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In 1975, Joe Morgan hit .327 with 17 home runs and 94 RBIs. Those traditional statistics may not seem impressive, but Morgan’s season ranks as one of the best in the game’s history.

As we begin voting Monday on the greatest individual season of all time, consider Morgan's value that season:

• He drew 132 walks, giving him a league-leading .466 on-base percentage (the highest figure, by the way, in either league between Mickey Mantle in 1962 and Wade Boggs in 1988).
• Because of his ability to get on base, he created a lot of runs --about 145, 17 more than the No. 2 hitter in the league, Greg Luzinski. But he created his runs in an efficient manner. He used up 354 outs; Luzinski, by comparison, used up 443 outs. So Morgan created more runs while using up 89 fewer outs.
• He stole 67 bases in 77 attempts. Factor in his speed, and he was one of the best baserunners in the league.
• He was an outstanding defensive second baseman, not only winning a Gold Glove but also ranking as the third-best overall defensive player in the National League in 1975, according to Baseball-Reference.com.
• He did all this in an era when second basemen usually produced little at the plate. In 1975, National League second basemen hit a collective .267/.330/.353 (BA/OBP/SLG) -- with just 80 home runs. Morgan hit nearly one quarter of all home runs by National League second basemen. In 2011 terms, that would be akin to a second baseman hitting close to 50 home runs.
• The Reds won 108 games, Morgan was the near-unanimous MVP winner, and he even drove in the winning run in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series.

Add it up, and you end up with a player who was the best hitter in the league and one of the best defenders and baserunners in his league, and he did so while towering over other players at his position and playing on a championship team.

The wins above replacement statistic attempts to capture all this. In 1975, Morgan’s Baseball-Reference WAR was 12.0, the best of his career and easily the best in the National League. During his 1972 to 1976 peak, Morgan rated as the best player in the NL four times, at least acording to Baseball-Reference.



In 1975, Morgan was a full five wins better than Mike Schmidt, an astonishing total. Only 12 times since 1901 has a player recorded a bWAR of at least 4.5 wins higher than the No. 2 position player in his league:

1921 AL: Babe Ruth (14.0) over Ty Cobb/Tris Speaker (6.6)
1924 AL: Babe Ruth (11.9) over Harry Heilmann (6.2)
1956 AL: Mickey Mantle (12.9) over Yogi Berra (7.3)
2002 NL: Barry Bonds (12.2) over Jim Edmonds (7.2)
1975 NL: Joe Morgan (12.0) over Mike Schmidt (7.0)
1924 NL: Rogers Hornsby (13.0) over Frankie Frisch (8.0)
1967 AL: Carl Yastrzemski (12.2) over Al Kaline (7.3)
1946 AL: Ted Williams (11.8) over Johnny Pesky (6.9)
1923 AL: Babe Ruth (14.7) over Harry Heilmann (9.8)
1926 AL: Babe Ruth (12.0) over Goose Goslin (7.2)
1922 NL: Rogers Hornsby (10.7) over Dave Bancroft (5.9)
1948 NL: Stan Musial (11.5) over Johnny Mize (6.9)

For what it’s worth, only three of those 12 seasons ended in a World Series title -- Morgan, Mantle and Ruth in 1923.

So maybe Joe Morgan didn’t hit 73 home runs or drive in 191 runs or bat .400. But his 1975 season ranks as sleeper candidate for greatest individual season of all time.

* * * *

It wasn’t easy picking the 32 best seasons. I had two rules: Only one season per player, so we’d end up with a bracket of 32 different players; and I considered only seasons since 1901 (sorry, Ross Barnes fans).

It was important to get a diverse list of eras as well as positions. I did put a little more emphasis on more recent decades; basically, the quality of the game has improved over time, thus making it more difficult to post seasons with huge WAR totals like Ruth put up. Here is the breakdown by decade:

1900s -- 1
1910s -- 3
1920s -- 3
1930s -- 2
1940s -- 4
1950s -- 3
1960s -- 2
1970s -- 3
1980s -- 3
1990s -- 4
2000s -- 4

And by position:

C -- 2; Johnny Bench, Mike Piazza.
1B -- 3; Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Rod Carew.
2B -- 4; Eddie Collins, Rogers Hornsby, Jackie Robinson, Joe Morgan.
3B -- 2; George Brett, Mike Schmidt.
SS -- 5; Honus Wagner, Ernie Banks, Robin Yount, Cal Ripken, Alex Rodriguez.
LF -- 6; Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Rickey Henderson, Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols. (Ruth played left field in 1921, and Pujols primarily played left in 2003.)
CF – 8; Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Hack Wilson, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr. (Musial started at all three outfield positions in 1948 but played the most in center.)
RF -- 2; Hank Aaron, Sammy Sosa.

So there are our 32 players. I didn’t necessarily pick each player’s highest WAR season. In some cases, a player’s iconic season -- like Ted Williams’ .406 year or Hank Aaron’s 1957 MVP campaign -- was selected. In some instances, maybe a player had other things in his favor that would help him to potentially fare better in the voting, like a big RBI total. Certainly, WAR is a good baseline to use because it helps us adjust for differences in eras, but it shouldn’t be the only factor in determining the better season between two players. Was what Williams accomplished in 1941 more impressive than what Morgan accomplished in 1975? Is Yount being the best hitter in his league while playing shortstop more impressive than what Babe Ruth did in 1921 against an inferior brand of pitching? Maybe you prefer the all-around brilliance of Mays or DiMaggio over the pure hitting dominance of Rogers Hornsby or Lou Gehrig.

Which seasons just missed the cut? There were seven players who had a bWAR season of at least 10.0 who didn’t make the bracket -- Lou Boudreau, Jason Giambi, Ron Santo, Adrian Beltre, Home Run Baker, Norm Cash and Matt Kemp. Sorry, guys. (Just noticed there are three third basemen there; too late now to change the final 32, unfortunately.)

So get to the bracket and start voting. We’ll do one round per day this week, culminating in the final matchup on Friday.

Let the debates begin.

Follow David Schoenfield on Twitter @dschoenfield.

The genesis for this article came out of all the recent Hall of Fame discussions. A lot of arguments were along the lines of “Tim Raines was one of the best players in baseball in the mid-'80s,” or “You know, Don Mattingly was the best in the game there for a few years,” or perhaps “Barry Larkin was as good an all-around player as anybody at his peak.”

None of those statements are necessarily incorrect. But are they good Hall of Fame arguments? How many players can you claim were “one of the best in the game” over a period of years? So here’s what I did. I went back to 1969 and looked at each five-year span to determine the five best players in baseball, based on cumulative Baseball-Reference wins against replacement over those five years. (For the purposes of this piece, I looked just at position players.)

So here we go, with the usual caveats about WAR. You’ll see a lot of the same players and you’ll see a lot of Mike Schmidt and Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols in the top spot. But while the best player may not change all that often, it’s interesting to see who pops in some of the top five slots.

1969-1973: Sal Bando (33.6), Joe Morgan (32.7), Reggie Jackson (32.2), Johnny Bench (30.4), Pete Rose (30.1)

Our first entry and we already get a big surprise: Sal Bando, the best player in baseball? It may seem odd now, but Bando was one of the most respected players in the game at the time and finished second, third and fourth in MVP votes in 1971, 1973 and 1974. He hit for power, drew walks and played a solid third base, putting up big numbers for the era in the Oakland Coliseum, a place where batting averages and fly balls often went to die.

1970-1974: Joe Morgan (37.6), Johnny Bench (31.9), Sal Bando (30.0), Reggie Jackson (29.2), Pete Rose (28.8)

No change in the top five, although Morgan takes a big leap ahead of the others, replacing a more mundane 1969 with a monster 1973. You’re going to see a lot of Morgan here, as his 1972-76 run was one of the greatest five-year stretches in baseball history.

1971-1975: Joe Morgan (46.2), Reggie Jackson (33.3), Johnny Bench (31.9), Pete Rose (29.6), Willie Stargell (29.5)

Some believe Rose was a compiler, a good player who merely played forever. That’s not accurate; while he was never the best player in the game -- although he did win the 1973 MVP Award -- he was clearly one of the best for a period of years. This peak coincides with his years in the outfield; his value started declining once he moved to third base in 1975, where it’s fair to say he wasn’t exactly Brooks Robinson.

1972-1976: Joe Morgan (51.0), Rod Carew (33.2), Cesar Cedeno (32.5), Johnny Bench (32.1), Bobby Grich (32.0)

Absolutely phenomenal: Morgan was nearly 18 wins better than the No. 2 player over this five-year span. I don’t know if any player has ever dominated the game to the extent Morgan did over this stretch (that’s another article). Cedeno was a marvelous talent, a power/speed center fielder who hit .298 while averaging 21 home runs and 55 steals per season over these five years. The Astros moved the fences back in 1977 (10 feet at the foul lines, 12 feet in the power alleys), hurting Cedeno’s power. He injured his knee in 1978 and then broke his ankle in the 1980 playoffs, sapping his speed and effectively ending his years as a productive player.

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There are a lot of columns and analysis out there advocating the case for Tim Raines for the Hall of Fame. I probably won't add anything new to the discussion, but let me start here:



Player A is Raines. Player B is Tony Gwynn. That final column is times reached base. Yes, Raines reached base more often in his career than Gwynn, in just slightly more plate appearances. I'm not the first writer to come up with that comparison. Joe Posnanski, among others, is especially fond of this factoid. The point of the statistic isn't to bring down Gwynn, rather to show how potent and devastating an offensive player Raines was. The arc of his game was a little different than Gwynn's but the results are similar: Gwynn got more singles, Raines walked more and had a little more power. He was one of the great base stealers of all time and scored more runs in his career than Gwynn.

That's what Raines did: He scored runs. He's 51st on the all-time list and of the 50 players ahead of him, all eligible candidates are in the Hall of Fame except for Jimmy Ryan and George Van Haltren, two 1890s outfielders; turn-of-the-century shortstop Bill Dahlen; and Rafael Palmeiro.

A common refrain about Raines from his advocates is that he was one of the best players in baseball over a span in the 1980s. This isn't some after-the-fact hocus-pocus going on. It was widely believed at the time. In a 1984 Sports Illustrated piece on Raines, Pete Rose said: "Right now he's the best player in the National League. Mike Schmidt is a tremendous player and so are Dale Murphy and Andre Dawson, but Rock can beat you in more ways than any other player in the league. He can beat you with his glove, his speed and his hitting from either side of the plate." In his annual Baseball Abstracts, Bill James often argued the case of Raines' all-around brilliance. Raines finished fifth, sixth and seventh in MVP votes, despite playing for mediocre Expos teams.

Raines' five-year peak was 1983 to 1987. According to Baseball-Reference's WAR ranking, the top five players during those years were Wade Boggs (39.7), Rickey Henderson (34.1), Cal Ripken (33.3), Schmidt (31.4) and Raines (30.7). Pretty nice company. (The next five were Alan Trammell, Gwynn, Eddie Murray, Murphy and Keith Hernandez.)

To be fair, this alone doesn't make him a Hall of Famer. I checked every five-year period since 1969 (1969 to 1973, 1970 to 1974, etc.) and not all of the names that appear in the top five are Hall of Famers or future Hall of Famers. Heck, Sal Bando rated as the best player in baseball from 1969 to 1973.

Some characterize Raines as having too short of a peak level of dominance. From 1988 to 1995, he averaged .283/.375/.409, with 81 runs and 33 steals per season. Maybe not an MVP candidate anymore, but still a good player, top leadoff hitter and valuable contributor. He's hardly alone in this aspect. He had six seasons with an OPS+ of 130 or higher, the same as Jim Rice, Dawson and Ernie Banks, and more than Kirby Puckett, Roberto Alomar, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Yogi Berra, Tony Perez or Robin Yount.

Maybe Raines doesn't have a slum-dunk case. But he has a case. Maybe voters have forgotten his great years in Montreal (and they have forgotten; he received only 37 percent of the vote last year). Maybe they remember his final seasons with the Yankees, when he became a part-time player on two World Series champions. Maybe they can't believe he compares favorably with Tony Gwynn.

Believe.

When fans think of Bobby Valentine, most will initially think of the time he tried to sneak back into the dugout wearing glasses and a fake mustache after getting ejected from a game. There will be plenty of talk about the perception that he's arrogant, a little aloof and craves the limelight too much. There will be talk that he hasn't managed in the major leagues since 2002 (although he did in Japan after that) and that his departure from the Mets was fueled in part by his disagreements with general manager Steve Phillips.

So the talk will mostly be about his personality. But what kind of manager was he? Let's look back at his career -- focusing mostly on his full seasons with the Mets from 1997 to 2002 -- to see what that may indicate about how he'll manage the Red Sox.

Will Carl Crawford hit leadoff?

With Jacoby Ellsbury's new power stroke, it may make sense to move him down in the order to get him more RBI opportunities; that would leave Crawford as a leadoff option. I don't see that. Even if Crawford bounces back, his on-base percentage is hardly ideal for a leadoff hitter and Valentine -- a guy who was using computers and studying sabermetrics back with the Rangers in the '80s -- craves a high OBP from his leadoff hitter.

Check out his leadoff hitters with the Mets:

1997: Lance Johnson/Brian McRae.
1998: Brian McRae/Tony Phillips -- McRae posted a career-high .360 OBP that year.
1999: Rickey Henderson.
2000: Ten different leadoff hitters, including Benny Agbayani 27 games.
2001: Used four guys at least 20 games, led by Joe McEwing's 44 games. Led off Agbayani 32 times.
2002: Roberto Alomar/Roger Cedeno.

The unconventional use of Agbayani, the rotund Hawaiian without much speed but in possession of good on-base skills, shows Valentine's preference for OBP. In 2002, with Cedeno failing to do the job, he used Alomar there. I see Crawford remaining lower in the order, with Ellsbury staying in the No. 1 spot.

Does he like the quick hook or does he let his starters stay in the game?

There's not really a lot of in-game strategy in the American League, especially with a team like the Red Sox that basically just looks to bash the ball. So the most important strategic elements for Valentine will be how he handles the rotation and bullpen. The 2011 Red Sox were 12th in the AL in average innings per start, but that was more a function of a lousy rotation than Terry Francona's itchy trigger finger.

Let's see where the Mets under Valentine ranked in average in innings per start among NL teams:

1997: 5th
1998: 4th
1999: 8th
2000: 4th
2001: 4th
2002: 5th

Nothing really unusual here, as the Mets usually had a solid rotation under Valentine. They ranked in the upper half of innings because he had decent pitchers.

He was a little more generous when it came to allowing his starters throw 100 to 119 pitches:

1997: 9th
1998: 7th
1999: 12th
2000: 3rd
2001: 1st
2002: 4th

What's interesting about the 2001 squad is that they actually allowed the fewest walks in the league, so the high pitch counts weren't the result of a staff that walked a lot of hitters. He had a veteran rotation that year -- Leiter, Kevin Appier, Glendon Rusch, Steve Trachsel, Rick Reed -- and let his starters work deeper into games. It will be interesting to see if Valentine allows Jon Lester and Josh Beckett to reach the century mark more often than Francona did. In 2011, Lester had 22 100-pitch games -- tied for 25th-most among major league starters; Beckett had 21. Justin Verlander had 34, CC Sabathia 31, and other top AL pitchers like James Shields, David Price, Felix Hernandez, C.J. Wilson, Dan Haren and Jered Weaver were all in the high 20s or low 30s.

Does he like an experienced closer?

In other words, would he be comfortable with Daniel Bard in the ninth inning? With the Mets, he initially had John Franco. The team acquired Armando Benitez in 1999 and when Franco went down with an injury in early July, Benitez took over as closer; when Franco returned, Benitez kept the closer job. As the Rangers' manager from 1985 to 1992, he had a different closer every year early on, before the club turned starter Jeff Russell into a successful closer in 1989. Hard to read too much into this, although both Russell and Bard throw hard. My guess is this becomes more of a front-office decision (do they sign Ryan Madson?), but that Valentine would have no problem making Bard his closer.

Does he like strikeout pitchers or guys who throw strikes?

With the Rangers, Valentine (and pitching coach Tom House) were obsessed with guys who threw hard. They had Bobby Witt, Jose Guzman, Edwin Correa, Nolan Ryan, Mitch Williams and others. Ryan had mostly refined his control (for him) by the time he reached Texas, but the other four would have problems hitting a barn door placed 10 feet in front of them. His first four staffs all had the highest walk rate in the American League. His staffs with the Mets were better, and Valentine seemed less concerned with velocity -- guys like Reed, Bobby Jones and Rusch were more finesse-type pitchers who threw strikes.

Mets strikeout rate under Valentine:

1997: 13th
1998: 7th
1999: 4th
2000: 3rd
2001: 5th
2002: 5th

Mets walk rate under Valentine:

1997: 2nd
1998: 7th
1999: 8th
2000: 3rd
2001: 1st
2002: 5th


Does he like a set lineup?

During his years with the Mets, Valentine always had a set infield, but remarkably never had one outfielder start 100 games at one position more than once. His machinations out there were pretty remarkable and show the willingness to be flexible and mix and match players as needed. Now, with the Red Sox he won't have same issue, with Ellsbury and Crawford playing every day, but it certainly suggests he'd be comfortable with a platoon in right field.

Here's the list of outfielders who started 100 games in a season at the same position with the Mets under Valentine:

1997: Bernard Gilkey, LF, 134
1998: Brian McRae, CF, 144
1999: Rickey Henderson, LF, 113
2000: Jay Payton, CF, 124; Derek Bell, RF, 136
2001: None
2002: Roger Cedeno, LF, 125; Jeromy Burnitz, RF, 131

The big issue here is how he handles Crawford, especially if he struggles to hit left-handers again (.195 in 2011). Would he consider benching Crawford against lefties, or at least the tough lefties?


Does he like young players?

With the Mets, he mostly had a veteran lineup. He did give Agbayani an opportunity, broke in Payton and Timo Perez, and gave Cedeno his first chance to play every day. With the Rangers, he broke in position players like Ruben Sierra, Oddibe McDowell, Steve Buechele, Pete Incaviglia, Jerry Browne, Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez and Dean Palmer. Again, this might be more of a front-office decision, but I'd say Valentine would give youngsters like Josh Reddick and Ryan Lavarnway an opportunity to play regularly.

Valentine's reputation with the Mets was one of being prepared and being tactically smart with his in-game moves. He had to do more with the Mets than he'll have to with the Red Sox, especially considering he was often platooning at one or two outfield spots. He trusted his veteran starters to go deep into games. In short, there's nothing radically unconventional about Valentine's managerial philosophy. Of course, he last managed in the majors 10 years ago and his biggest challenge won't necessarily be strategy, but getting Crawford to rebound, getting his older players in better shape, and rebuilding Bard's confidence.

In major league history, a player has scored 150 or more runs 46 times, topped by Billy Hamilton's 198 for the 1894 Philadelphia Phillies. You can probably guess that the game was a little different back then: Hamilton posted a .521 on-base percentage, he was one of three Phillies to bat .400 and they scored 1,179 runs in 132 games, or nearly nine runs per game.

Of those 46 seasons of 150 runs, 27 came in the 1880s or 1890s, including eight guys who did it in 1894. It happened seven times in the 1920s, five by Babe Ruth. And it happened 10 times in the 1930s. But since World War II, only two players have scored 150 runs in a season: Ted Williams scored 150 in 1949 and Jeff Bagwell scored 152 in 2000.

After scoring his 124th run in Thursday's win, Curtis Granderson is now on pace for 149 runs. He's scored 27 runs more than the No. 2 guy in the majors, Jacoby Ellsbury. Yes, runs are team-dependent to a certain extent -- you need good hitters behind you to drive you in -- but 149 runs is an awesome achievement, no matter how you slice it. And runs are definitely not, as somebody tweeted the other day, "a meaningless stat." There aren't exactly any chumps on this list of players who have scored 140 runs in a season since 1946.



One thing you'll note about Granderson is he easily has the lowest batting average and on-base percentage of anybody on the list. Clearly, his teammates have helped, as he's scored 47 percent of the time he's been on base, the second-highest percentage on the list. He's helped by spending most of the season in the No. 2 hole in the batting order, giving more opportunities to the hitters behind him. Most of the guys on the list hit leadoff (Biggio, Henderson, Dykstra, Knoblauch) or No. 3. the 1996 version of A-Rod hit second (with Ken Griffey, Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner following) and the 2007 version hit cleanup, the only cleanup hitter on the list.

The most surprising name on the list might be Knoblauch, especially since he also has the lowest home run total. Despite finishing last in the AL in home runs, however, that Twins teams still scored 877 runs. No. 3 hitter Paul Molitor hit .341 and drove in 113 runs despite hitting just nine home runs.

Anyway, you'll notice most of names here consist of (A) Ted Williams, or (B) players from the high-octane offensive period of the late '90s. The most runs scored in the 1950s, '60s and '70s belongs to Billy Williams of the 1970 Cubs, with 137 runs. That team did score more than 800 runs. The most impressive run-scoring feat during that time might have been Tim Raines, who scored 133 runs for the 1983 Expos, a team that scored just 677 runs overall. Raines scored nearly 20 percent of the Expos' runs that year.

Follow David Schoenfield on Twitter @dschoenfield.

So your team is offering up a star? Sometimes the prospect you get in return turns to gold. And sometimes (more often?) deals like these 10 happen.

1. Fred McGriff for Melvin Nieves, Donnie Elliott and Vince Moore. (Braves/Padres, 1993.)

2. Rickey Henderson for Steve Karsay and Jose Herrera. (A's/Blue Jays, 1993.)

3. David Cone for Marty Janzen, Jason Jarvis and Mike Gordon. (Yankees/Blue Jays, 1995.)

4. Mark McGwire for T.J. Mathews, Eric Ludwick and Blake Stein. (Cardinals/A's, 1997.)

5. Curt Schilling for Vicente Padilla, Travis Lee, Omar Daal and Nelson Figueroa. (Diamondbacks/Phillies, 2001.)

6. Jason Schmidt for Ryan Vogelsong and Armando Rios. (Giants/Pirates, 2001.)

7. Aramis Ramirez and Kenny Lofton for Bobby Hill, Jose Hernandez and Matt Brubeck. (Cubs/Pirates, 2003.)

8. Carlos Beltran for Mark Teahen, John Buck and Mike Wood. (Astros/Royals/A's, three-way trade, 2004.)

9. Jason Bay for Andy LaRoche, Bryan Morris, Craig Hansen and Brandon Moss. (Pirates/Dodgers/Red Sox three-way trade, 2008.)

10. Matt Holliday for Brett Wallace, Clayton Mortensen and Shane Peterson. (Cardinals/A's, 2009.)

Follow David Schoenfield on Twitter @dschoenfield.

Yes, this is another article about the sorry state of offense in 2011. Scoring is down a fifth of a run per team from 2010, a "year of the pitcher." It's down four-tenths of a run from 2009, six-tenths of a run if you want to reach back to 2006. We've also heard about how power is a big part of this "problem," as MLB-wide isolated power is down 20-25 points from 2006. But we're not talking about something else that seems to have gone missing: leadoff hitters who are quality table-setters.

We'll get into the data up front and then start seeing if we can parse what it might mean. First, there's the simple fact that OBPs for leadoff hitters are down. Last year's MLB-wide leadoff man OBP of .329 was the lowest we've seen in a full season since 1982, when it was also .329. It hadn't been lower than .329 since 1978, when the leadoff OBP was .323. From 1993-2010, the American League’s leadoff OBP of .330 was its worst, the NL’s .328 its second-worst. Keep in mind, leadoff OBP didn’t disappear in a puff of PED ban enforcement. As the first chart reflects, leadoff OBPs weren’t just stable after 2006, they went up. The AL’s 2009 leadoff OBP of .355 was its highest since 1996. On-base percentage for leadoff men was back up where it had been in the offensive onslaught of the late '90s… until last year.

So, a low-water mark was set in 2010, the worst leadoff OBP in 32 seasons … until this spring's action. In 2011, leadoff hitters have managed to get on base at a .325 clip. It’s especially bad in the American League, where leadoff men were eking out a .312 OBP through Thursday’s action. More than a quarter of the way in, we’re still waiting for both leagues to flip the ignition, but without any ignitors, let alone the original Paul Molitor, how is that supposed to happen?

Naturally, the first question to ask is why? Looking at walk rates for leadoff hitters in the second table, we’ve obviously lost some of what we took for granted -- hitters aren’t managing that walk once every 10 times up, a pace you might once have accepted as the basic standard. We’re not at the bottom of a trough, but the rate is back down where things were earlier in the Aughties, and that’s sub-good.

Some of that is a matter of the selection of leadoff likelies available to their teams: Jacoby Ellsbury is not a big-time walking man, for example, and wishing he was won’t make it so, but it doesn't make him ineffective. However, in a league and time where Rickey Henderson is still retired, finding people who can draw ball four hasn’t exactly been easy, which is probably why Juan Pierre or even Scott Podsednik keep getting opportunities. Some of it can also be institutional -- last year, the Rays came up with a perfectly functional creative adaptation, moving John Jaso and B.J. Upton into and out of the role as Joe Maddon played matchups. But this year they got carried away with the Sam Fuld phenomenon, only to learn what they already knew from his projections, which is that for a leadoff hitter he makes a heck of a defensive replacement.

Admittedly, when we think about leadoff hitters, it's easy to stick with happier memories, of the guys who are or were truly great at it: Rickey and Tim Raines in the '80s for example, or Ichiro for the past decade. You can take things down a notch and think fondly of Ray Durham or Tony Phillips, or from the current generation of players get sentimental about guys like Brian Roberts and Chone Figgins. And from any of these guys, you generally knew what to expect: OBPs that were .350 or higher, plenty of walks, and stolen-base totals in the 20-50 range.

But even then, there were always the other guys, the way the other half lived with their leadoff options, which pulled leadoff OBPs down around .333 year after year. If you were around in 1981, you had a rare opportunity to see one of the worst leadoff hitters of all time in action, achieving what would be, even by his standards, a career lowlight. Alfredo Griffin posted a .236 OBP leading off for the Blue Jays for the bulk of a season that was blighted by a strike. It's a mark for single-season leadoff putrescence that hasn't been underwhelmed in the 30 years since.

We can get into origin myths if you like, and ask where the great leadoff men came from and now, where they went, and whether or not we're bereft of truly elite leadoff men in this particular generation of players -- beyond admirable dinosaurs like Ichiro, of course. I wonder if we aren’t just stuck in the Michael Bourn generation. That might not seem entirely fair to Bourn, because he's one of the better leadoff hitters by today’s standards. He has posted OBPs better than league average in 2009 and 2010, after all. He's off to a slow start this season, but at least he's reliably within spitting distance of walking once every ten times and he runs well. That might represent a new, lower standard of what will do, but perhaps this isn't a burden to be Bourn, but a reflection of a changed game. Bourn makes an appropriate symbol for a time when teams are getting used to living with less offense.

Christina Kahrl covers baseball for ESPN.com. You can follow her on Twitter.

To go with our Willie Mays package today, SportsNation worked up a list ranker with 30 of the greatest players of all time. Don't agree with me that Willie Mays was the greatest ever? Then Click here to vote yourself.

Here's my quick list without spending too much time thinking about it:

1. Willie Mays: He could hit, hit for power, run the bases and field with the best we've ever seen. Could have won as many as 10-11 MVP Awards.
2. Barry Bonds: If he had played center field instead of left, I'd consider him for No. 1.
3. Babe Ruth: I'd like to see him hitting 95-mph fastballs on a regular basis.
4. Hank Aaron: A testament to longevity, consistency, durability and greatness.
5. Stan Musial: Won three MVPs and finished second four other times.
6. Ted Williams: Maybe the greatest hitter of all time, but I give Musial the slight all-around edge.
7. Albert Pujols: Barring injury, he's this good.
8. Roger Clemens: We don't know what he did and if it helped. But we know what he did on the field. Greatest pitcher of all time.
9. Mike Schmidt: Dominated the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s. Eight-time home run champ and one of best fielding third basemen ever.
10. Walter Johnson: Could have dominated in any era.

11. Honus Wagner: Won batting titles, ran the bases and hit for power in the dead-ball era.
12. Lou Gehrig: Only strike against him is he didn't play a premium defensive position.
13. Alex Rodriguez: You can't deny the numbers.
14. Lefty Grove: The most underrated great pitcher of all time. Won nine ERA titles.
15. Mickey Mantle: If only he had stayed healthy.
16. Ty Cobb: Would love to go back in time and bring him back to 2011.
17. Josh Gibson: They say he hit 'em longer than the Babe.
18. Joe Morgan: The most underrated great position player of all time. Did everything well.
19. Rickey Henderson: The object is to score runs and nobody has scored more than Rickey.
20. Greg Maddux: 355 wins, fourth-most starts, more pitches painting black than anyone.

21. Cal Ripken: Overrated as a hitter, underrated as a fielder.
22. Tom Seaver: Mets fans still can't believe they traded him.
23. Pedro Martinez: At his peak, the best ever. Four pitches that made batters cry.
24. Frank Robinson: And to think he was only third-best NL outfielder of the early '60s.
25. Johnny Bench: Knees gave out, but those first 12 seasons were amazing.
26. Satchel Paige: Was he even the best Negro Leagues pitcher?
27. Rogers Hornsby: No denying his hitting numbers. Too low? Maybe so.
28. Pete Alexander: Won 94 games over one three-year span, impressive even for the time.
29. Cy Young: Yes, you can say I'm disrespecting the 19th century.
30. Sandy Koufax: A little bit of a product of his time and a huge home/road splits, plus short career for this list.

Follow David on Twitter: @dschoenfield. Follow the SweetSpot blog: @espn_sweet_spot.

Last week, ESPNNewYork.com ran its list of the 50 greatest Yankees of all time. It was a fun project and I was lucky enough to be one of the voters on the panel.

I was actually crazy enough to write nearly 4,000 words on the topic. I didn't post last week since there was so much going on with the season starting, and so on, but I hate to waste all that work. So here's my list, starting with No. 50. I considered only a player's time with the Yankees, focusing mostly on his regular-season value while also factoring in postseason heroics and maybe an intangible or two. I'm not a Yankees fan, so I didn't consider this a list of most beloved Yankees, as some may have.

Here we go. We'll post in chunks throughout the week. The overall ranking from the panel is included in parenthesis.

50. Catfish Hunter, P (46)
Hunter was great his first season with the Yankees (23-14, 2.58), not so great after that (although he did have a big win in the 1978 World Series), but earns mention for being the first high-priced free agent to sign with New York. A true trailblazer who set the tone for the next 35 years of baseball in the Bronx.

49. Eddie Lopat, P (41)
The Yankees acquired Lopat after he had gone 29-26 with a 2.77 ERA for the White Sox in 1946-47. The White Sox acquired Aaron Robinson, a 32-year-old catcher who could hit a little (he had been an All-Star in ’47), but who the Yankees hardly needed with Yogi Berra ready. Lopat went 113-59 with the Yankees and proved to be a clutch World Series performer (4-1, 2.60). That said, the deal actually turned out OK for the White Sox. Robinson was flipped after one season to Detroit for Billy Pierce, who became one of the AL’s best pitchers of the 1950s.

48. Wally Pipp, 1B (not ranked)
He was a solid player for a decade with the Yankees, rapping out over 1,500 hits from 1915 to 1924. But you may remember him for something else.

47. Rickey Henderson, OF (40)
Don't blame Rickey for the Yankees' failures to win a division title in the mid-'80s. During his four-plus seasons with New York, he hit .288/.395/.455 and scored 513 runs in 596 games and arguably should have won the '85 MVP Award over teammate Don Mattingly. OK, not arguably. He should have won (with apologies to George Brett, who had a monster season for the Royals). From Baseball-Reference.com, Rickey had a 10.0 WAR (wins above replacement) that year, one of only two 10-plus seasons from a hitter in the '80s (Robin Yount’s 1982 was the other).

46. Spud Chandler, P (34)
Chandler was 109-43 in his career (all with the Yankees), for a .717 winning percentage. No pitcher with at least 100 victories has a better percentage. A football and baseball player at the University of Georgia, Chandler spent five years in the minors and didn’t reach the majors until he was 29, making him one of the least likely MVP winners ever (he won in 1943 with a 20-4, 1.64 season).

45. Herb Pennock, P (27)
A crafty left-hander for the Yanks from 1923-33 who survived on a variety of overhand and sidearm curveballs, it was once written of him, "His biceps is conspicuous by its absence." He also had a great nickname: The Knight of Kennett Square. (He was from Kennett Square, Pa.) Pennock was one of many 1920s Yankees acquired from the Red Sox, moves that helped create the first New York dynasty. He later made the Hall of Fame, although he's one of its weakest members.

44. Robinson Cano, 2B (not ranked)
If he has more seasons like 2010, he’ll start to climb much higher.

43. Bobby Murcer, OF (35)
Like Mickey Mantle he was from Oklahoma and a shortstop in the minor leagues. Burdened by the unfair Mantle comparisons, he was never fully appreciated and his best seasons came in the low-offense environment of the early '70s, obscuring that he was one of the best players in the league for a few years.

42. Joe Gordon, 2B (38)
A slugging second baseman for seven seasons (missing two years due to World War II), Gordon was an All-Star six of those seasons and the 1942 AL MVP when he hit .322 with 103 RBIs.

41. Bill Skowron, 1B (not ranked)
Nicknamed "Moose," although he actually wasn't as big as the moniker suggested (5-foot-11, 195 pounds). A five-time All-Star in the '50s, he hit .300 five times and was a great World Series performer, hitting .293 with 29 RBIs in 39 career games.

40. David Cone, P (45)
I was sure I rated Cone lower than most of the voters, but he actually ended up just 45th on the final list. It seems like Cone pitched forever for the Yankees -- that's the impression a lot of postseason games can leave on you -- but he won just 64 games in pinstripes. He started 12 playoff games and went 6-1 with a 3.86 ERA including a crucial win in Game 3 of the 1996 World Series when the Yankees were down 2 games to 0.

39. Roger Clemens, P (not ranked)
Clemens over Cone? I don't see how you rank them the other way. Clemens was 83-42 with a 4.01 ERA with the Yankees, good for a 114 ERA+; Cone was 64-40 with a 3.91 ERA, good for a 119 ERA+. Clemens pitched nearly 200 more innings, and his postseason résumé was actually stronger than Cone's: 7-5, 3.42 ERA. As far as big postseason games, he had the 15-strikeout one-hitter in Game 4 of the 2000 ALCS against Seattle (arguably the most dominant postseason game ever pitched) and people forget the Piazza Game featured Clemens pitching eight shutout innings of two-hit baseball.

38. Dave Winfield, OF (28)
An All-Star all eight of his seasons in the Bronx, Winfield won five Gold Gloves with the Yankees, including one as a 35-year-old right fielder. Really? A big, tall, old, lumbering right fielder was one of the three best outfielders in the American League in 1987? Winfield famously went 1-for-22 in the 1981 World Series and the Yankees never made it back to the playoffs that decade, somewhat obscuring that he was a great run producer for a lot of years.

37. Elston Howard, C (24)
The first African-American to play for the Yankees, Howard didn’t get 400 plate appearances in a season until he was 29, as he served in a utility role until finally winning regular catching duties from Yogi Berra. Despite the late start to his career, he made nine straight All-Star teams and won the 1963 AL MVP award.

36. Earle Combs, OF (23)
The leadoff hitter and center fielder on the famed '27 Murderer’s Row lineup, Combs may be a questionable Hall of Famer (primarily due to a short career), but averaged 125 runs a season during his eight years as a regular thanks to a .325 career average, good speed (he hit 20-plus triples three times) and good on-base skills.

35. Mike Mussina, P (50)
I think no pitcher has been as unappreciated over the past 20 years as Mike Mussina. He should be a Hall of Famer but will struggle to get in, at least initially. He had the bad timing of joining the Yankees the year after they won the World Series and retiring the year before they won again. He won 123 games with the Yankees.

Mike Mussina in the postseason: 23 G, 21 GS, 7-8, 3.42 ERA, .676 OPS
Andy Pettitte in the postseason: 42 G, 42 GS, 19-10, 3.83 ERA, .739 OPS

The big difference? Pettitte received an average of 4.39 runs per game of support while Mussina averaged just 3.07 runs of support.

34. Paul O’Neill, OF (30)
The Yankees acquired O’Neill from the Reds in the sort of trade you never see anymore: an old-fashioned challenge trade. O'Neill was turning 30, coming off a year in which he'd hit .246 and dropped from 28 home runs to 14. Roberto Kelly was 18 months younger, played center field, and had been an All-Star in 1992, although he'd slumped in the second half to finish at .272 with 10 home runs. On first glance, you would say the Reds made the smarter deal. What did the Yankees see? How did a guy with a .259 career average top .300 the next six seasons? Retrospective reports have said that Lou Piniella drove O'Neill too hard in Cincinnati, tried to turn him into a home run hitter. It's one of those stories that sounds good after the fact, but doesn't always match the truth. Michael Key has joked with O'Neill on Yankee broadcasts about his relationship with Piniella, which O'Neill artfully dodges.

But you know what? When you check the records, it rings true. In his final three seasons with the Reds, 18 percent of O'Neill's flyballs were infield popups. Over his Yankee career, only 9 percent of his flyballs were infield popups. Also, he started hitting more groundballs and more line drives. He was no longer trying to hammer home runs every swing.

33. Tommy Henrich, OF (37)
Broadcaster Mel Allen nicknamed him "Old Reliable" for his ability to get the big hit. Henrich actually grew up playing softball in high school and didn't sign with the Indians until he was 20. After a few years in their system he was declared a minor league free agent and signed with the Yankees, where he played on seven World Series champions. He hit the first walkoff home run in World Series history, a bottom-of-the-ninth shot off Don Newcombe that gave the Yankees a 1-0 win the 1949 opener.

32. Waite Hoyt, P (32)
Originally signed by the New York Giants out of high school in Brooklyn, Hoyt later went to the Red Sox and then the Yankees, where he became a Hall of Famer for the 1920s powerhouses, winning 157 games in pinstripes plus six more in the World Series. Hoyt apparently coined the phrase, "It's great to be young and a Yankee," performed vaudeville in the offseason, worked as a mortician, became known for his Babe Ruth stories and was the popular longtime broadcaster for the Reds.

31. Orlando Hernandez (not ranked)
Not even in the top 50? More evidence that El Duque gets a short shrift when it comes to his proper place in Yankee mythology. Sure, he was a pedestrian 61-40 in the regular season, but when the Yankees won three straight World Series from 1998-2000, Hernandez was the key postseason performer, going 8-1 with a 2.20 ERA in 10 starts. During those years he was a more important playoff performer than Jeter, more important than Rivera, more important than Pettitte or Bernie. Those guys became legends in large part to help from Hernandez.

Follow David Schoenfield on Twitter at @dschoenfield. Follow the SweetSpot blog at @espn_sweet_spot.

Every now and then, when I’m looking for something to do, I head over the Baseball Reference to play with some of the many tools they have on the site. I can’t even begin to describe how much I’ve been able to do on that site to satisfy the inner baseball geek inside of me. During a recent trip, I took a look at Mark Prior’s statistics and reminisced about what could have been. As I ventured down the page, I was reminded of the similarity scores and I was curious how his career compares. (If you have no idea what a similarity score is, they have an explanation.)

At age 22, with an 18-win season under his belt, the most similar pitcher to Prior was Vic Willis. I didn’t know much about Willis, so I looked him up. Turns out he started his career right before the 20th century and was inducted into the Hall of Fame with 249 wins. That’s less than Tommy John, who’s not in the Hall of Fame, but that’s another article all together. The point is that at that point in his career, things looked great for Prior. Fast forward to present day and we’re left to wonder what could have been for the boy with “perfect mechanics”.

That got me thinking about present-day guys that rank right with Hall of Fame players early in their careers. It’s by no means a career predictor, but it is kind of cool to see how you compare to the greats.

At age 22, Roger Clemens turned in a 7-5 season fresh off finishing sixth in the rookie of the year balloting the previous season. The most similar pitcher to the Rocket through age 22? Jair Jurrjens of the Atlanta Braves. (Compare Stats).

Moving over to the hitters, at age 23, Barry Bonds was just getting his feet wet with the Pittsburgh Pirates. In his second season in the league, Bonds led the team in home runs with 25. The most similar hitter to 23-year-old Barry? The Cincinnati Reds slugging right fielder, Jay Bruce. (Compare Stats).

Maybe those two examples are sour to you based on PED issues. Fine, how about one of the biggest characters the game has ever seen? At age 22, Rickey Henderson had stolen 189 bases and had a goal in mind to break Lou Brock's record. It’s hard to pin down a perfect fit for matching Rickey, but if we look at who was most similar at that age we’ll see Carl Crawford’s name. (Compare Stats).

What does it all mean? To be honest, probably nothing. It’s just fun to play around with history some times. Take a few minutes the next time you’re bored on the Internet, turn off Facebook, and immerse yourself in the numbers.

Joe Aiello writes for The View From the Bleachers blog, which is part of the SweetSpot network.

Earlier this week, Craig Calcaterra got Rich Gossage on the phone. As you probably know, Gossage has been fairly outspoken about the use of steroids (etc.) and Craig had an interesting question for the Goose: What would the Hall of Fame do if a current member was found to have used steroids?

Gossage wouldn't speculate about whether it would be appropriate to remove someone from the Hall of Fame. And though I didn't ask him, he volunteered that he has no idea what member, if any, could have possibly used steroids, and doesn't know one way or the other if anyone had (he wouldn't comment on the issue of Canseco's credibility).

To date, no member of the Hall has ever been de-inducted, as it were, and I could find nothing that suggests that the Hall even has a procedure for doing so. Of course, if they wanted to, the Hall could simply call a meeting of its board and make a rule in about five minutes. But let's face it: if the Football Hall of Fame hasn't taken out O.J., what are the odds that the Baseball Hall of Fame would remove a juicer?

Craig is right: the people who run the Hall can do whatever they like. The people who run the Hall of Fame listen to Major League Baseball and they listen to the living Hall of Famers. But it's a private institution that makes its own rules.

There's a new book -- I have it, but I haven't read it -- that suggests the Chicago Cubs might well have thrown at least a few games in the 1918 World Series. As it happens, none of those Cubs are in the Hall of Fame.

But what if one of them was, and a smoking gun was discovered?

There have long been rumors about shady dealings in other World Series. Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were once investigated for throwing regular-season games. Both were officially cleared, but still ... we probably won't ever know much more about all of these things than we already know. But you never know when a damning letter might be unearthed. What if we have something close to proof that Cobb threw a game or two?

Nothing, probably.

I don't believe anyone's really got the stomach for yanking Ty Cobb's plaque from the wall. There would be a lot of talk about the mists of time and the conditions of his era, and in the end Cobb's (again, theoretical) transgressions would become just another inconvenient footnote in the game's long, sometimes sordid history.

What would the Hall of Fame do if a modern Hall of Famer was found to have gambled on baseball? Or (more likely) to have used illegal performance-enhancing drugs while those drugs were (theoretically) against Major League Baseball rules?

I don't have the foggiest idea. I've been thinking about this for two days (and trying to write this blog post for two days), and I just don't know. Usually, these things are obvious enough (in my mind, anyway) that I can rattle off something for you within an hour or so. This one's got me stumped, though.

The people who run the Hall of Fame really don't want to kick anybody out. The people who vote for the Hall of Fame have made it pretty clear that while cocaine, amphetamines, and various other controlled substances are perfectly acceptable, they're drawing the line at steroids. But what if -- and please pardon this hypothetical -- what if Rickey Henderson were to appear on a list of players who had used steroids? Henderson sailed into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

If he -- again, hypothetically -- was exposed as a "cheater" (not my word), it would create a real quandary for all the stakeholders. But I think the Hall would sit tight. Just not worth the hassle. The voters/writers might squawk, but in the end they need the Hall more than the Hall needs them. So let's say our hypothetical Man of Steal keeps his plaque. Doesn't that make it just a bit harder for voters to spurn Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro and Barry Bonds?

I'm not saying there's a complete turnaround, or that anything big happens immediately. But I think if someone in the Hall of Fame is exposed, that player will not be de-plaqued, and I think it will help some future candidates with steroids in their past.