So I am a little biased but I always thought the Jays' 93 lineup never gets the respect it deserved.

Here's my analysis of the Big Red Machine vs. the 04 New York Old Farts (position players only). We'll start with offence. The Big Red Machine scored 840 runs in a basically run-neutral environment in a league in which the average team scored 667 runs. The Big-Red Machine was 1.26 X better than the average team in the national league. As Reds' pitchers were not particularly better than other teams' as hitters; this actually understates the difference.

The Yankees in 03 scored 877 runs in a moderately run depressing environment in a league in which the average team scored 788 runs. In order for the Yankees to reach the Big Red Machine level (1.26X league), they'd have to score 992 runs. Let's give Rodriguez a generous 20 runs more than Soriano. The Yankees are still way, way off from the Big Red Machine. We'll give the Yankees a generous 50 runs for Sheffield over Rivera/Mondesi et. al, and they're still significantly behind. Then you factor in the comparison between Boone and Almonte, and the fact that the lineup doesn't have a single starter under 27, and it seems to me that the Yankees are likely to be significantly behind the Big Red Machine. Actually, the Yankees' offence doesn't look particularly better than the Red Sox' offence.

Then, you've got defence. Down the middle, the BRM offers Bench, Concepcion, Morgan and Geronimo; the OFs offer Posada, Jeter, Almonte and Lofton. The defensive difference at the key positions is huge. At the lesser positions, it's pretty much even.

As far as I am concerned, it is not really a close call; the BRM is by far better. Now, pitching is another story altogether...

Mick, thanks for naming the Juggernot, which may not even resemble the Yankees team the Fighting Jays will play in the second half. The one with Jose Vidro, Odalis Perez, and whatever else it wants between now and then.

I thought the 2003 Red Sox were great, mostly because there were no holes in that batting order. This year's Yankees are still a 2B away from that, just as the Jays will obviously take a step back from Frankencatcher. Even Boston is going to a glove man at second, but they'll still score a ton of runs.

That Red Machine was a truly awesome lineup. Great gloves, too, and some really, really smart players. That's why the Yaz-Fisk-Rice-Lynn team taking them to seven games was the best Series ever. The most joyous will always be 1992 and 1993, but I never saw better baseball than in 1975.

I admit that the current Yankees could be tremendous if Mussina, Vazquez and Brown all have great years. They could win 110 games. But the NYOF, as Mike calls them, haven't won anything yet, and in case you haven't heard, they're in a tough division where you need to add Tejada, Palmeiro and Lopez to have even a chance at a .500 season.

The 1993 Jays team was special because WAMCO featured three great hitters and two very good ones. AMOWC wouldn't have been as catchy, but I always thought it would have caused even more nightmares for pitchers. The shortstop could hit a little, the closer was lights-out, that Hentgen kid won 19 games. Those were the days...

Will the Yankees' GLE score as many runs as the Red Sox did last season? Doubtful.

Well, as great as the 1993 offense was, they weren't even the best offense that year -- the Tigers scored more runs.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/balco1.html
This Yankee lineup may be even worse when we consider that a certain off season acquisition may have to play this season off the juice. COMN

Oh yeah, look for the red arrow on page four of the affidavit.

The 27 Yankees outscored the Reds of 1976 by 976 runs to 857.

Out homered them 158 to 141

Out hit them .307 to .280

Played 7 fewer games and had no DH

I would take them in a heart beat

Hmm, a better lineup than those three teams (2004 Yanks, 76 Reds, and 27 Yankees)? There might be another group of Yanks you could interestingly toss into that mix, really any group of players that made up one of their lineups in the late 1930s - Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, and an assortment of lesser-known players who were capable of putting up some nice averages (Bill Dickey hit .362 one year, the 1939 OF regulars - DiMaggio, Keller and Selkirk - averaged .342 between them (437 for 1278), and third baseman Red Rolfe was a solid .300 hitter). The only real hole in the lineup was SS Frank Crosetti, and while 2B wasn't too great, it wasn't too shabby either. The two Yankee second basemen of the time period were Tony Lazzerri, ending his career, followed by Joe Gordon, beginning his.

There are two ways I consider possible ways of comparing the two lineups - either by position or by comparing the best hitter with the best hitter, the second-best with the second-best, and so forth. Sometimes evaluating by position doesn't work so well, because you can fall into the trap of ignoring the size of the discrepency between different players. You could, for example, compare ARod and Woodward at SS and then Delgado and Giambi at 1B and call it a wash, when it quite clearly isn't. So here's the two lineups in order of best-to worst hitters as I see it (the order of the list will be quite subjective).

1) Rodriguez 3B ---- Joe DiMaggio CF
2) Sheffield RF --- Gehrig 1B
3) Giambi 1B --- Keller RF
4) Posada C --- Dickey C
5) Jeter SS --- Rolfe 3B
6) Matsui LF --- Selkirk LF
7) Williams DH --- Gordon/Lazzeri 2B
8) Lofton CF --- Tommy Henrich DH/Ute
9) ??? 2B --- Crosetti SS

1. I think we have to say this is pretty close to a wash. ARod and DiMaggio are both easily HoFers, the best in their day. I'd give the edge to DiMaggio though, because he was absolutely awesome at everything. ARod may be a 5-tool player, but DiMaggio was THE 5-tool player. MY PICK: DIMAGGIO

2. This one is pretty close as well. I'd give the edge to Gehrig (Gehrig's 1936-8 overall averages were .334/38/142, almost exactly what Sheffield did last year in what many called a "career year". The different eras each player played in plays a huge part of course, but Lou Gehrig is Lou Gehrig, and numbers don't lie). MY PICK: GEHRIG

3. Keller hit fewer Home Runs, but his RBI totals still neared 100. Giambi has a ton of power and knocks in more runs, but his '03 avg was 84 poitns below Keller's '39 avg. Then again, I'm sure Keller didn't walk 130 times with the lineup that surrounded him (and I doubt giambi will repeat that with the protection he'll have this year - but that's a separate post). Keller was actually only the Yanks' left fielder in 1939 though, after Gehrig retird, so it's a little unfair to list him here as being in a lineup with Gehrig. The previous Yankee left fielders were solid (Jake Powell hit over .300 in his half-season as a Yankee, Henrich hit 20 HRs his season as a regular), but Giambi is better than both of them. MY PICK: GIAMBI

4. Posada versus Dickey. Posada's a good player, but Dickey was a far superior pure hitter with power that was nearly comparable. I'll have to go with Dickey. MY PICK: DICKEY

5. Hmm. Between 1938 and '39, Rolfe averaged about .321/12/80. Jeter hit .324/10/52 last year, but was injured. Averaging out '01 and '02, he hit about .303/19/75. Jeter has a little more speed than Rolfe did. His slugging percentages are a little higher. I think we have to call this one a wash. MY PICK: NO ONE

6. Selkirk had a very solid 1939, but it appears I'm tending towards 1938 for my Old Yankee lineup, and he had a quite mediocre season that year. Matsui was a little disappointing last season, but on the whole better than the 1938 George Selkirk. MY PICK: MATSUI

7. Bernie Williams versus Joe Gordon/Tony Lazzeri. This is probably the oddest comparison of the lot. It has to be a pretty solid win for Bernie. He's getting old and was plagued by injuries last year, but last year was his first sub-.300 season in a decade. Gordon had some power, but in 1938 he had a pathetic OBP of .338. In this comparison, we have a present-day outfielder with moderate power and a good batting average pitted against a 1930s second baseman whose main asset was hitting home runs. Talk about a reversal of roles! MY PICK: WILLIAMS

8. Lofton and Henrich. It's hard to really use Henrich, because he was more of a regular outfielder in 1938 than a DH/Utility player, and I already used him in the Giambi comparison. But since he's listed and these Yankees really wouldn't have had many other options for a hypothetical DH (unless you include Myril Hoag and his .277/0/48 1938 season in 267 at-bats), we'll use him anyway. He hit more homers than Lofton will and had less speed. Lofton hits for a better average. This is probably a relatively small win for the present-day Yankees. Lofton will do decent things for them, things of which the Old Yankees might not have had the luxury, but nothing that would have strongly shifted the balance of the 1938 team. The old Yankees had the resources to make the impact of Lofton fairly negligible. MY PICK: LOFTON

9. Ew. Umm...Well we basically have a 1930s version of Alex Gonzalez (the Cubs one, who although I love him as a player for his leather, is hardly the most potent of a lineup threat) against...no one. If we use Erick Almonte as our new Yankee second baseman, well, I guess we have to give this win to Crosetti, but not by a lot. The current-day Yanks will, most likely, slpurge on someone slightly more mediocre than Almonte is to fill out their lineupo hole, in which case, this will be a total wash. MY PICK: CROSETTI, but with an almost negligible amount of impact.

Well, there's my little rant. To be quite honest, I originally started this post to take a look at the 1931 Philedelphia A's, but I got a little sidetracked. I realize that my stats comparisons are hardly fair, and I've gotten stuck using some stats with little or no meaning (see: batting average), but they're quick and easy gages of performance, and this post is already quite long. Feel free to make your own analyses of the two teams, I can most definitely accept my word as wrong. My rankings of the order of hitters is very, very, subjective, especially when ranking a bunch of guys I've hardly even heard of based on some archaic stats. But it was an interesting tangent to explore, however right or wrong I may be.

Technically, if you add up my tallies it works out to be very close, but the advantage probably works out to the 1938 Yankees. You can pretty much not include the 8th- and 9th-best hitters on both teams, seeing as those comparisons were both very minor victories for mediocre players, and negate each other (Crosetti and Henrich basically is equal to Lofton and Almonte). In that case, the tally is 3-3, with one tie. Since my 1938 picks are players higher up on the list, and therefore with more impact on games, I have to give a very small advantage to the 1938 Yankees lineup over the 2004 one.

http://somecalzoneforderek.blogspot.com/archives/2004_02_18_somecalzoneforderek_archive.html#107708799620430817
I also assumed we were looking at the greatest lineup ever, so I did a little unscientific study, sure to infer the wrath of Dudek, where I Established Runs Created Level-ed the 2004 Yankees around 900-950 runs.

In other words, better than the '03 Yankees, but maybe not as good as the '02 Red Sox.

(And that's assuming everyone stays relatively healthy.)

Sure, the potential is there for a 1,068 run team assuming Cashman gets a quality bat at 2B. It's tempting to think Giambi, Sheffield, A-Rod will all be at their 150+ RC best, and Jeter and Williams back to their 120+ RC norm... but it isn't likely.

It may be the best lineup ever BOUGHT but there is no skill in buying a team. If this talent was developed by the Yankees then it would be impressive, but to simply purchase it makes this argument completely meaningless.

It may be the best lineup ever BOUGHT but there is no skill in buying a team. If this talent was developed by the Yankees then it would be impressive, but to simply purchase it makes this argument completely meaningless.

Well, it would be if the game were General Manager Ball but it isn't. I'm sick and tired of the obsessive analysis of GMs, and owners, and payrolls, and all the rest. The game on the field is the thing, that's the thing I care about, and all the rest has its own charm, but it's nothing as compared to baseball.

The question of how the team is assembled (make no mistake, players were "bought" in the 1920s as well, in fact there was no other way to get players in those days except buying and trading - no draft!) is utterly irrelevant to me in asking who was the best.

I have a few candidates for the best lineup ever that haven't been looked at. Rememeber this is not "best team" we're talking about.

1950 Boston Red Sox. Pesky, Doerr, Dropo, Stephens, and Williams all had a claim to be the best players in the AL at their positions. Billy Goodman hit .354 and couldn't crack the regular lineup. Dom DiMaggio was a Gold Glover who scored 131 runs.

1953 Brooklyn Dodgers. Furillo wasn't a great player, but he had a hell of a year. Jackie Robinson played third and left, and was fantastic. Snider had his best year and he was at the peak of his game. The same for Gil Hodges. That's four good or great players having terrific years, and none came close to the MVP, because Campy was their catcher, and he hit 41 home runs and had a good claim to be the best player in baseball at the time. Add Reese and Gilliam - wow.

1996 Cleveland Indians. A better lineup than these Yankees. This team was so good that Brian Giles and Jeromy Burnitz couldn't break into the lineup. Belle, Thome, and Ramirez were a touch better middle-of-the-order than A-Rod, Giambi, and Sheffield are.

1902 Pittsburgh Pirates. I still think this is the best one-year outfield ever... Clarke, Beaumont, and Honus Wagner. Remember in looking at these figures that the league averages were .259/.306/.319

1887 St. Louis Browns. Pinball numbers in a pinball league, but the AA in 1887 was a pretty decent league which could give the NL a run for its money. (Bob Caruthers went 29-9 and hit .357 with a 1020 OPS playing right field when he wasn't on the mound). They lost the postseason series, though, to the 1887 Detroit Wolverines who had a bunch of Hall of Famers and a bunch more guys who weren't far off...

The '93 Jays were good, but not even close to this class. Not nearly. The '87 Tigers, for example, had a better lineup.

Stan, the Yankees of 27 and the Big Red Machine are IMO closer than it appears. The Yankees scored 975 runs in a pitcher-friendly park in a league where 762 runs was average. Their ratio is 1.28, compared to the Reds' 1.26. You have to adjust the Yankees' ratio up some to account for the park.

On the other hand, there's defence. I know nothing about the defence of Koenig and Collins, who were the 27 Yankees' shortstop and catcher. I do know that there are very few teams that can match the up-the-middle defensive abilities of Bench, Concepcion, Morgan and Geronimo.

One other thing. The Yankees had a pitcher named Wilcy Moore, who came up at age 30 in 1927, appeared in 50 games, starting in 12, saved 13, went 19-7 with a 2.28 ERA, giving up only 2 home runs in over 200 innings. In truth, he was the Yankees' best pitcher that year over Shocker, Hoyt, and Pennock. After that year, he was utterly mediocre. There's probably more to this story, but I don't know it. Anybody?

Wilcy Moore : The Mike Scott and Bruce Sutter of 1927, all rolled into one.

Moore was a semipro knockabout who had never even sniffed the majors. Somewhere along the way, though, he got hurt and started pitching sidearm, at which point he rocketed through the minors in two years and found himself starting 1927 for the Yankees. He wasn't able to go for long periods, it was thought, because of his injured arm, but he was impossible to hit.

No one could figure him out, not just because of the delivery but because of the sinking fastball he was throwing from it. I don't know what type of pitch it was, but nobody could touch it. So Huggins started going hog wild with him, throwing him in as a closer, as a long man, as a starter, basically everywhere he could get away with. The short of it was that Moore developed (surprise surprise) arm problems again.

Craig, the '53 Dodgers are a good addition to the list. They dominated run-scoring in the league at about the same rate as the Big Red Machine and the '27 Yankees. Plus Campy, Gilliam, Reese and Snider are within spitting distance of Bench, Morgan, Concepcion and Geronimo defensively.

The '96 Indians were second in the league in runs scored behind Seattle, and there were a bunch of other teams that were close.

By the way, I should mention since I referenced the '96 Indians above, that that lineup was supposed to be *better* than it turned out to be. Nobody in that lineup had a surprisingly good season, but three players had disappointing years. Eddie Murray had been great the year before, but wasn't very good, and two other guys (Alomar and Baerga) had hit very well their whole careers before '96, and both had tremendously disappointing years. So in fact, their offense (which had the potential to be eye-popping) didn't turn out to be so grand as it might have been.

Incredible team with a very underrated staff as well. Nobody remembers them anymore outside Cleveland even eight years later, which is amazing.

Mike's point is well-taken. Alomar and Baerga, who had always been pretty good, really sunk the Indians offense.

Thanks very much, Craig, for the story on Wilcy Moore. Can't you just feel the different era in that story? Is it any wonder that the Roaring Twenties came to a very sudden end?

Well, it would be if the game were General Manager Ball but it isn't. I'm sick and tired of the obsessive analysis of GMs, and owners, and payrolls, and all the rest. The game on the field is the thing, that's the thing I care about, and all the rest has its own charm, but it's nothing as compared to baseball.

If you're sick of hearing about owners and payrolls then go write about football where the playing field is even. This is the way baseball is and, until it's changed, that's what people will talk about. It's not a fair system when teams are eliminated from the postseason before opening day. Yes, players were bought in the '20's but not in this manner. What the Yankees are doing is a joke and it doesn't warrant a discussion such as this one.

Yes, players were bought in the '20's but not in this manner

No, it was much, much worse. To take the best-known example:

Babe Ruth, the best young player in baseball, was sold in 1919 by the Red Sox to the Yankees for $100,000 cash and a $300,000 loan. No trades, nothing going the other way, no Commissioner or union to vet the deal.

How on earth is that not "worse" than what we see now?

Bob Caruthers, the best player in baseball in 1886-87, was sold that December by St. Louis to Brooklyn. An outright sale, a rich team buying the best player in baseball, without sending anything but cash in return.

How is that not "worse" than what the Yankees are doing?

Lou Gehrig was signed out of Columbia as the country's best-known college athlete. The old saw is that the Yankees bribed his college coach, Andy Coakley, to convince Gehrig to sign. They didn't need to... they just offered more money than anyone else.

In 1921, when the big-market Giants needed a third baseman, they paid the Cincinnati Reds $150,000 for Heinie Groh. They also sent some lesser players to the Reds. It certainly didn't add up to what Soriano is worth.

In 1922, when the Giants needed another pitcher, they sent $100,000 to the Braves, and took Hugh McQuillan. They sent Rube Benton and Fred Toney to the Braves, and Toney wouldn't even go.

In 1923, the Yankees needed a pitcher, so they bought Herb Pennock from the Red Sox for $50,000.

That was how it was in those days. Half the teams in either league were trying to win, the other half were basically growing players for the good teams. The Phillies' best record in the 1920s was in 1929, and they were 71-82 and finished 5th.

The bottom line of my argument is that whatever this Yankees team accomplishes on the field is not enhanced or dimmed one iota by the fact that they are being paid a lot of money, or a lot of money is paid for them. If you think it is, I think you have an unhealthy obsession with baseball as a business and a severe lack of appreciation for baseball as a sport.

George Steinbrenner is stealing my passion for the sport. It used to be a game, now it's simply a business. Anyone who thinks otherwise is blind to reality. I will never give the Yankees credit for what they are doing no matter how well they perform on the field.

How can you obtain data for a whole team in a certain season ?
Let say that i want to enjoy remembering the Giants in the early 60's: Mays, Mc Covey, Cepeda, your assortment of Alou's, Tito Fuente et al...
I think that while i just cited those Giants, it was great for the fans to know that Willie was going to be there as long as he wanted or be able to play. Now the media oriented galactic superteams do not offer that raw " i'll stick with them no matter what ". If i were a galactic team fan ( which in every instance i'm not ) i really do not know what i could be proud of: what a bussiness whizz is on top of my team or what an incredible marketing operation is that...
regards

Eureka! it is in BR. Great!

http://economics.about.com
It used to be a game, now it's simply a business.

Why didn't you just type "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" after Craig's post. It would have been faster.

Cheers,

Mike

Craig, what you say is absolutely true. The Alex Rodriguez' trade is by no means the first or most egregious case of purchasing talent. However, over the long run, these purchases, if continued, have in the past led to diminished fan interest. The last Yankee dynasty 1920-1964 ultimately contributed to a reduction in fan interest in some American League cities. Eventually fans give up hope, and the game does suffer some from this. One can enjoy the game and the players, but also worry about the effects of the business on the game.

When the last Yankee dynasty ended, attendance surged. Whether the Yankees started another dynasty 8 years ago, I do not know. I do know that it is more satisfying to lose to a dynasty built on brilliance like les Canadiens or the Celtics, rather than one built on having the biggest budget by far. Fortunately, dynasties like empires crumble in due time.

Mike's point is, as he is so often, very true to the mark.

I think that in the short term, great teams like the Yankees are great for baseball.

I think long-term multi-decade dynasties, and particularly long-term moribund loser franchises, are bad for baseball.

"I think that in the short term, great teams like the Yankees are great for baseball."

I don''t know how to properly quote, so I'll just cut and paste. But I disagree. I suppose I see where you're coming from - when attendance surges in cities the Yankees play in, it appears good for baseball, as does all the press about the "best lineup in baseball history" as it is this year, or the "rotation made of aces" as it was in years past. The fact that baseball is being discussed in any way is publicity. But sometimes no publicity is better than bad publicity - if people are writing to newspapers about how they're never going to go to another baseball game again now that the Yanks have signed ARod (not that I've seen any of that, I'm just being hypothetical here), then sure Major League baseball is being talked about, but attendance is going down, so there is a negative rather than a positive impact. And also, for every massive attendance surge this year in a city where the Yankees play, the Rangers probably lose at least that many fans. If the Yankees were already going to pull in 30,000 at Comerica Park without ARod and the Rangers were going to pull in 25,000 fans who went to see ARod, that's 55,000 fans over two different games. You add ARod to the Yanks, and the attendance for that Yankees game rises even more, to say, 35,000, but the Rangers pay the price. What drawing power do they have now? They'll probably get no more than the season average - probably something around 15,000 in a place like Detroit. So despite the boost in attendance for the Yankees, attendance overall declines. Of course in this example I'm just playing with imaginary numbers, but I'm sure you get the point - dynasties, especially unpopular dynasties like the Yankees, do not necessarily help baseball, even in the short term. Calling the Yankees unpopular is a stretch, but by that i mean they have about as many active haters (likely more) than lovers (though there are a lot of them out there).