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All All-True-Team Team

Introduction

Now that I'm done with the True Team series, I'm going to analyze the results. If you're unaware of this series, here are the links to the posts. The methodology is explained there.

Angels | Astros | Athletics | Blue Jays | Braves | Brewers | Cardinals | Cubs | Diamondbacks | Dodgers | Giants | Indians | Mariners | Marlins | Mets | Nationals (Expos) | Orioles | Padres | Phillies | Pirates | Rangers | Rays | Red Sox | Reds | Rockies | Royals | Tigers | Twins | White Sox | Yankees

Team Established

The first thing that became blatantly obvious was that teams that were established around 1900 had a huge advantage in this series because of the advent of free agency in 1975. Here is that proof in graph form:


Yearestablished_medium

You can also see how much better the Yankees team is than all the other teams.

All All-True-Team Team

Now, if we take the best eligible players and create a team out of them, this is the result. For this team, I did try to keep players at their original position. The only place this really affected the team was at catcher. There were three other players who didn't make the team at all (Chipper Jones, Luke Appling and Jeff Bagwell) who have a higher career WAR than the starting catcher, Johnny Bench.

Position Player WAR Team
C Johnny Bench 81.6 Reds
1B Stan Musial 139.3 Cardinals
2B Charlie Gehringer 88.1 Tigers
SS Cal Ripken 99.7 Orioles
3B Mike Schmidt 110.6 Phillies
LF Ted Williams 139.8 Red Sox
CF Mickey Mantle 123.1 Yankees
RF Mel Ott 116.1 Giants
SP Walter Johnson 127.7 Senators (Twins)
SP Bob Gibson 85.6 Cardinals
SP Bob Feller 66 Indians
SP Don Drysdale 65.7 Dodgers
SP Carl Hubbell 64.4 Giants
CL Mariano Rivera 56.3 Yankees
RP Eddie Rommel 42.1 Athletics
RP John Hiller 28.2 Tigers
RP Bob Stanley 21.5 Red Sox
RP Al Brazle 20.5 Cardinals
BENCH (1B) Lou Gehrig 125.9 Yankees
BENCH (OF) Carl Yastrzemski 108.7 Red Sox
BENCH (OF) Al Kaline 101.9 Tigers
BENCH (3B) Brooks Robinson 94.6 Orioles
BENCH (OF) Joe DiMaggio 92 Yankees
BENCH (3B) George Brett 91.6 Royals
BENCH (OF) Roberto Clemente 91.3 Pirates
TOTAL 2182.3

There are players from fourteen different teams, including four Yankees and three Red Sox. The best True Player is Ted Williams by half a win over Stan Musial. The lone active player on this team is Mariano Rivera. With the exception of the relief pitchers, all of these players are in the hall of fame.

Position Averages

The relief pitching position was a weakness for almost every team. Here are the averages for each True Team position:

Positionaverages_medium

Mr. Teams

Finally, there were nine Mr. Teams named in the series. I also tried to name honorary Mr. Teams for those who are known as such.

Mrteam_medium

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this series as much as I did. I realize the strict rules removed a lot of players from contention, but it provides another opportunity to re-do this. Maybe each SBNation blog can come up with their own True Team. If nothing else, maybe it reminded you of a player long forgotten.

Whatever your reason for following along, thank you for doing so. I hope this provided a little baseball conversation for you during the off-season. I know it has for me.

As always, you can follow me on Twitter @stealofhome.