The Best All-Time Hitters At Each Position As Selected By Career OPS+ (I'm only considering players who began their career in 1900 or later.)
Catcher -
Mike Piazza (144)
First Base -
Lou Gehrig (179)
Second Base -
Rogers Hornsby (175)
Third Base -
Mike Schmidt (147)
*A-Rod is currently at 146Shortstop -
Derek Jeter (123)
*Honus Wagner would have this easy at 150 but I disqualified him due to his career starting in 1897, this is of course completely arbitrary as most things are. Also depending on how A-Rod spends the rest of his career (playing shortstop somewhere else?) he may re qualify himself as a SS rather than a 3B in which case he'd easily surpass Jeter which brings me to thinking about the Yankees currently having the best 2 hitting shortstops in modern baseball history... Well that's pretty insane. And in case you are wondering, Ernie Banks is right behind Jeter at 122.
Outfield
- Babe Ruth (207)
Outfield -
Ted Williams (190)
Outfield -
Barry Bonds (183)
DH -
Mickey Mantle (172)
*Of course Mantle was not a Designated Hitter, but he has the highest OPS+ of any player who hadn't made the team. If you were really putting this team out there you'd certainly play Mantle at Center Field and bring Williams or Ruth to DH.
Now setting the lineup would be a bit difficult as you can only have one clean up hitter. As IHateU will note there's no pure lead off hitter but I think they'd manage to score a few runs anyway.
Just for S&G, I think I'd go with:
1. Mickey Mantle - When he was healthy he had good speed (153 career steals) and he had a great OBP at .421 (of course almost all of these guys had great OBP...)
2. Barry Bonds
3. Ted Williams
4. Babe Ruth
5. Lou Gehrig
6. Rogers Hornsby
7. Mike Schmidt
8. Mike Piazza
9. Derek Jeter - I considered putting him at lead off but considering he's easily the worst hitter on the team it doesn't make sense to get him more at bats than the other guys. You know you have a pretty good hitting team when Derek Jeter is your worst hitter.
I think Barry Bonds would be happy to not have to worry about IBB anymore. Slightly better protection than Ray Durham.
maybe the real home run peak is over though and things will will revert back a bit.
if you look at baseball's history you see these different peaks and valleys between hitting and pitching and then strange single season aberrations like 1987.