This is an idea I got while writing the Vern Stephens post; look at the greatest players at each position on teams (not necessarily franchises, of course) that no longer exist. Why not (aside from the fact that I'm completely certain it's been done before)? Might as well start with Stephens' own squad.

The Milwaukee Brewers jumped ship after one season in the new American League, moving to St. Louis and taking the National League team's old nickname, the Browns. From 1902 to 1953, the Browns toiled away as the Cardinals' boring little brother. They won a single pennant, and that in the depeted wartime AL of 1944 -- losing the Series to the Cardinals, naturally -- and of the eight teams in the league, finished fifth or worse in 40 of the 52 seasons of their existence.

So, this isn't much of a half-century team. But it's interesting, anyway. Here are my picks, with slash stats, OPS+, and Wins Above Replacement totals from Rally's database (all from time with the Browns only):

The Infield
C: Hank Severeid (.290/.342/.369, 92, 12.3)
1B: George Sisler (.334/.381/.481, 131, 50.1)
2B: Del Pratt (.282/.332/.396, 120, 19.5)
3B: Harlond Clift (.274/.394/.433, 118, 33.4)
SS: Vern Stephens (.293/.357/.451, 125, 22)
(click here to read more)

Rick Ferrell is in the Hall of Fame for some reason, and Wally Schang probably should be, but Severeid played almost as many games with the team as the two of them combined, and he played relatively well.

Sisler manages to be overrated nearly 80 years after his retirement -- hitting .420 and having your 84 year old hits record broken by Ichiro will do that -- but he's very easily the best player in Browns history, pacing the field in plate appearances, hits, doubles, triples, runs, RBI, and steals.

Pratt was a fine hitter for the Browns in his 20s, and then became a nice little player for the Yanks, Red Sox, and Tigers in his 30s, though his offensive game didn't translate as well to the 1920s. He topped out at 6 homers, but twice topped 100 RBI, including leading the league with 103 for the Browns in 1916. He led the league in games played four straight times from 1913-1916, and again for the Yankees in 1920.

Clift is one of the great unappreciated players of history, recognized as such in a really interesting essay in Bill James' New Historical Baseball Abstract. He was a solid third baseman with good power back before third basemen were supposed to have power, and hit .299/.418/.550 (141 OPS+) with 63 homers in 1937 and 1938 while the Browns were losing 205 games. He crashed and burned at age 30, and somewhat fittingly left the club in 1943, fading away with the Senators while the Browns reached their one and only World Series the following year.

Gotta be honest: I'm cheating a little bit to put Stephens here. Wallace, a Hall of Famer, played many, many more games with the Browns than Stephens, and put up 36 Wins Above Replacement. But Wallace's Browns OPS+ is just 103; he had some good years with the stick, and some terrible ones. His WAR comes mostly from his defensive value, and if people think our defensive numbers are suspect now, how confident can we be about the ones from over a hundred years ago? Plus (perhaps most importantly), Wallace's time with the Browns came in the first decade of the 20th Century, when the American League was new and not really all that much of a Major League. So I'm kind of randomly making the judgments that (a) the 'aughts AL was even weaker than the wartime AL; (b) the gap between Stephens' and Wallace's defense probably wasn't as great as it looks; and (c) Stephens' superior offense beats Wallace's defense and longevity. I'm totally willing to believe that I'm completely wrong about each of those things. Wallace just didn't feel right.

The Outfield
Ken Williams (.326/.403/.558, 144, 35.7)
Baby Doll Jacobson (.317/.364/.459, 115, 22.9)
Wally Judnich (.283/.367/.462, 122, 12.4)

The first two are guys with really pretty, 1920s-boosted numbers, but they were both still very good players. Ken Williams probably has a better claim to the Hall than a lot of his contemporaries who did get in thanks to Frankie Frisch's Veterans Committee shenanigans, but being a Brown for almost his entire career hurt him there. Jacobson was nothing special, but he led all Brown outfielders by quite a bit in plate appearances, was a good hitter, and seems to have been a decent enough center fielder. Those two are easy.

The third is really, really tricky. A lot of very-good-to-great outfielders played for the Browns, and played well, but didn't play for them for long: Goose Goslin, Vic Wertz, Jeff Heath, Tilly Walker, Bob Cullenbine, Bob Nieman and others were all star-quality players, but mostly for other teams. Burt Shotton seems to be the #3 in career WAR, but Judnich has to be the sentimental pick and, had only Adolf Hitler never been born, would probably be the clear #3, and maybe a whole hell of a lot more than that. In 1942, Judnich was 25, coming off two very nice full years with the Browns, and exploded, hitting .313/.413/.499 (155 OPS+) and seventeen home runs, racking up 5 wins above replacement in 132 games. Judnich spent the next three years in the Air Force. He was 29 when he came back, wasn't even close to the same player, and was out of baseball after ten games with the Pirates at age 32. So Judnich is my pick for the last spot on this roster, less for what was than for what might (almost certainly would) have been.