A difficult decision as we work our way around the horn
We continue the Brewers All-Time Team today with first base. A quick reminder:
- We’re looking for the best individual season at each position, not the best career
- Players can only be used once
- A player must have played more games at the given position than any other in the given season
We started the series on Tuesday with our catcher, 2014 Jonathan Lucroy. Today we’ll look at first base.
First Base: Prince Fielder, 2009
162g, .299/.412/.602, 166 OPS+, 35 2B, 46 HR, 141 RBI, 110 BB, 6.3 bWAR, 5.9 fWAR
The first baseman for this All-Time Team was, I think, the trickiest decision in the whole project. The Brewers (at least, prior to when Fielder left) have had a long history of good first baseman, and to add to the trickiness, the three best of them don’t really resemble each other. George Scott was the first big Brewer star, a solid hitter who won eight Gold Gloves in his career. Cecil Cooper was next, a guy who hit .312 over a nine-year stretch while also winning a couple of Gold Gloves. John Jaha and Richie Sexson popped in with a few big slugger seasons in the 1990s and early 2000s. Then it was Fielder, the big prospect (literally and figuratively) who hit bombs.
Scott, Cooper, and Fielder all have seasons which required serious consideration for this spot. I ultimately chose Fielder, who in 2009 had the best offensive season by a first baseman in club history.
Fielder didn’t need much time to adjust to major league pitching. While he had flaws as a player—he was an atrocious defender and baserunner—he hit 28 homers while hitting .271 in his first full season. A year later, in 2007, he set a still-standing franchise record with 50 homers. But unlike his famous father, Fielder wasn’t a one-dimensional home run hitter. He hit .288 walked 119 times in 2007, giving him an OBP of .395. During his peak years (we’ll say 2007-2012), Fielder was a .289/.401/.549 hitter. Cecil never hit over .277 in any full season and was a career .255 hitter.
The various strengths of Fielder’s offensive approach came together most completely in 2009. An incredibly durable player for most of his career, Fielder played in all 162 games in ’09; from 2006-15, he played in at least 157 games in nine of 10 seasons, and from 2006-11—which make up essentially his entire Brewers tenure—he missed eight games. Total.
At his best, Fielder was a prodigious power hitter, as evidenced by those 50 homers in 2007. Watching Fielder unload was quite a sight; he would put all of his (listed) 275 pounds into that swing. In 2009, he hit 46 bombs, the second-highest total of his career. It was also his best year as a run producer, and his 141 RBI were tied with Ryan Howard for the most in baseball.
But what made his 2009 season his best was the things he did in addition to run producing. He walked 110 times—21 of which were intentional—which was good for fourth in the league. And to further prove that he was not just a home run hitter, he hit .299 with 35 doubles and three triples(!). He was behind only Albert Pujols in times on base.
Fielder’s 2009 batting line of .299/.412/.602 (a 166 OPS+, third in baseball behind the two league MVPs, Pujols and Joe Mauer) is one of the most impressive in Milwaukee’s history. While he was a poor baserunner and far from a Gold Glove defender, our available defensive metrics suggest that ’09 was also Fielder’s best season in the field as a Brewer. Pujols’ monster season prevented Fielder from winning any major awards, but he finished fourth in MVP voting.
The sheer force of that offensive performance combined with the “less bad than usual” defensive metrics is enough for me to call Fielder’s 2009 season the best at first base in team history. But as I mentioned, it’s extremely close, and two other seasons do require a bit of a deeper look.
George Scott, acquired as a 28-year-old from the Boston Red Sox before the 1972 season, was the first major star in the Brewers’ history. He manned first base for five seasons from 1972-76, won a Gold Glove every year (he’d already won three in Boston), and averaged 4.5 WAR in that stretch. The best season of Scott’s career came in 1973; he hit a career-high .306 (and set a career-best mark with a 144 OPS+) with 24 homers and 30 doubles, which in the depressed offensive environment of 1973 was enough to give him the American League lead with 295 total bases. When that offensive peak year is combined with his Gold Glove defense (Scott is by all accounts—the eye test, available defensive metrics—one of the best defensive first basemen of all time), Scott earned 6.7 WAR via Baseball Reference (and 6.1 via Fangraphs).
But the season that truly makes this first base decision difficult is Cecil Cooper in 1980. Cooper hit a massive .352 (second in the league—that was the year George Brett hit .390) and led the majors with 122 RBI and the AL with 335 total bases. He hit a then-career-high 25 homers, stole 17 bases, and had a career-best 219 hits, which was again second in the league to a Royal, this time Willie Wilson. Cooper’s OPS was negatively affected by his aversion to walks—he had only 39 that season—but why walk when you’re hitting .352, right? He still had a 155 OPS+, and he was judged to have played league-best defense, giving him his second consecutive Gold Glove. He was fifth in MVP voting, and his 6.8 bWAR in 1980 are the most ever for a Brewers first baseman.
There’s not a wrong decision between Cooper’s 1980 and Fielder’s 2009. They’re two of the greatest years in franchise history, and while they were different sorts of outstanding seasons, they were both just that, outstanding. Scott, too, belongs in this conversation. But for me, given that first base is the defensive position of lowest priority, I’ll go with the season that I judge to be the best overall offensive performance, and that’s Fielder.
Also considered, besides Cooper in ’80 and Scott in ‘73: these three guys also had excellent years in 1972 (Scott), 1982 (Cooper), and 2011 (Fielder); and while they aren’t at that level, a special shout out to Jaha in 1996, when he hit .300/.398/.543, and Sexson in 2003, when he tied what was then the franchise record with 45 homers.