If you like scrappy middle infielders who put up 20.9 career WAR, you'll love today's Birthday Team.

C: Geovany Soto (12.0 WAR)
1B: Everett Mills (4.4 WAR)
2B: David Eckstein (20.9 WAR)
3B: Ernie Courtney (5.4 WAR)
SS/Manager: Ozzie Guillen (20.9 WAR)
LF: Gene Stephens (4.6 WAR)
CF: Marvin Benard (8.6 WAR)
RF: Brian Giles (51.1 WAR)

SP: Camilo Pascual (40.9 WAR)
SP: Joe Dobson (26.3 WAR)
SP: Dave Boswell (12.6 WAR)
SP: Big Bill James (4.8 WAR)
SP: Al Gould (1.9 WAR)
RP: Matt Albers (2.4 WAR)

Commissioner: William Eckert
Team President: Bill Veeck Sr.
Team executive in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame: Akihiro Ikuhara
Fun name: Jimmy Outlaw
One-year wonder: Kevin Maas

I am always surprised to see Brian Giles WAR totals. I suppose playing for bad Pirates teams during his peak had something to do with it.

SP: Camilo Pascual (40.9 WAR)

Pascual is one of the guys I always miss in Sporscle quizzes. Really nice, but short peak. Led the league in K's three straight years, and CG and SHO three times each, though not all the same years.

He's in that dead zone of early 30's to early 60's where very few pitchers managed HoF or even HoVg careers. The War was obviously a big factor; I don't know if there's anything else systematic.

#2: also his late start and getting stuck in Cleveland's system. The Indians were stacked at the time, put him in a lesser team's system and he's probably full-time no later than the middle of his age 24 season. You never know but it's not hard to see Giles getting an extra 1000 very good PAs if he'd been drafted by somebody else, at least pushing him closer to Abreu. (Or as a 17th round pick, it's possible that no system other than Cleveland's ever would have developed him nearly so well.)

The other thing is the complete lack of anything flashy. A lot of the value is walks ... valuable but not sexy. The only black ink he ever had was one season leading the league in walks. Even his gray ink is underwhelming at 57. As nice a career as it was, just twice in the top 10 in WAR. And he followed Pitt with SD, another hotspot of national attention. It's the perfect formula for anonymous excellence.

A "surprising" thing is that you would have thought he'd rack up AS game after AS game as sole rep for the Pirates and Padres -- surely he must have been their best player almost every year of his prime. But that's not how sole reps tend to work these days, it's all about filling out the pen.

A "surprising" thing is that you would have thought he'd rack up AS game after AS game as sole rep for the Pirates and Padres -- surely he must have been their best player almost every year of his prime. But that's not how sole reps tend to work these days, it's all about filling out the pen.

I don't even know why there';s a pen in the All-Star Game. Take the 9 best SP and give them an inning each.

When the Indians finally traded Giles, it was... heads up for Ricardo Rincon. Rincon was a good lefty reliever, but you'd think they were offered better than that sometime between 1994 and 1998.