Top 10 Baseball Seasons of All Time

Haven’t posted in a while, but a few discussions I’ve had with hartichoke and claw in the last few weeks have got me thinking. So I’ve come up with my own top 10 list: the top 10 seasons for an individual player in modern baseball history. I’ve included a few caveats: first, I haven’t really defined the term modern, but I don’t include anything before Ruth, mainly because it’s impossible to compare stats between that era and the current era; second, I’ve kinda shied away from naming pitchers, mainly because “good” pitching statistics have changed so much within even the last 20 years, so it’s a little hard to compare seasons. Still, I named a few pitchers simply because their numbers were impossible to ignore. Third, every player only appears once on the list. Lastly, I didn’t take into account the player’s team performance, but part of me feels that matters when one defines a “good” season.

1st. Ted Williams, Boston Red Sox, OF – 1941 Season
First off, fuck me for picking a Boston Red Sox as having the best season of all time. Secondly, fuck me for picking this season over Bonds ’01 season as a Giants fan. Basically, though, it comes down to age. Williams’ absurd season occurred at the age of 22. Jesus fucking Christ. Here’s the basic info for Williams’ season:

Okay, yes a few of Bonds’ seasons had better numbers than Williams. But, Ted Williams at the age of 22 hit .406 with 37 home runs, leading the league in both categories. Oh yeah and he walked 147 times and only struck out 27. First off, that’s a ratio of 5.4 walks to strikeout, and that also means he hit more home runs than strikeouts. That fact alone is worth his placement atop this list. I just imagine if a player in this day in age put up those numbers when he was 22. People were pooping themselves when Pujols hit 37 home runs as a rookie, but he only hit .330. Some people think Mauer could hit .400 at some point in his career, but Mauer will probably hit around 20 homeruns in a year once or twice only, with far more strikeouts. The concept of a player who could hit for such a large amount of power and hit for such a high average at such a young age is unbelievable to me.

2nd. Bob Gibson, St. Louis Cardinals, SP – 1968 Season
Had to put this season here, ahead of Bonds, because a pitcher needed to be No. 2. No doubt in my mind this is the greatest season a starting pitcher has ever had. Here are the stats:

The obvious number to look at here is the ERA. 1.12. I will shit my pants if anyone ever approaches this number during our lifetime. The complete games, shut outs, and strike outs are all pretty sick too, but they’re somewhat hard to compare to current numbers. That ERA, though, is pretty unbelievable.

3rd. Barry Bonds, San Francisco Giants, OF – 2001 Season
Just look at the numbers, because no one’s ever going to come close to them again:

They speak for themselves. He may have been on steroids, but those numbers are undoubtedly the best flat out stats of all time. Numbers wise, you really can’t top Barry. The scariest part about these stats is from a technical standpoint this was Barry’s third best season. But it’d be stupid not to include the 73 home run season. On a slightly related note, Barry was walked intentionally 120 times in 04. 120 times!!! That’s almost once a game. Martyr

4th. Babe Ruth, New York Yankees, OF – 1920 Season
The only season to even come near Barry’s season from a statistical perspective:

As much as I love Barry, it’s hard to imagine a player who changed a game more than Ruth. Jesse made the comment that Bonds was the best player of all time because of how much the other team worried about him constantly, but I have to imagine it was even more the case for Ruth. He was putting up basically the same numbers in an era when the home run wasn’t even a big deal. Hell, they were recycling old balls in games at this time. I still think Barry’s a better player for the full package he offered over the course of his career (and don’t give me that fucking Ruth pitched shit, that part of the game was incomparable to now; Barry would have pitched if he had played in that era) but Ruth was better for his era.

5th. Pedro Martinez, Boston Red Sox, SP 2000 Season
Honestly, I completely forgot about this season. Mainly because I was too young to really pay attention to numbers, or because I wasn’t a fantasy god at this point. Either way, when I stumbled upon the numbers for this season I was blown away. You could definitely make the argument that this season was better than Gibson’s season.

The really absurd numbers here are the ERA+ and the WHIP. .737???? OMGzz Fantasy God. The strikeouts to walk ratio (8.875) is naice and the strikeouts per nine innings (11.8) is out of this world. You kinda forget how good Pedro was at his height. Throwing 98 with that much movement??!! He has double-jointed fingers, which means he can hold on to the ball longer than a regular pitcher, giving the ball an absurd amount of movement despite the high velocity (general rule of thumb is higher velocity, less movement because you throw “through” the movement, that’s why pitchers who are able to combine velocity and movement, a la Tim Lincecum, are so special). And that changeup? People used to talk about it moving an entire plate and falling off the table. Everyone’s talking about how Strasburg’s ability to combine high 90s to 100s velocity with movement is unprecedented in our lifetime. Fucktards. Pedro had the same velocity (dude used to hit 99) and more movement less than a decade ago. Everything current is over hyped (more on this point later).

6th. Joe DiMaggio, New York Yankees, OF 1937 Season
Gotta rep the San Francisco guy here. DiMaggio’s season, similar to Williams’ season, gets moved higher up the list a bit because he was only 22 and it was only his second year.

This season doesn’t quite look as unbelievable as some of the other seasons, mainly because of the lower walk totals leading to a lower OBP and OPS. The reason for these lower totals was the man behind DiMaggio for most of the year: Lou Gehrig. Gehrig won the MVP in 1936, and in 1937 he had almost as good a year as DiMaggio, with actually higher OPS and OPS+. You weren’t going to walk DiMaggio to face Gehrig. That definitely helped DiMaggio’s power stats, but it hurt his walk stats. Still, this was a pretty unbelievable season.

7th. Lou Gehrig, New York Yankees, 1B 1927 Season
I’m gonna say it right now, and many people are going to disagree. Lou Gehrig needs to be in the discussion with the best hitters of all time. He ebbed and flowed a little bit more than some of the other people in the discussion, but if he doesn’t get sick, he hits over 600 home runs, if not more, with a near .340 career BA, around Ted Williams’ average. He got sick when he was 34. Most players played until they were 40 or 41. Oh and he put up the numbers he put up while playing every game, every day. The “Iron Horse” was way sweeter than Ripken.

Good good numbers. Comparable to any other season ever.

8th. Greg Maddux, Atlanta Braves, SP 1994 Season
Mad Dog fucking shoved. No one really remembers how good he was, but he was so fucking sick.

He even struck people out at a pretty good rate in 1994. That ERA and ERA + are pretty disgusting, so is the low, low walk total. Smartest player ever to play the game.

9th. Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles Dodgers, SP 1966 Season
Go Jews. No but seriously, best Jew ever. This season was pretty disgusting. He actually had four seasons in a row that might have been the best four years for a pitcher ever. He won Cy Youngs in 3 of the 4 and would have won in all 4 if he didn’t get injured and pitch only 223 innings that year (“only”).

Even in an era when pitchers threw more innings than they do now, Koufax threw a lot of innings. Apparently, in one game during this year, Sandy (who only had two pitches) threw a curveball in the second inning that bounced in the dirt. After the pitch, he called the catcher out to the mound and told him that his arm hurt to much to throw any more curves, so he was just gonna have to throw all fastballs today. He pitched a complete game shutout with 8 strikeouts. Oh yeah, and during the four year stretch when he was so good, he couldn’t straighten his arm for the last two seasons. Given that knowledge, it’s not surprising he retired after the 1966 Season. Still, besides maybe Barry Sanders in the NFL, I can’t think of another player retiring after the four best years of his career.

10th. Willie Mays, San Francisco Giants, OF 1954 Season
Fuck yeah Giants. I’ve included this season to illustrate my final point of this post: Willie Mays is the best player of all time. First the stats, then I’ll explain why they’re special:

This was Willie’s first season back from the War in Korea, and it was definitely one of the best. Basically, Willie missed nearly two years in the prime of his career, yet he still hit 660 home runs. Over the course of his career, Willie hit approximately .22 home runs per game. In the nearly two years willie was gone, he missed 266 games. Assuming he kept his lifetime average for home runs, Willie could have expected to hit around 59 home runs in those missing games, meaning he would ended up with 719 home runs for his career, breaking Ruth’s record. That’s a low estimate, though, because over the four years following his return, Mays’ hit home runs at a clip of about .27 per game, meaning he would have been expected to hit around 71 home runs in the 266 games he missed. Therefore he would have been expected to end up with around 731 home runs for his career, destroying Ruth’s record. Basically, if Mays doesn’t go to Korea for a pointless war (fuck Korea) Mays breaks Ruth’s record.

Honorable mentions: Jimmy Foxx in 1932 or 1938, Nolan Ryan in 1973, Ichiro in 2001, Albert Pujols in 2008, Ken Griffey Jr. in 97 (sick season), Mickey Mantle in 1957 (probably the one most deserving of the honorable mentions), Ricky Henderson in 1990 (the year he did everything, not just steal), Eric Gagne in 2003, Mark McGwire in 1998, Randy Johnson in 2004 (not an unbelievable statistical year, but he had a 20 strikeout game and a perfect game in the same year…at the age of 40), Alex Rodriguez in 2007, Willie McCovey in 1969, and Stan Musial in 1948 (another very deserving year).

In the end, I think if the question was asked who was the best hitter in their prime, the only people worth discussing are Mays, Ruth, Williams, Gehrig and Bonds, with the caveat that Bonds isn’t included in this group if he doesn’t take steroids. I don’t think Pujols is in the discussion yet. The numbers he puts up are good, very good. But he is a model of consistency more than the potential best player of all time. Mays put up similar home run numbers, with around the same average, but much more steals in his prime. Ruth put up higher power numbers and a higher average in a dead ball era. Williams put the same power numbers but with a higher average. Gehrig had a higher average and the same power numbers too. And Bonds, well Bonds had the best numbers of anyone ever. That said, Pujols has a real chance to have the best year of his career this year. His previous best year when you focus only on home runs and average is 06 when he hit 49 home runs and had a .331 BA., almost exactly the same as Bonds’ best year pre-steroids (1993). This year he could conceivably hit for the same average but with 50+ home runs, putting him in the discussion for best hitter in their prime. As it is know, though, I don’t even think Pujols is the best Cardinal hitter in his prime: I’d take Stan Musial.

The reason I’d still say Mays is the best player ever is he put up those ridiculous numbers while missing two years, as mentioned previously, but also while playing most of his best years at the Polo Grounds, where it was 483 to center. He it 51 home runs without being able to hit a home run to centerfield (literally, no one ever hit a home run over the centerfield wall in the history of the polo grounds). I have to imagine he had at least a few deep flyouts that would have been gone other places, but you can’t really think about that. And he was sick at defense. And he stole bases. Sick.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKEL!!!!