SATISFY YOUR BASEBALL APBAtite…by having Ralph Terry win 32 games? Why, Terry even broke into an impromptu version of the frug over this!
Imagine what it would be like if all the great teams that have played at Yankee Stadium throughout its history could face off against each other …
How would the Murderers’ Row squad of 1927 fare against Ron Guidry in his Louisiana Lightnin’ prime? Could they scratch out a run against Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth? How would Reggie Jackson do against Whitey Ford?
We posed those questions to the makers of APBA Baseball and asked them to run a simulated 162-game season pitting each of the 26 World Series champion Yankee teams against each other (using their APBA Baseball for Windows software) to find out which was the greatest team in Yankee Stadium history. The result may come as a surprise.
...One of the most interesting aspects of the project was the ability to generate a full season’s worth of statistics. At last, Babe Ruth, Roger Maris and a healthy Mickey Mantle were able to go head-to-head with a level playing field, with each team playing 162 games. As it turned out the 1927 Babe prevailed as the Yankee Season home run king (and the extra games did make a difference). Ruth also won the RBI crown (by one over Maris) and had the three highest slugging percentages.
The batting race went down to the final day of the season before Lou Gehrig won it .38118 to .38103 over ... Lou Gehrig. Yes, the 1932 Gehrig was just that much better than the 1928 Gehrig. Meanwhile, the 1936 Gehrig led the league in runs scored.
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1. TomH Posted: April 14, 2008 at 02:27 PM (#2743423)Strange the 1939 team didn't do better.
Game 1 is pretty hard to imagine when you have to pretend that Ramiro Mendoza went through that lineup (and then some) without giving up a single run.
Can't be. Because their were only 3 Mantle/Steinbrenner teams over .500.
I think 98 was the best, and probably the best team of all time even if we don't limit it to the Yankees. How did SG's (I think) experiment go?
My bad. I should have clicked more links.
On edit: jeez, I guess I didn't even have to clink more links. Just, like, read stuff. I'll be over by the coffee machine.
Valid points, but I saw this as a "strictly for fun" exercise, with suspension of reality a prerequisite. Even so, I was surprised to see nothing from Mantle 1956 on the leaderboards.
I'll let you know, if it ever finishes.
1998 .5911939 .578
1927 .568
1937 .565
1938 .555
1999 .553
1941 .539
1977 .538
1996 .537
1936 .534
1978 .530
1947 .529
1950 .527
1961 .522
1923 .521
1932 .520
2000 .519
1949 .51509
1951 .51506
1953 .5090
1956 .5085
1943 .508
1958 .507
1928 .506
1952 .502
1962 .493
How do we balance the "talent pool" issue versus the ubiquitous presence of baseball in early 20th century America.
I would assume the reason the Domican Republic produces so many ball players is that every boy plays a lot of baseball (no real competing sports), and it is one of the few means of advancement in a primarily agricultural/manual labor economy.
Those same conditions held true in the U.S. prior to WW II. The only pro-sports of note were baseball and boxing. Pretty much every kid played baseball, and for most it was the only career option besides the farm or the factory.
I wouldn't be suprised if the pre-WW II white population produced more good ballplayers the the current U.S. population of all backgrounds. If the 10M people in the Dominican Republic can produce 100 MLB players today, why couldn't the 100M white Americans in 1920 produce 400 equivalently skilled players (for 16 teams).
All this is of course controlling for nutrition, training methods etc.
I wouldn't be suprised that, if the baseball players of the 1920s-40s were magically cloned today and raised with modern nutrition and training, they could compete with today's major leaguers.
Surprisingly, the 1980 team won.
Nobody won.
I think there's a reasonable chance that the best of those old Yankees teams could fare pretty well against today's also rans, but the comparison wasn't to the also rans, but to the 1998 Yankees, who lapped the field (22 GA of Boston) by even more than any of their pre-WWII counterparts. And bad as the Devil Rays might have been, I doubt if they were as bad as the 1927 Browns (1-21 against the Yanks) or those depleted A's teams of the late 30's. The talent is far better distributed throughout the Majors today than is was back then, and still that 1998 team dominated on the same level as those other teams.
And of course while Ruth and Gehrig shared much of their primes together, Dimaggio and Gehrig only played together for two years before the effects of Gehrig's ALS began to set in.
I imagine that APBA doesn't adjust for era.
(Actually, that was some bizarre team. Their starters included Tino Martinez, Rey Sanchez, Robert Fick and Paul Abbott, but also had Julio Lugo, Carl Crawford and Scott Kazmir.)
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