Who had the greatest season of all time? Is it one of Babe Ruth’s many dominating seasons? Is it the 2001 version of Barry Bonds when he hit 73HR? Different stats tell slightly different stories. WAR has a different all-time leaderboard than Runs Created, which is also different from WPA (Win Probability Added). While that is a totally separate issue, we wanted to see how well the all-time greatest seasons stacked up head to head with each other, so the League of All-Time Greats came into being, once again using OOTP 15.

This league is made up of only 8 teams, split into 2 divisions. Going by Runs Created, which seems to be pretty robust metric in OOTP, we took the top 8 RC for a single season with the caveat that each player can only appear once – or else we would have more than half the league being made up of different versions of Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds. Each team’s lineup is made solely of that player without changing any of their season attributes, meaning that most players will be playing out of position.

The teams (Runs Created in parentheses):
– 2001 Barry Bonds (230)
– 1921 Babe Ruth (229)
– 1927 Lou Gehrig (208)
– 1932 Jimmie Foxx (202)
– 1922 Rogers Hornsby (202)
– 1930 Chuck Klein (193)
– 1998 Mark McGwire (193)
– 2001 Sammy Sosa (193)

The teams were divided into two divisions: The “Old-Timers” league was anyone from 1930 and before, while the “New-Timers” league consisted of the rest. The winners of each division meet in a best-of-nine World Series.

As we needed to set a year for this league to occur, we chose a year in between the two gaps (pre-1932 and post-1998) that had obvious baseball significance: 1961.

We also needed to fill out their teams with pitchers. We decided upon one pitcher for all, and again wanted to find someone meaningful. We didn’t want a superstar pitcher but landed someone above average with historical significance. We chose Orvall Overall, who played for the Cubs and lays claim to being the first pitcher to strike out 4 batters in one inning of a postseason game (not duplicated until Anibal Sanchez in 2013). More importantly he was the last man to be on the mound for the last out in a World Series clinching game for the Cubs.

The teams were all set up ready for Opening Day. The experts had their preseason predictions, and it looked like it was unsurprisingly going to be a Babe/Barry free for all.

And the schedule makers wanted to start the season off with a bang.

In the Opening Day matchup, Bonds hit the only home run, but 3 separate Babe Ruth’s stole bases. Two Ruth doubles in the bottom of the 8th were the difference as Babe Ruth took the game 7-6.

That Opening Day loss stung Barry, and Bonds went on to lost the next two games to Ruth before finally getting a victory in the fourth and final game of the series. After winning two more in a row against Jimmie Foxx, Bonds went into a funk (maybe steroids weren’t as readily available in 1961?) and would lose 7 in a row, including getting swept by Rogers Hornsby. Bonds would show some signs of life at the end of April, beating Mark McGwire 8-0 and 17-7 in two consecutive games.

Babe Ruth meanwhile won 10 of his first 11 games, sweeping Chuck Klein and Sammy Sosa. He finished April 14-5 with a 1.5 game lead of Rogers Hornsby.

Jimmie Foxx got off to the slowest start, losing 12 of his first 13 being swept by Chuck Klein, Lou Gehrig, and Rogers Hornsby before finishing the month on a high note sweeping Sammy Sosa.

Will Barry turn it around? Thankfully for him Sosa and Foxx also stumbled out of the gate. More to come…