing on a baseball forum), Big Schil's postseason stats are hard to top: 11-2 W-L, 2.23 ERA, 0.968 WHIP vs. Pedro 6-4, 3.46, 1.080.
The other modern choice or if we add a lefty to the staff is MadBum 8-3, 2.11, 0.899. Depending on how far back you want to go, there's always Koufax -- whose only postseason numbers are from the World Series: 4-3, but 0.95 and 0.825.
No way Utley, IRod, Jones and Suzuki make my team.
No love for Carlos Beltran? Dude has been a postseason monster.
Ditto Big Papi and Daniel Murphy...
You can be sure Papi is my DH for one game with the universe at stake. Beltran was also a great postseason player... but taking that third-strike curve from Wainwright to end the Mets' season will also follow him (more in lore, I surmise, than stealing signs with a system devised by the Houston analytics dept).
Clutch players?
He hit 3 HRs and had an OPS over 1.000 in that series. But, hey, one at bat...
If I’m looking for great postseason players, history is on the side of all three...
Personally I think the only clutch player in MLB history is Pat Tabler.
Career OPS: .724
Career OPS with bases loaded : 1.198
HOF numbers
Game Seven NLCS, bottom of the 9th, trailing 3-1, bases loaded, two outs, pennant on the line... bat on shoulder
So therefore it discounts his entire postseason career?
Did you know Mariano Rivera only pitched one time in Game Seven of the World Series? And he blew a 2 run lead. Does that mean he wasn’t a good postseason pitcher, too?
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