Rank your top 19th Century Baseball Players

[nat]

He doesn't actually make a top 5-10 list, but I'd like John McGraw to get a some attention. Little Napoleon was actually one hell of a ball player. 334 career batting average, 466 career on base percentage. Not much power, but excellent at setting the table. Sort of the 19th century Wade Boggs.

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by nat

He doesn't actually make a top 5-10 list, but I'd like John McGraw to get a some attention. Little Napoleon was actually one hell of a ball player. 334 career batting average, 466 career on base percentage. Not much power, but excellent at setting the table. Sort of the 19th century Wade Boggs.

Absolutely. McGraw and Spalding were both good enough to merit induction as players.

[molenick]

Adding another 15 alphabetically to make 25 from me. I think between my first 10 and next 15 all positions are covered.

Burkett (who I think is the best player not mentioned so far)
Caruthers
Duffy
Galvin
Glasscock
Kelly
McCormick
McGraw
McPhee
O’Rourke
Rusie
Thompson
Ward
Welch
D. White

Beckley, Griffith, Keeler, and Kelley excluded because of 20th century crossover (and to make it easier for me to pick 15 players).

[Misunderestimated]

I'll take the approach that the time limits are OJ subjects (1887-90 but inclusive of the minor leaguers in the set).. So no Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, A.G. Spalding, George Wright, or Jimmy Creighton..

1-A) Cap Anson (I'm just rating him as a player not based on my opinion about his role in excluding African-Americans from "organized baseball") For better or worse he was probably the definitive 19th Century ballplayer.
1-B) Kid Nichols - My pick for best pitcher. He was an 1890's guy which makes him different from the Keefe/Radbourn/Clarkson/Galvin crew who were pretty much done by 1894 when pitching changed.

3) Ed Delahanty -- also more of a 1890's guy, sad story.
4) Personal favorite: Sliding and Scoring Billy Hamilton -- perhaps the greatest leadoff man and run scorer who played until Rickey Henderson (Or Cool Papa Bell... I guess he hit leadoff. It seems logical -- sadly I can't back this up with much data).

5-8 I'm just dumping Clarkson/Radbourn/Keefe and Galvin here -- they played in another world and their stats are crazy. I want to point out Radbourn's 1884 as the best single season -- maybe ever. I'm not sure what the order for these guys is. The contemporaries would have put Hoss first I guess and Galvin last.

9-11 ) Dan Brouthers - Roger Connor, and Sam Thompson -- likely in that order. Great hitters -- power hitters I guess. At peak they were probably better than Anson but they did not run up the career numbers like Cap -- not even close.

12) Buck Ewing -- Those who saw him play and played with and against him regarded him as simply the best. He was known as the best catcher. His numbers don't impress like some of the others. Of course, being a Catcher in the 19th Century was brutal (there's a book about it I read at some point).
-- --
Some others to round out a "team" positionally etc.
2B - Bid McPhee
3B - Deacon White
SS - Jack Glasscock
Utility - $10,000 Mike (King) Kelly (Basically everything but Pitcher) & Bobby Caruthers (Pitcher Outfield)... Both had short careers and they were big winners.

[Joe_G.]

Fully support Sam Thompson, was wanting to post all week, glad Keith beat me to it.

In my opinion, and I am biased, the other guy that should be on far more lists is Deacon White. As others alluded to and Peter Morris elaborated so well (in his book "Catcher - How the Man Behind the Plate became an American Folk Hero"), a good catcher offered more to a team's success than any other position. It was a position most athletes feared to play. To do it well you had to be extremely skilled and fearless. No one did it better in the 1870s than Deacon White. Deacon caught more games than anyone that decade with innovations that placed him at great risk (such as catching right behind the plate when runners were on base). Catching was brutal, shortened many careers, the wear-and-tear taking toles on offensive production, yet Deacon frequently led or was among the leaders in offense. The value of the catcher would diminish with time, but when it mattered most, Deacon was the best.

Recognizing the tole catching was taking on his hands, Deacon then re-invented himself as a 3rd baseman for the last half of his career and played the position well. In 1888, as the oldest player in baseball, he still was able to hit for average, 6th in the League at .298. Amazing he put up the numbers he did as a catcher, play many short seasons, and still eclipse 2000 hits.

While the following link doesn't provide a lot of stats and analysis, I found it to be an interesting read.

https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/...l-hall-of-fame

And if we are loving on 19th century catchers, need to give a shout out to Charlie Bennett

[oldjudge]

Great post, Joe, and I love that portrait. Not that it is relevant for this discussion, but Deacon White is also by far the toughest HOFer in the Old Judge set.

[Schwertfeger1007]

-Thank you all for the input and your responses! This has been a super fun read!!

I dove deep tonight and did my own statistical analysis and interestingly enough came up with the same top 10 (although I'm sure it's a different order) as Michael "Molenick".

I focused heavily in a lot of cases on more current statistical segments like WAR and OPS+. I found 4 pitchers that really stood ahead of the rest (although if I was forced to take a 5th it would've been McCormick...sorry Pud!).

As for the position players the top 5 for me were easy to select.

The 6th came down to a tight grouping and I was forced to leave off guys like Thompson (baaarely), Stovey (surprised he wasn't mentioned more), Browning (one of my all time favorites) and Orr (sorry just not enough playing time for me). And at the end of the day, if Connie Mack and Jay Miller say Buck Ewing belong in top 10 then who am I to argue?

Without further ado:

Position-
1. Brouthers
2. Delahanty
3. Anson
4. Connor
5. Hamilton
6. Ewing

Pitchers-
1. Nichols
2. Clarkson
3. Radbourn
4. Keefe