My best player to not get a vote Garry Templeton. Best pitcher Charlie Hough

Eddie Murray and Dale Murphy join the "5 ballot" club. 8th time for Gary Carter which is tops among catchers.

Actual 1985 NL MVP McGee finished 3rd, behind Gooden and Tudor. Tudor versus McGee versus Guerrero was all within the margin of error for us.

Actual 1985 AL MVP Mattingly finshed 4th, behind Henderson, Brett, and Boggs - but well behind Boggs, and Boggs was well behind Brett. Henderson versus Brett was also close enough that it's hard to say which way it would go with twice as many voters.

Saberhagen v Stieb was close too but I think we had a clear preference

Saberhagen v Stieb was close too but I think we had a clear preference

I voted in the other direction on this one, but I guess not too many voters were with me.

My best player not to get a vote was Mike Scioscia (and he barely missed my ballot in 15th).
My best pitcher not to get a vote was Fernando Valenzuela (although there were a few position players w/out votes higher than him).

This whole exercise has made me appreciate Gary Carter more. He's basically been the best catcher in baseball for a decade with no real competition, not even from fluke seasons.

My best pitcher to not get a vote was Fernando-mania (I had him 14th).
My best position player to not get a vote was a different catcher: Rich Gedman (who I had 4 places ahead of Scioscia).

Gooden is the third non-HoMer to win an MMP (not including active players) following Ron Guidry and Fred Lynn.

Pitchers to win MMP

Gooden 1985
Guidry 1978
Carlton 1972
Seaver 1971
Gibson 1968
Koufax 1963

This whole exercise has made me appreciate Gary Carter more. He's basically been the best catcher in baseball for a decade with no real competition, not even from fluke seasons.

This project has increased my appreciation for Dave Stieb. I had him as the best pitcher in the AL for four consecutive years (even if Bret Saberhagen narrowly beat him out this year).

This project has increased my appreciation for Dave Stieb. I had him as the best pitcher in the AL for four consecutive years (even if Bret Saberhagen narrowly beat him out this year).

This whole exercise has made me appreciate Gary Carter more. He's basically been the best catcher in baseball for a decade with no real competition, not even from fluke seasons.

I already thought highly of Stieb as Bill James used to rave about him back in the Abstract days when these seasons were actually happening and absolutely nobody at that time other than Bill James was talking about how great Stieb was.

My appreciation for Carter has grown by leaps and bounds. As I've said previously, for absolute peak of 1 or 2 seasons Bench was better, and Bench had a better overall career - but for a decade of continuous play (extended 10-year peak), I don't think any catcher in history matches what Carter did from 1977 to 1986. Bench was great from '68 to '77 but he had the injury-plagued '76 in that run and Carter just didn't seem to have any real down years like Bench did.

Furthermore, this has made me appreciate Blyleven even more than before and, hey, he's in the HOF now so no one needs to advocate for him any more - but in '81, '84 and '85, maybe he wasn't the best pitcher but he was still one of the best pitchers even though he was on the downhill part of his career.

Finally - one last note on 1985 - this was the first year I got involved in fantasy baseball. It was still pretty new at the time and the level of sophistication was nowhere near what it is today. Today you have to be a real GM and manage your budget accordingly, so it's as much about getting bang for the buck as it is identifying who the best players are.

You have to keep in mind, however, that the typical fan back in 1985 - regardless of which city you were in - mostly thought "all the guys on my team in my city are great and all the guys on your team in your city suck!" It was a very partisan type atmosphere.

Fantasy baseball literally forced you to learn to appreciate players on other teams. Tim Raines - heck, he's up in Canada, no one down here watches him play - but if you start paying attention, you realize "Damn, this guy is really good!" Then you start thinking things like "I want him on my team!" So you start to learn a bit about other players on other teams and your baseball wisdom grows.

In 1985 there was not as much baseball wisdom around as there is today (no BTF back then!)so it was really easy to win my fantasy league those first couple of years. People didn't know about the defensive spectrum so they all wanted to draft Don Mattingly. Meanwhile, I was picking up guys like Cal Ripken, Ryne Sandberg and Gary Carter, because I knew it was almost impossible to find quality hitters at their positions. I also had the advantage of no budget constraints at the time, and budgeting would completely change the way people drafted in the years to come. Good times indeed! The taste of success was quite sweet while it lasted but eventually others started to get better educated.

Fantasy baseball literally forced you to learn to appreciate players on other teams. Tim Raines - heck, he's up in Canada, no one down here watches him play - but if you start paying attention, you realize "Damn, this guy is really good!" Then you start thinking things like "I want him on my team!" So you start to learn a bit about other players on other teams and your baseball wisdom grows.

I'm playing fantasy for the first time in decades this year and discovering exactly this. I've always been a baseball fan, followed the sport pretty closely, but playing fantasy has made me far more aware of the lesser players than I was a year ago today. Example-before Grilli went down,I spent a few days really looking over Melancon contemplating snagging him(Wish that I had taken him too. Man, do I). While I likely would have been peripherally aware of MM in other seasons, this year I was all up on him, and slews of other players. The best thing about playing fantasy has been that it has deepened my knowledge and love of the game and many of the unpublicized players that are so essential to success.The worst part(Well, other than Matt Kemp)is the conflict that occurs when your favorite team is going against one of your pitchers. Oh man, I hate that. Feels as if it hurts the purity of the experience

Fantasy baseball literally forced you to learn to appreciate players on other teams.

This is one of my favorite things about fantasy sports, it really enhances my appreciation of the players. I don't really feel like it hurts my appreciation of the sport (I certainly don't go rooting for my fantasy team players against my real life teams) and it adds another way to really enjoy what's happening in the game.