This quarantine has left us all starved for baseball, and we’ve been filling it with variations of baseball fantasy: simulations, favorite and ideal lineups, video games, and polls, among other things.
When MLB first shut down, Marc Carig tweeted out “Something to pass the time.” And challenged the universe to top his lineup for a must-win baseball game. And the universe answered back. As the weeks passed, Carig followed up this tweet with an article on The Athletic highlighting some of his favorite responses, and MLB shared some lineups from players.
I wondered which of these lineups would actually win, so I reached out to WhatIfSports.com to see about putting something together to see which of these lineups would actually win in a single-game format. With that said, there are a few things to note. The original tweet was followed up with “no dh. I said real base ball. Pitcher hits for himself.” Despite this, several lineups feature a DH. One features two CF. Etc. I had to make some decisions to make this whole thing work.
With that out of the way, and with WhatIfSports.com’s help, I’m simulating each match up only once and will post each box score along with a short summary of the game. Hope you all enjoy my having fun with your lineups as much as I did seeing if anyone could best Marc’s “Top this” challenge!
Brandon Wilhoite, lead writer for MLB Marathon, is from Arizona, but now living in North Carolina with his wife and three kids. He studied economics and parlayed that into a career in financial technology, but his love for baseball and statistical analysis have led him to look for outlets to share this passion with others.
WhatIfSports username: just4me
Twitter: @IfIHitYou
Decision One: No DH. If you included one in your lineup, I ignored it. If you had Ted Williams at DH, he didn’t make your team. I’m sorry if you would have moved him to LF and dropped your left fielder instead – should have followed the rules.
Decision Two: Some of these lineups were clearly chosen on peak performance, others on career, others on personal factors. I had to choose to use career or peak versions of the players. Ultimately, I settled on peak and chose each respective players best season.
For players like Ruth, Hornsby, or Bonds that arguably have 3-5 “best seasons” I picked the one I felt best matched what the lineup was structured for. So, on some teams you might see the 1921 Ruth and others the 1923, but if you had a preference of your own, you should have specified as some did when posting their lineups. Regardless, each lineup features a “best” version of the player in question and should honor the spirit of that lineup.
Decision Three: Several lineups include Negro League star Josh Gibson. As there isn’t a sim-able peak season from Gibson, I replaced him with the player most commonly referred to as a positional comp – Jimmie Foxx. All Gibson seasons were replaced with 1935 Foxx’s .346/.461/.636 36 HR season with .992 FLD% and 33% CS rate. I wanted to emulate as close to possible a realistic Gibson season and felt this was the best way to do that.
Decision Four: I had to draft a full 25-man roster to run the games. So, I drafted identical benches with bench quality players who most likely won’t see any playing time, and if they do it will mostly be as a PH.
Decision Five: Part of the above, I had to draft a full pitching staff, so I drafted the three best seasons for the pitcher named on the lineup and filled the rest in with the best relief seasons of all time. This bullpen features Mariano Rivera, Dennis Eckersely, Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner, Bruce Sutter, Eric Gagne, and Lee Smith.
Decision Six: Some of the lineups presented listed players in positional order instead of in a batting order. In those few cases, I set the batting lineup in a way I saw as best chance of winning the game.
Decisions Seven & Eight: I put all the teams in a neutral stadium so ballpark effects wouldn’t skew the results and the home team was decided along with the bracket setup, randomly, with each second team listed for each matchup designated the home team.
And no, I didn’t simulate all 2,000 plus lineups people responded with. I only selected those that appeared on my timeline from personalities I am familiar with. If I missed yours or you think yours could beat any of these let me know, or you can run it yourself through Whatifsports.com’s SimMatchup feature. There were several people who I had hoped had put up their own lineups, but I didn’t see one from them, so… oh well.