C: Posada - (Pudge? Piazza? Mauer?)
1B: Pujols
2B: Kent - (Soriano? Utley?)
SS: ARod
3B: Chipper - (Rolen? Jeter at SS and ARod here?)
LF: Bonds
CF: Beltran (Edmonds?)
RF: Guerrero (Manny? Berkman? Sosa? Abreu?)
SP: Pedro (Johnson? Clemens? Johan? Halladay? Oswalt?)

Manny in right? Uh, no. I think the real question is whether 10 seasons of Manny is enough to surpass 7 seasons of Bonds in left.

Manny 5874 PA / 160 OPS+ / .317/.419/.599
Barry 4072 PA / 221 OPS+ / .322/.517/.724

Trying to use the Play Index to estimate who led the majors in games played during the 00s at each position. (Sean, we need a Fielding Season Finder :)

C Jason Kendall
1B Paul Konerko
2B Luis Castillo
3B Adrian Beltre
SS Miguel Tejada
LF Carlos Lee
CF Johnny Damon
RF Bobby Abreu
DH David Ortiz
SP Livan Hernandez
MR Dave Weathers
CL Trevor Hoffman

My first thought also was that this was going to be an all-star team. There was very recently just such a thread but, hell, what's the harm in doing it again.

First, the easy, iconic choices.

LF-Bonds
SS or 3B-ARod
RP- Mariano

(gap)

1B- Pujols
SS- Jeter, so ARod goes to 3B

(gap)

P- Pedro, the Unit, Johan. Not Clemens. Maybe Maddux, maybe Schilling, maybe Mussina

(close calls)

C- Pudge
2B- Kent (Utley making a charge)
CF- Berkman
RF- Vlad
DH-Manny

But as to the team of the decade in the other sense, I think that for ICONIC value, and who will they still be talking about 50 years from now, it's the Red Sox. The standard is a little higher for the Yankees for one thing. 50 years from now this team will be lost amidst the teams of the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s and '90s. And as for the Red Sox, who did they beat? Well, the Yankees, which has more iconic value than beating anybody else. And they beat the biggest monkey there ever was. So that's my pick, no matter what happens in the next week.

Exactly. The 1900s are 1900-1999. The 20th century is 1901-2000. This shouldn't be hard to figure out but people make it so.

You sheep can keep right on drinking the Gregorian Kool-Aid. A year, a decade or a century ends on January 11th of the following year.

Holy crap, I got that to work.

That's a little fun thing I do every year. It's every team ranked College Football style, 1-30. The World Champ is 1. The loser of the World Series is 2. The losers of the LCS are 3 and 4, ranked by regular season record. The losers in the first round of the playoffs are 5 through 8, ranked by regular season record. Every other team is ranked by regular season record. If there's a tie in record, the tie-breaker is the team with the better ranking in the previous year is ranked higher.

Anyway, it's kind of fun to see how teams bounced around during the decade, or not. Pittsburgh edges out KC as the worst team of the decade, which seems right to me. And don't underestimate just how bad Tampa Bay was for most of the oughts.

The 1900s are 1900-1999. The 20th century is 1901-2000. This shouldn't be hard to figure out but people make it so

Um, no. The 1900s are 1900-1909. It's a decade, not a century.

You sheep can keep right on drinking the Gregorian Kool-Aid. A year, a decade or a century ends on January 11th of the following year.

Right. The only time that there should be any pedantry is if someone says "the 201st decade", which could be interpreted as 2001-2010. But not really, since you haven't specified your starting point. Don't forget that "we" didn't start counting years in the current manner until what, 400 years after Year #1? And Year 1 was a guess anyway. So you're trying to be very exact about something that was a guess in the first place.

A decade is 10 years, any 10 years. So referring to "the 60's" can be 1960-69 without causing any heartburn. Even referring to the first decade of this century is fine since by common agreement (not unanimous, but common) the current century is 2000-2099.