A Stroll Through Fantasy Baseball History

This is more a frivolity than anything else, well, maybe there is some value here but nothing I am prepared to use to predict the future. I am working on completing a Fantasy Baseball Database, creating Player Rater scores for each season going back to 1980 (Okrent had the grand idea in '81, but it was a strike season and 1980 just sounds better).

Part of what I need to do to calculate Player Rating scores is to account for positional scarcity. To address this, I need to determine league averages, minimums, maximums, etc for each position and each year. From here, I create a baseline score for each position and each year. Anyway, here is the baseline score by position since 1980. Please disregard the actual value, rather pay attention to the trends. What this shows is how valuable each position has been over the past 28 years.


Outfield - Outfielders would have been the king of fantasy baseball had the idea gone mainstream in 1980. They remained on top for the first 6 years of the decade thanks to terrific seasons by Rickey Henderson (80 SB, 146 Runs in '86), Dale Murphy (36 HR, 121 R, 30 SB, 130 RBI in '83), Ben Oglivie, George Foster, Dwight Evans, and Tim Raines among many others.

Then, though through little fault of their own, they began to trade top spots with the First Basemen for the next 4 years and remained 2nd fiddle for 9 years after, tying for the best overall just twice.

Finally, prior to the very interesting merge that is currently underway, great seasons from Vlad Guerrero, Carlos Beltran, Gary Sheffield, Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols (he was an OF'er in 2003) and others vaulted the position back on top from 2002 to 2005.

First Base - One of the selfish reasons I wanted to go back into the 80's was to see how Don Mattingly fared against the great of his day (pretty well by the way). The position is, and always has been, a great source to score fantasy points and has been #1 or #2 every year but one in the last 28. Their great run was from 1992 - 2002 where they were #1 each season, and of course, in 1997 the crop compiled the greatest season since 1980:

Jeff Bagwell - - - 43 HR, 135 RBI, .286 AVG, 31 SB, 109 R
Andres Galarraga - 41 HR, 140 RBI, .318 aVG, 15 SB, 120 R
Mark McGwire - - - 58 HR, 123 RBI, .274 AVG, 3 SB, 86 R
Tino Martinez - - -44 HR, 141 RBI
Frank Thomas - - - 35 HR, 125 RBI, .347 AVG, 110 R
Jim Thome - - - - -40 HR

Plus very good seasons from Tony Clark (32/100/117), Mo Vaughn (30/91/96), Errik Karros (31/86/104), and Jeff King, JT Snow, and John Olerud each had over 100 RBI).

Second Base - Always one of the lesser offensive positions, second base spent much of the last 28 years sandwiched between the better third basemen, and the worse off shortstops. This was the basic trend from 1980 through 2001 with just two distinct time frames where the typical second basemen was better than their peers on their left. In 1984-1985 when Ryne Sandberg (combined years: 45 HR, 167 RBI, 86 SB, 227 R) and Juan Samuel (34 HR, 143 RBI, 125 SB, 206 R) had career years; and in 1999-2000 thanks to great seasons from Jeff Kent, Bret Boone, Robbie Alomar. Since then however, the second base crew have firmly become the '2nd worst' position as shortstops and third basemen have gained in prowess.

Third Base - Third Basemen have generally been the 3rd best position with two noticeable dips. In 1984 Mike Schmidt stopped hitting 40 HR and the second best 3B of the year was Ron Cey. The rest of the Top 10 remind me of the baseball cards I used to sign in the name of the player for my brother - Doug Decinces, Buddy Bell, Hubie Brooks, Carney Lansford, and Pedro Guerrero - you could only trade one of these away if it was signed.

The next 13 years were very good: Howard Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Matt Williams, George Brett, Schmidt, Ken Caminiti, and Gary Gaetti among others were consistently good for years at at time. Even Kelly Gruber (31 HR, 118 RBI, 14 SB, 92 R, .274 AVG) had a great year. But the well dried up in 2000 as Travis Fryman, Jeff Cirillo, Dean Palmer, and Joe Randa snuck into the Top 10.

Shortstops - Perennially bad throughout the 1980's, despite incredible seasons from Cal Ripken, the shortstops didn't begin to emerge as a powerhouse until 2001 and even spent a season rated worse than catchers. But in 2001 they passed Third Basemen and in 2007 finished a 13 year climb to the top and have ended the last two seasons as the most prolific position in fantasy baseball. We've chronicled Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Jimmy Rollins and before them Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Miguel Tejada, and Nomar Garciaparra in this space and at FIO so no reason to go into it again.

In that fateful year of 1984 when catchers were rated more highly, only two shortstops drove in over 70 (none over 90); only four batted over .270; 4 bettered 70 runs, and only 1 hit 25 out of the park.

Catchers - As mentioned, catchers, as expected, are consistently the worst position for offense. And while it is not a significant trend, we can see a slight decrease in score over the past 20 years. The best year ever for catchers was the same 1984 mentioned with the shortstops and Gary Carter (27 HR, 106 RBI, .294 AVG, 75 R) and Lance Parrish (33 HR, 98 RBI, 75 R) were easily the two best.

Overall Trend - Easy discernible in the above chart is the parity among the non-catchers. We are in the midst of a 6 year trend that looks to result in virtually no difference among the OF, SS, 1B, and 3B positions. An argument can be made that this is temporary, but I tend not to buy into that. Increasingly each position is manned by power hitting, offensive minded players and in cases where power is not the first option, speed makes up any difference (see Rollins, Ramirez, Reyes).

Keep in mind that the scores are adjusted for positional scarcity and does not imply that in terms of raw numbers a 1B does not do as well as a Shortstop. Instead, look at the chart in terms of value - raw numbers in the context of their peers.

Finally, here is a list of average stats by year. These are not the average fantasy player stats, rather, I adjusted them upwards a bit so it passes the, "Yeah, I would like this guy on my team" test. For example, 1n 2007 that turns out to be a player withe either 21 HR, 90 RBI, 23 SB, 93 R, or a .286 AVG. Again, this is not to say this player would need to have all of these stats, rather, I wouldn't hesitate to draft someone who is projected to have any of these stats (within reason of course).

This chart is important to keep in mind since it helps put each season in it's proper place when looking at fantasy value. 60 HR in 1998 roughly equivalent to 38 HR in 1980.