Dodgers All-Time Team v.2012

Sorry for the brief hiatus - tax season (baseball blogging isn't paying the bills yet).

Today we're taking a look at the Dodgers All-Time team, version 2012.

In addition to our normal review, we are adding an infielder, an outfielder and two starting pitchers to last year's team (which can be seen here).


The Dodgers have built a tremendous history of winning and the future certainly looks bright for the LA Dodgers, who will be led by Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and newcomers Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Zack Greinke and Hanley Ramirez in 2013.  Don Mattingly has an all-star lineup that is built to win for the new ownership group and anything less than a World Series has to be considered a failure.

But none of those guys mentioned above are on the Dodgers All-Time team; needless to say, cracking this team is extremely difficult, especially the rotation.

Looking at last year's team, we decided to make one significant change, dropping off Maury Wills in favor of Pee Wee Reese.  Reese, a Hall of Famer, is quite underrated as a player.  Despite missing three years to serve in World War II, Reese, who played his entire career with the Dodgers, amassed 63.1 WAR, ten all-star appearances (nine consecutive) and was the best defensive shortstop of his era (his 25.5 dWAR ranks 6th all-time among shortstops who played primarily after 1920).

For the infield spot, we considered adding Wills back in but felt that Gil Hodges was the better pick.  Hodges is another guy that missed time to serve but he spent 16 years with the Dodgers and is a revered figure in Dodger history.

For the extra outfielder, we looked at Willie Davis as well as Pedro Guerrero but settled on Davis rather easily.

Once again, starting pitching was a major point of contention.  Even though we all agree that Don Sutton is a questionable Hall of Famer (a compiler... who hung on long enough to get 300 wins), he ranks first in Dodger history in wins and is one of the first names that comes to mind when you think great Dodger pitchers so we added him first.  He was great with the Dodgers (16 years, 233 wins, 3.09 ERA, five top-5 Cy finishes)... he wasn't as great in the latter part of his career outside of LA but he was great with the Dodgers.

The last spot in the rotation came down to Don Newcombe, Orel Hershiser, Dazzy Vance, Fernando Valenzuela and Claude Osteen... this was a very tough decision.  We threw it out there to Mark Timmons and his readership at www.LADodgertalk.com but there was no consensus among the group over there so we went with our gut and added Dazzy Vance... you can see the chart below to see why this was so tough.


Here's our team.  Tell us what you think.

C - Roy Campanella
1B - Steve Garvey
2B - Jackie Robinson
SS - Pee Wee Reese
3B - Ron Cey
IF - Gil Hodges
OF - Duke Snider
OF - Carl Furillo
OF - Zack Wheat
OF - Willie Davis
SP - Sandy Koufax
SP - Don Drysdale
SP - Don Sutton
SP - Dazzy Vance
RP - Ron Perranoski

3 comments:

  1. Great effort...It is quite a task, considering the talent over the years... Tommy Davis would have a spot if I could split hairs...

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is a tough team to crack... I'm not sure where you'd fit Tommy Davis in. Zack Wheat made the team with a pre-1920 exception but I do think he's worth it (franchise leader in hits and games played). Definitely not taking him over Snider or Furillo (Carl had 15 years, all with the Dodgers, 8 MVP ballots). So his only shot is over Willie Davis... important to note we really weigh tenure over prime and isolate stats with the franchise and Tommy only had four seasons with 500+ plate appearances with the Dodgers (compared to 12 for Willie). As such, Willie amassed 51 WAR compared to 15 for Tommy. Lack of tenure hurts him, big time. Thanks for the comment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Excellent job in 100% agreement.

    ReplyDelete

Copyright © 2012 FOR BASEBALL JUNKIES.