A pretty good Birthday Team today, especially if you like having spare catchers all over the place.

C: Jerry May (5.3 WAR)
1B: Scott Hatteberg (10.0 WAR)
2B: Craig Biggio (65.5 WAR)
3B: Bobby Adams (15.7 WAR)
SS: Les Bell (10.3 WAR)
LF: Bill Buckner (15.1 WAR)
CF: John Anderson (28.8 WAR)
RF: Dave Nilsson (10.6 WAR)

SP: Lefty Tyler (26.4 WAR)
SP: Ken Hill (23.3 WAR)
SP: Toothpick Sam Jones (18.2 WAR)
SP: Eddie Smith (17.3 WAR)
SP: Shaun Marcum (13.4 WAR)
RP: Bob Weiland (10.5 WAR)
RP: Billy Koch (5.4 WAR)

Fun names: Maurice Archdeacon, Rusty Peters
Manager: Ollie Caylor
Quarterback: Josh Fields

SP: Lefty Tyler (26.4 WAR)

Gotta love the deadball era. 269.1 IP, 1 HR allowed. His HR/9 shows up a 0.0, leading the league.

SP: Toothpick Sam Jones (18.2 WAR)

Toothpick Sam was traded to the Giants at the start of the 1959 season after a 6.3-bWAR season with the Cardinals in which he went "only" 14-13 despite leading the NL in Ks, K/9, and fewest H/9 and finishing second in ERA.

He then proceeded to win 21 games for the Giants in '59 while leading the league in ERA and finishing second in Ks.

Still, the Cardinals didn't do so badly in the trade---the guy they got back finished his career with the highest lifetime slugging percentage (min. 5000 PA) for someone who never slugged .500 in a full season (.455). (technically, Mike Napoli could be considered to have the highest such career slugging pct (.475), but I'm going to count his 432-PA 2011 when he slugged .630 to be a "full season.")

The guy traded for Jones had nine full seasons in which he slugged between .451 and .491.

His HR/9 shows up a 0.0, leading the league.

Alas, his 0.0 the prior year was only good for fourth best.

Regarding Ken Hill:

It always has puzzled me how the Tigers' farm system went from historically prolific in the 1970's to historically fruitless in the next two decades. Of course, I knew about Smoltz for Alexander. But, until two months ago, I didn't realize the Tigers signed Ken Hill - and then traded him for Mike Heath (gulp).

Those fun Three True Outcomes/no pitching Tigers' teams of the early 1990s would've looked much different with Smoltz and Hill atop their rotation. Alas...

RP: Billy Koch (5.4 WAR)

Unbelievable fact (in the literal sense) that I learned about Koch: by baseball gauge's Win Shares, he had a more valuable age 27 season than any Hall of Fame reliever.

Koch 18.1
Smith 15.6
Sutter 15.3
Rivera 14.9
Fingers 14.0
Gossage 10.9
Hoffman 8.4
Wilhelm 0.0 (180 innings of 4.95 ERA in AAA)

I know that says far more about Win Shares than it says about Koch's 2002 season, but if you worded the question well you could win a lot of bets from this.

Still, the Cardinals didn't do so badly in the trade---the guy they got back finished his career with the highest lifetime slugging percentage (min. 5000 PA) for someone who never slugged .500 in a full season (.455). (technically, Mike Napoli could be considered to have the highest such career slugging pct (.475), but I'm going to count his 432-PA 2011 when he slugged .630 to be a "full season.")

The guy traded for Jones had nine full seasons in which he slugged between .451 and .491.

You can see why the Giants traded Bill White - they had a log jam at first base of historic proportions. White, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie McCovey, and White, coming off his age 24 season, was the oldest of the three.

Orlando Cepeda, and Willie McCovey,

Back-to-back NL Rookies of the Year ('58-'59), at the same position for the same team. In that '59 season, all three 1B hit over .300, with White and Cepeda making the NL All-Star teams and Cepeda and McCovey (who didn't debut until July 30) getting MVP votes; McCovey was ROTY despite only 219 PA.

And then when Bill White was 32 the Cardinals traded him to the Phillies, and replaced him with... Orlando Cepeda.