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I've been very critical of the argument that Jack Morris should be in the Hall of Fame because he was the "winningest pitcher of the eighties." While it's a wonderful thing to be one of the best in the business for ten whole years (and Morris wasn't, but that's neither here nor there), a player doesn't deserve any extra credit due to the accident of having had those ten years begin in a year ending in zero. So I was thinking: who are the Players of Decades that didn't have the happy accident of coming into prominence in a nice, round year? I decided to look at the decade that runs from years ending in 5 to years ending in 4, just because that list seems likely to be the furthest removed from your traditional "team of the decade" lists. So we'll do each of the ten full "decades" that began in the twentieth century. Today: 1905-1954. We'll do the other half later in the week. Stats shown are for the relevant decade only.
1905-1914
C: Roger Bresnahan (.275/.398/.362, 129 OPS+, 3360 PA)
1B: Ed Konetchy (.278/.353/.400, 125 OPS+, 4774 PA)
2B: Nap Lajoie (.331/.384/.425, 146 OPS+, 5195 PA)
3B: Frank Baker (.321/.375/.471, 153 OPS+, 3840 PA)
SS: Honus Wagner (.328/.397/.466, 155 OPS+, 5920 PA)
LF: Sherry Magee (.301/.375/.450, 143 OPS+, 5927 PA)
CF: Ty Cobb (.368/.423/.515, 182 OPS+, 5258 PA)
RF: Sam Crawford (.316/.369/.460, 150 OPS+, 6476 PA)
SP: Walter Johnson (179-115, 1.62 ERA, 174 ERA+, 2442 IP)
Notes: The biggest beneficiary of the time shift is Sherry Magee, whose career started in 1904 and dropped off precipitously starting in 1915...if I'd arbitrarily chosen the decade from 7 to 6, Eddie Collins (who didn't start until 1907) would crush Lajoie, which I guess drives home that this is just as unfair as the traditional "team of the decade" posts...Home Run Baker and Walter Johnson didn't start until 1907 either [edit: actually 1908 for Baker], but Baker doesn't have HOF competition and Big Train was just that damn good...Wagner is probably the only one on this list that would also have been on the 1895-1904 team; consider that he was still primarily a shortstop, still one of the league's best hitters, and was age 31-40 during this period...Cobb is probably the CF of the decade from 1900-1909 even though he didn't start until 1905, but this makes it ridiculously easy.
1915-1924
C: Wally Schang (.289/.394/.399, 120 OPS+, 4116 PA)
1B: George Sisler (.353/.396/.498, 145 OPS+, 5258 PA)
2B: Rogers Hornsby (.359/.424/.562, 180 OPS+, 5408 PA)
3B: Heinie Groh (.295/.375/.390, 121 OPS+, 5824 PA)
SS: Dave Bancroft (.279/.355/.362, 102 OPS+, 5703 PA)
LF: Joe Jackson (.338/.405/.495, 159 OPS+, 3134 PA)
CF: Tris Speaker (.353/.442/.509, 160 OPS+, 6101 PA)
RF: Babe Ruth (.351/.483/.714, 219 OPS+, 4500 PA)
SP: Walter Johnson (198-135, 2.32 ERA, 143 ERA+, 2875 IP)
Notes: This was definitely Schang's "decade," but he played long enough and well enough, as a catcher, that it seems to me he really ought to be in the Hall...Sisler's run of great seasons straddles 1920, so he probably doesn't make either the Team of the Teens or Twenties...man, Eddie Collins really gets screwed over in this range -- Hornsby's great run starts in 1916...bad time for shortstops, though Ray Chapman would probably look a lot better had he not been killed on the field in 1920...It was hard to pick Jackson (whose career also ended in '20, for very different reasons), but his quality of play over Bobby Veach was big enough for me to overlook nearly twice as many PA...you can flip a coin on offense, but I think Speaker's superior defense puts him ahead of Cobb for CF.
1925-1934
C: Mickey Cochrane (.321/.414/.483, 128 OPS+, 5380 PA)
1B: Lou Gehrig (.343/.444/.643, 184 OPS+, 6805 PA)
2B: Rogers Hornsby (.359/.448/.602, 171 OPS+, 3971 PA)
3B: Pie Traynor (.327/.370/.442, 111 OPS+, 6113 PA)
SS: Joe Cronin (.303/.385/.451, 117 OPS+, 4254 PA)
LF: Al Simmons (.359/.403/.589, 150 OPS+, 6087 PA)
CF: Earle Combs (.327/.399/.467, 127 OPS+, 6133 PA)
RF: Babe Ruth (.338/.469/.677, 199 OPS+, 6014 PA)
SP: Lefty Grove (203-87, 3.04 ERA, 144 ERA+, 2510 IP)
Notes: This setup is a huge boon for Cochrane, whose years of greatness basically ran from 1925-1934...you'd expect it to hurt Ruth, since he was so clearly the whole story of the 1920s, but it ends up helping him because he becomes the slightly-less-dominant player of two decades...even that choice wasn't quite as easy as choosing Lefty Grove as pitcher.
1935-1944
C: Bill Dickey (.307/.391/.496, 130 OPS+, 4068 PA)
1B: Jimmie Foxx (.316/.425/.590, 155 OPS+, 4832 PA)
2B: Billy Herman (.307/.371/.416, 116 OPS+, 6060 PA)
3B: Stan Hack (.304/.394/.404, 121 OPS+, 6385 PA)
SS: Arky Vaughan (.318/.408/.451, 137 OPS+, 5554 PA)
LF: Joe Medwick (.328/.369/.512, 138 OPS+, 6162 PA)
CF: Joe DiMaggio (.339/.403/.607, 159 OPS+, 4417 PA)
RF: Mel Ott (.298/.419/.525, 160 OPS+, 6078 PA)
SP: Tommy Bridges (131-84, 3.48 ERA, 130 ERA+, 1874 IP)
Notes: Foxx gets his moment in the sun here; Gehrig is probably the 1B of the 20s and 30s, Mize the 1B of the 40s, so here the second-greatest 1B of all time finally gets his own decade...and Charlie Gehringer, the clear 2B of the 1930s, gets edged out by an inferior overall player...Hack probably gets into the Hall if he'd excelled from '30-'41 rather than '35-'46...Carl Hubbell becomes the second huge snub after Collins, as he was clearly the pitcher of the '30s but didn't carry it over strongly enough into the early 40's; not a great time for pitchers as a whole, what with the war and all.
1945-1954
C: Yogi Berra (.296/.354/.497, 130 OPS+, 4333 PA)
1B: Johnny Mize (.287/.376/.528, 142 OPS+, 3182 PA)
2B: Jackie Robinson (.319/.414/.487, 137 OPS+, 4981 PA)
3B: Al Rosen (.295/.393/.521, 148 OPS+, 3297 PA)
SS: Pee Wee Reese (.280/.383/.402, 109 OPS+, 5921 PA)
LF: Ted Williams (.342/.489/.636, 193 OPS+, 4472 PA)
CF: Larry Doby (.285/.394/.500, 142 OPS+, 4246 PA)
RF: Stan Musial (.344/.434/.599, 172 OPS+, 6196 PA)
SP: Warren Spahn (166-110, 2.93 ERA, 129 ERA+, 2417 IP)
RP: Ellis Kinder (92-65, 75 Sv, 3.48 ERA, 123 ERA+, 1357 IP)
Notes: Roy Campanella might've given Yogi a run for his money if Yogi didn't get a two-year advantage for being born white...Jackie and Doby, meanwhile, wouldn't come all that close to qualifying in the 40s or 50s, so this range is perfectly suited to them...I almost gave Ted the nod in the previous decade too, but Medwick did have almost 3x the playing time...relief pitching slowly but surely started to become a meaningful part of the game during this period, so I thought I'd better start including them...couldn't decide what to do with Musial--at first, I accidentally omitted him entirely, since his not playing 50% at any one position kept him from showing up in my searches; then I had him at 1B, the single position at which he spent the most time in the period, replacing Mize; then I decided to fudge a bit and put him in RF, replacing Enos Slaughter.
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