FIRST BASEMEN
1) Walt Geldof * 2040 - 2062
Most times winning the Tyson Bacon Award:
Despite winning the Bacon award the most times, Geldorf cannot say that he dominated his position more than any other player. He was the best first baseman in the league in 9 different years. As terrific as that is, there are players who ranked as their positions’ top player as many as 16 times.
In his Historical Abstract book, Bill James insinuates that if the player with the most Win Shares in a given year did not win the MVP award, then the voters got it wrong. (To be fair, there are a number of times where voters simply did have it wrong). By contrast, I figure that, whether the Bacon winner was assigned by the game or voted by the NPBL owners, the selection is likely more correct than my rating system. I compare the two to see if it validates my rating.
Out of the 152 Bacon Award winners, 106 (70%) were ranked as the tops at their
position for that year. Another 30 winners (20%) were the 2nd best at their position. Since there are Bacon Award winners in both the FFL and the GEL, both recipients cannot be the top player
overall in the league. At best, the two award winners could be 1st and 2nd.
As for Walt Geldorf, in the 8 years that he won the Tyson Bacon Award, my rating system shows him as the best player in the NPBL 4 of those years (2043-2046). In 2048, he was 2nd best. In 2047, he ranks 3rd best. In 2042, he was 5th best and finally in 2053, he shows as my 11th best player.
2) Mark Sims * 2037 - 2055
Sims’ career almost completely intersects Geldorf’s career. One of the rather large factors in my ratings is the player’s YOPDI score. YOPDI is a measurement of how dominant the player is over time. If a player is the best at their position for a given year, he receives 10 YOPDI points. The 2nd best receives 8 points and so on. The top 8 players receive points. (The scale is adjusted and a 9th player earns points during the years there were 28 teams in the league). I was concerned that Sims’ overall ranking might suffer since he played during the same years as Geldorf. However, it turned out not to be the case as Sims easily finished with the 2nd most YOPDI points for a 1st baseman.
Geldorf and Sims end up ranked 1st and 2nd (or 2nd and 1st) in every metric I looked at for ranking the players. They have the top score for single seasons, for best five years, for their careers and top YOPDI scores. They are far-and-away the top two at the position.
3) John Gleaves * 2009 - 2027
Gleaves hit a total of 533 home runs during his career. He is one of 16 players in NPBL’s 500 HR club. (Jocko Garcia needs 20 more dingers to join the club). In the MLB, there are currently 27 players in the 500 HR club. Of course, the MLB has played longer than the NPBL (though we are catching up!). Considering the years 1920 to 1995, there were 14 players in the MLB group. In the NPBL, 6 of the 16 (38%) players are first basemen. In the MLB, 3 of the first 14 (21%) were first baseman with 10 of the total 27 (37%).
In his Historical Abstract, James would at times refer to the fact that x% of a player’s value came from the home run. I don’t know how he calculated that, but I would think that Gleaves’ would have a rather high percentage of his overall value from the home run. He did not hit for average, or steal bases. Nor did he have very many extra base hits that weren’t home runs. The one thing Gleaves would do is walk an average amount. However, Gleaves is certainly NOT the player with the MOST value added by the home run. That distinction surely goes to Jose Hernandez (#47 on this list).
4) Sonny Miller 2064 - 2075
Miller being ranked this high is a surprise to me. I might be accused of some hometown bias, but the ranking are purely objective. What Miller has going for him is extraordinary consistency. His top season is rather average as far as the top first baseman go, but his fifth best season is nearly equal to his best season.
Miller has slowed down a little, but he is still putting up all-star caliber numbers for Massachusetts. The rankings only consider what has been accomplished to this point. Should Miller contribute another 2-3 exceptional seasons, he may be able to overtake John Gleaves for the #3 spot.
5) Mack Outlaw * 2025 - 2042
Mack Outlaw played for the North Carolina Clippers for the first nine years of his career before being traded to the Mississippi Ravens franchise in 2034. By the end of 2038, the Raven franchise dissolved and became the Georgia Hornets. The club only stayed 4 years in Georgia before moving to Kansas to become the second incarnation of the Kansas Storm. Outlaw didn’t make the move as he retired a Georgia Hornet, narrowly missing being the 3rd first baseman in the top 10 to play for the Kansas Storm (Geldorf and Martinez).
As mentioned, this Kansas Storm franchise was the second incarnation. The first version began with the inception of the NPBL and contracted (along with New York, Rhode Island and Texas) in 2042. When it comes to first baseman, the first version of the Storm was the opposite of the second version. In fact, one could argue that the original Storm first baseman was the weakest position for any franchise. The best first baseman in the history for the original Storm was Jose Rojas. Rojas checks in at #42 on this list. However, the reason Rojas makes a #42 ranking is due in large part to his time spent with Minnesota. While in Kansas, the best season Rojas had was only a WAR of 1.5 in 2016. The best WAR by a first baseman in an original Storm uniform was 2.9 by Robert Killian in 2022 – the lowest best score for any position for any franchise. The second lowest was also a first baseman. Jeffery Eisenberg (#74) for the Rhode Island Reds.
A couple notes: all players are assigned a “career position” based on where the player played the most games. It is possible for a team to have an outstanding player who served a season or more at a non-career position. This does not “count” in the above rankings. For example, Donnie “Bloody” Bremer qualifies as a third baseman for Maryland. Although he played a few seasons as the Admiral’s primary second baseman, all of those seasons actually count towards the third baseman ratings.
Secondly, the lowest season WAR is but one way to look at the weakest position argument. I may present a couple of other perspectives on this in other rankings.
6) Ángel Martínez * 2052 - 2070
Which player had the biggest “fluke” season? First off, I would make the hypothesis that OOTP players are far more consistent than real-life players. I believe that some of this has to do with circumstances of reality getting in the way (steroids, depression, changing in batting stance, etc). I also believe that OOTP player arcs cater towards what the public wants. It’s typically a less enjoyable experience for the user when they don’t know what they are going to get year-to-year from their little fictional baseball players. In line with this hypothesis, I found that the largest fluke seasons in the history of the NPBL are really not all that fluky. The biggest difference in WAR from one season to the next was Angel Martinez from 2060 to 2061 (see table below). The explanation of the variance is as much due to 2060 being an injury shortened season as it is due to the outstanding 2061 performance. This does not fit what I was looking for in a fluke season given that Martinez followed it up with Bacon Award winning seasons in 2062 and 2063.
Instead of a variance from one year to the next, the better way to answer the question is to look at the variance between a player’s best season and the player’s second best season. Doing so brings us to the following candidates:
- Juan Phillips LF Oregon 2007
- Kyle Winfield RF Idaho 2044
- Bruce Scott 2B Hawaii 2071
- Lawrence Farrell CF Georgia 2055
Each players’ fluke season is included in the table below along with the year before, the year after and the players’ second best season.
I think probably Juan Phillips 2007 would be my pick for flukiest season.
7) Vicente Escobar 2055 - 2064
A couple of interesting notes regarding Vicente Escobar. First, he played for mostly bad teams. During his playing career, Escobar’s Minnesota teams averaged a 67-95 record. Escobar was able to make the playoffs a few times early in his career. In fact, the second interesting fact is that Escobar debuted in the playoffs in 2054. He played the entire year (2054) in AA, and then was called up to be the Wolves’ first baseman for the playoffs. Francisco Bell, the team’s regular first baseman throughout the year, had only 6 at-bats during the playoffs while Escobar batted 39 times.
Finally, his career is short (10 years). The only other top 10 player at any of the positions with only a 10 year career is Sully Sullivan (RF) and the only reason Sullivan has such a short career is because he was already 31 years old when the league started in 2000. Below is a complete list of players to make a positional 75 list with 10 years or less in the league (without being capped by 2000 or 2075).
8 ) Aragorn King * 2003 - 2016
Aragorn King was one of the super-players that began the league. At the inception of the NPBL, each owner was allowed to create an 18 year-old super stud. Many of them shared the same name as current owners. Others had very LotR-flavored names: Aragorn King, Gandalf Greyhemme, and Sauron Evil.
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Having the created guys was a brilliant move by (the original commissioner) Jason Kroner when he set up the league because it kept so many guys involved in the league longer than they would have. That is not to say that it worked for every owner but you could argue that the league could have folded years ago without that idea. Remember there were tons of new leagues popping up all the time during the ootp 4 era (when this league started) and I think every other league I was in has folded so the idea of having a self named superstar was pretty original and I think helped maintain interest even from the teams that were not very good.
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I recall trying to figure out the list of the created super-players and not being able to figure out one team’s player. I can’t seem to find that post right now though. (Author note: I found it and it's coming later).
9) Guillermo Malagón 2050 - 2067
In contrast to Sonny Miller, Guillermo Malagon is the first baseman that I am most surprised is not ranked
higher. If I had put a subjective element to the rankings, I would probably swap Malagon and Miller. One of the most important metrics for the rankings is the players’ best 5 seasons. Miller’s total score for his top 5 seasons ranks as the 6th best among first baseman, while Malagon’s top 5 ranks 16th:
10) Antonio Herrera 2000 - 2012
In the spring of 2002, Herrera was traded from Illinois to Minnesota in exchange for CF John Charity. Perhaps draft picks were involved too, I don’t know. The move signified a change for the Wolves. After losing records in the 2 years prior to Herrera’s arrival, the Wolfpack went on to 11 straight winning seasons including 2 seasons with 100+ wins and a National Cup in 2005. The consecutive winning season streak lasted exactly as long as Herrera’s career did.
Herrera may be one of the most underrated players. He was basically overshadowed by Aragorn King and some of the other super players of his era, but Herrera quietly went out and did his job and transformed his team into a winner.