AGMVC - Catchers closed, onto first basemen
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by user Steaksammich
The votes are in and the 8 current members of the AGMVC voted Victor Martinez as the game's best catcher. I've added the results to the catcher page and closed the voting. Feel free to place your votes anyway. I probably won't update the results to reflect the changes, but that shouldn't stop anyone from having their opinion heard.
Now that Victor Martinez has his award, it's time to move on to first baseman. The Voting Committee is being called upon once again, this time to vote on the top ten active first baseman. Stop by and place your vote.
So that this isn't just an article giving cheap promos to the AGMVC, I'll throw in a little bit of content. I already went ahead and added a list of the top ten firstbasemen of all-time to first base. There won't be an official vote on this (I figure we can save that for some fun and games during the long off-season), but feel free to comment and add your two cents. The list is not set in stone and changes can obviously be made by anyone.
1. Lou Gehrig - Gehrig is heads and shoulders above any other first baseman in the history of the game. A .340/.447/.632 line is an amazing single season, but Gehrig kept it up over the course of 17 years. The original iron man hit 493 homers to go along with that line and was part of 6 World Series winning Yankee teams. He topped 150 RBI seven times including back to back seasons with 174 and 184.
2. Jimmie Foxx - Not quite as good as Gehrig, but a .325/.428/.609 line with 534 HR is damned impressive. He had 12 consecutive seasons with at least 30 HR and 105 RBI. He won the World Series with the Philadelphia Athletics twice, won the MVP 3 times, and is one of the few men in the history of the game to win the Triple Crown when he hit .356 with 48 HR and 163 RBI in 1933
3. Mark McGwire - Bitch and moan about steroids all you want, but I really don't see why people want to focus on the negatives so much. Sure, he injected an illegal substance into his body. Well, Babe Ruth was a drunk, Ty Cobb was a racist prick, and Pete Rose bet on baseball. Everyone has flaws. And you can play the cheating card all you want, but you're a damned fool if you think that the pitchers Big Mac was facing weren't doing the same thing. So instead of the black mark on the game, let's focus on the actual game itself. The man hit 583 HR and had an ISO of .325. Very few could match this guy's power.
4. Jeff Bagwell - With his career likely over, we can now look back and realize that we got to watch one of the best in the game play. He hit for average, got on base, hit for power, and was one of the best in the league year after year. He stuck with the same team for his entire career and he may not have won any World Series, but that was no fault of his own.
5. Frank Thomas - Born on the same day as Bagwell, it's tough to pick between the two. Thomas has slightly better numbers, but Bagwell was a more well rounded player. Thomas was a monster with the bat, but that was his only assett while Bagwell was quick enough to steal over 200 bases and took home a gold glove.
6. Harmon Killebrew - He has numbers very similar to McGwire. Both were slow, extremely powerful guys who didn't hit for a high average, and could knock the ball out of the park at any time. But it took Killebrew 2000 at bats more than Big Mac to hit 10 home runs less than him.
7. Eddie Murray - He was never the best guy in the league. He never won the MVP and there was always someone better than him. But he while he was never great, he was always extremely good. He reached double digits in homers for 21 straight years.
8. Rafael Palmeiro - He was caught using steroids in 2005 and he was villified for it, but he was still one of the greatest to play the game. Like Murray, he was never considered the best, but he was always very good. He had a period where he went 9 straight seasons with at least 38 HR and 104 RBI. He also has the distiction of being the only guy to play DH for most of the year, but still win the Gold Glove.
9. Johnny Mize - His career went downhill very quickly after the 1948 season, but he was a superstar when starting his career with the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees. He was able to hit for a high average and had enough power to hit at least 40 HR 3 different times.
10. Willie McCovey - The San Francisco Giants legend had a long career, but a short peak. He didn't stick as a regular until his 5th year in the majors and his production dropped off after he turned 32. But still, he stuck around a long time past his prime and amassed some pretty impressive numbers.
Date
Mon 05/22/06, 8:16 am EST
