This is part of my All-Time Teams series that I have been completing for BaseballDigest.com. The Yankee piece can be read here. The Dodgers team article should hit the web soon. Keep checking back for excerpts of the complete Red Sox All-Time Team, which should launch—in entirety—next week.  

ALL-TIME RED SOX

You can love the Yankees or hate ‘em, but you can’t deny their standing in baseball lore. So to a degree, choosing the Yankees All-Team was an exercise in futility. In order to create a compelling argument, it was necessary to outline marginal “discrepancies” between players who were far too legendary to be deserved of such diminished praise.

And if that meant Mickey Mantle had to be left off the roster, that Joe Torre’s supremacy over Casey Stengel needed to be justified, or even if Jason Giambi needed to be separated from the rest of the cringe-worthy field—well, that’s how it was going to have to be.

It was an entirely different story with the Dodgers. For a team considered to be one of the true cornerstone Major League franchises, you wouldn’t think Ron Cey would make the All-Time team. Or Dixie Walker. Or Zack Wheat. But alas, they did. And perhaps even more than their own impressive careers, they have the dearth of competition to thank for that.

Now we move onto the Red Sox, a franchise who needs no introduction to any generation. For all the fluctuations in talent and success over the last eleven decades, they have remained a prominent mainstay in the baseball lexicon. From the early 20th century era of World (Series)-Domination, to 86 years of pain and back again, the Sox have entertained a century’s worth of baseball fans.

Along the way, Fenway Park has been host to various superstars who achieved their namesake in vastly different fashions. You’ve had Yaz’s impeccable consistency and seriousness and Manny doing whatever it is that he did. There was Cy Young’s being—well, Cy Young. Then you had Roger Clemens and his “legendary” workout program.

And guess what? None of those guys will make this list. Nope, not even Cy Young.

Despite 86 years as the doormat as the rest of the league, the Sox have continued to roll out a steady stream of legitimate Hall-of-Famers and superstars. Yet despite a few noticeable omissions and difficult decisions, it really isn’t close at most of the positions.

Maybe that will make this job easier than the prior two. Who am I kidding? I just spent 400 words on an intro. Moving on… 

Franchise Player-Ted Williams

For a moment, forget all that jargon about the suite of All-Timers that populate the Red Sox illustriously fickle history. Ted Williams is far and away the greatest great player in a field full of them.

Of course, it can’t hurt that he’s the only person in history to be a dual inductee of the Baseball and ISFA Fishing Hall-of-Fame. But Bassmaster status notwithstanding, Williams is best known for being a hitting savant, a man who had a scouting department operating out of his cranium. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t get enough credit for putting together some of the most incredible seasons in the history of the sport.

Just for a moment, put aside his supposed cerebral superiority (which has become the stuff of some pretty dubitable legends), and look at his incorruptibly incredible statistics.

A career .344/.482/.634 hitter, Williams also is credited with 521 career home runs and 2,654 hits despite losing three seasons of his prime to military service. He jacked 30 homers in eight separate seasons, drove in at least 100 runs in each of his first nine full seasons andnever batted under 300 in a full season. His lone “down” year came in his injury shortened penultimate ’59 campaign. 

It’s somewhat of a disservice to Teddy Ballgame’s legacy to discuss his career in whole instead of breaking it down into its well-oiled parts. As impressive as his career figures were, some of Williams’ individual seasons were even more so. Particularly, three consecutive ones early in his career:

1941: 37 HR, 120 RBI, .406/.553/.735, 11.9 WAR

1942: 36 HR, 141 R, 137 RBI, .356/.499/.648, 12.2 WAR

1946: 38 HR, 142 R, 123 RBI, .342/.497/.667 12.4 WAR

As you probably guessed, those three seasons constitute Williams’ final two pre-War seasons and his first one when he returned from duty. And it only serves as an indicator of how one of history’s most feared and respected hitters might have garnered even more acclaim had he not had the misfortune of playing in the ‘40s.

Two things are at play here. Most historians salivate over Williams lofty batting averages. But in today’s context, his OBP is even more indefatigable. Nine times in his carrer, Williams had an OBP over .490. He topped .500 thrice. Today, sabermatricians wax poetic when Jack Cust tops .400. Billy Beane would have had an aneurysm if he could have acquired an in-his-prime Williams.

The secondary—and much more crucial—factor is Williams’ war service. His 139.8 WAR ranks first in Red Sox history and is 30 wins higher than second place Yaz and double that of fourth place Dwight Evans. That same WAR puts him in eight place all-time, 37.9 wins short of the Babe for the top mark.

Now let’s do some pretty conservative extrapolation. From 1939 to 1949, Williams posted WARs over 7. From ’41-’49, he posted WARs of 11.9, 12.2, 12.4, 10.8, 9.2 and 10.6. Of course, this excludes the three seasons he lost to military service.

Over those six remarkable seasons, Williams averaged a roughly 11.2 WAR. For the sake of conservativeness, let’s round that number to a much more sustainable 10.0 WAR.

There’s no reason to think that Williams would not have maintained such a clip over those seasons, in which he would have been 25, 26 and 27 years old, respectively. Assuming health and reasonable production, let’s give him a 10.0 WAR for the ’43, ’44 and ’45 seasons. For the sake of argument, add 30.0 wins to his career WAR, giving him a career 169.8 career mark.

That puts him ahead of Barry Bonds, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and any other play whose name wasn’t Babe Bleeping Ruth. After all, the Babe was a player whose eye-popping WAR became particularly cushy thanks to the uselessness of the 1920’s replacement player. In 1920, he hit more home runs than all but one Major League team. The Philadelphia Phillies played half of their games in the Baker Bowl, where right field was just 272 feet from home plate. And they hit just ten more home runs as a team than Ruth did on his own.

And none of this even takes into account possible wear and tear from the war. Williams played just five full seasons over the final 11 years of his career. If he stays healthy over that time, it seems fair to suspect he would have surpassed the Babe’s all-time mark. Although that involves a bit too much guesswork for my taste.

Nevertheless, Williams didn’t face watered-down competition, sustain an uninterrupted career or have the benefit of being able to let himself go and still be a world class hitter. But the Splendid Splinter distinguishes himself as a cerebrally superior, stick proficient slugger whose legacy will endure regardless of What Could Have Been.

Jesse Golomb researches and writes for BaseballDigest.com. He is also the creator and writer of SoapBoxSportsByte, a blog that incorporates statistical analysis as well as fan perspective into daily pieces on the MLB, NFL and NBA. He can be followed on Twitter @SoapBxSprtsByte, or contacted by email at golombjesse@gmail.com.