Was the 1975 Red's Lineup the Best Ever as Joe Posnanski Claims in His New Book: "The Machine"?

by Jeff Zimmerman on Sep 17, 2009 4:00 PM EDT

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Joe Posnanski recently released his book, "The Machine", on the 1975 Cincinnati Reds with specific emphasis on the lineup. I will let Joe describe, as he does best, the Reds lineup in his article about the book on cnnsi.com:

There had never been a lineup quite like it. Yes, the famed 1927 New York Yankees had four Hall of Famers in their Murderers' Row -- including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig -- and averaged more than six runs per game. The Boys of Summer Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s had Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campanella and were a beautiful blend of power and speed. But the lineup Sparky Anderson put on the field on July 4, 1975, had something more. The Reds had power and speed too. More, though, there were three African-Americans in the lineup, three Latin Americans and two white Americans -- and Bench had Native American blood. They were the Great American Ballclub.

To find the quality of players on the teams mentioned, I decided to use Rally's WAR rankings to see how the 1975 Reds stood up to the 1927 Yankees and the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers. To make the comparison I added the lifetime WAR of all the players on the teams and here are the results:

	1927 Yankees	1955 Dodgers	1975 Reds
Hitting – All Player's WAR	422	379	420
Pitching – All Players WAR	175	187	111
Total WAR	597	566	531
Hitting – Negative WAR players removed	435	404	462
Pitching – Negative WAR players removed	179	189	113
Total WAR	614	593	575

I removed the players with negative for an additional comparison because most of these players were only on the team for a short time and could subtract from greatness of the teams.

The 1975 Reds, when compared to these 2 teams, has about the same level of offense as the 1927 Yankees, but is better once the negative players are removed. The Red's pitching staff is the worst of the three with them accumulating 77 less wins than the 1955 Dodgers. When the totals for the hitters and pitchers are added up, the 75 Reds are last of the three in total WAR.

Here are the team's players that accumulated more that had more than 10 WAR in their lifetime:

Yankees	Lifetime WAR	Dodgers	Lifetime WAR	Reds	Lifetime WAR
Babe Ruth (h)	172	Duke Snider	68	Joe Morgan	104
Lou Gehrig	118	Pee Wee Reese	67	Pete Rose	75
Tony Lazzeri	48	Jackie Robinson	63	Johnny Bench	71
Urban Shocker	47	Sandy Koufax	55	Tony Perez	51
Waite Hoyt	47	Gil Hodges	45	George Foster	43
Earle Combs	45	Jim Gilliam	39	Dave Concepcion	34
Bob Shawkey	40	Roy Campanella	36	Ken Griffey	32
Herb Pennock	37	Carl Furillo	35	Gary Nolan	27
Bob Meusel	24	Don Newcombe	30	Dan Driessen	20
Dutch Ruether	20	Johnny Podres	27	Merv Rettenmund	19
Babe Ruth (p)	18	Don Hoak	20	Fred Norman	18
George Pipgras	10	Carl Erskine	17	Clay Carroll	17
		Roger Craig	17	Don Gullett	17
		Russ Meyer	11	Clay Kirby	11
		Clem Labine	10	Cesar Geronimo	11

All I can say is that damn Ruth was great. His lifetime combined WAR of 190 is only 8 less than that of Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson's total (198 WAR).

Using lifetime WAR of the players as an comparison, the other two teams JoPo brings up are better overall, but the Red's lineup in 1975 can be debated as the best of the three.

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Comments

Is comparing the Lifetime WAR fair when he's only using the 1975 season?

"What we do in life, echoes in eternity!"

by Justin Bopp on Sep 17, 2009 4:32 PM EDT reply actions

I'd prefer to see only one year as well

Also, did the negative players that were removed have a lifetime negative WAR of just negative for that year?

by JBrew on Sep 17, 2009 5:01 PM EDT up reply actions

the obvious problem with focusing on a single year is that he'd have to pick a single year for the yankees and dodgers to compare to as well.

"What we do in life, echoes in eternity!"

by Justin Bopp on Sep 17, 2009 5:15 PM EDT up reply actions

Here are the answers to JBrew and your questions

I looked at lifetime numbers (JBrew – negative lifetime WAR) because if I only looked at that season, but several factors discouraged me.

1. The numbers were pretty close, less than one WAR between Brooklyn and Cincinnati. I want to encompass more of the overall/lifetime talent on that team.
2. The quality of competition/schedule can really come into effect

Here are the rankings of the 3 three teams when compared to teams since 1900:

Rank/Team/Year/Hitter WAR
3 NYA 1927 46.6
14 BRO 1955 40.3
19 CIN 1975 39.4

The main problem I actually have is that the Reds played 162 games and the Yankees 155. I have a piece coming out looking at set WAR per PA. Here are the numbers for teams per season when adjusted to 6000 PA

Rank/Team/Year/Hitter WAR
3 NYA 1927 46.46
9 BRO 1955 40.93
32 CIN 1975 37.48

Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.

by Jeff Zimmerman on Sep 17, 2009 6:20 PM EDT up reply actions