The five best players of the 2010sJen McCaffrey: The 10 Most Memorable Red Sox Games Of The 2010s
1. Mike Trout — You were expecting maybe Rusney Castillo? Trout just crushed this field in pretty much every category that didn't involve counting — and even a few categories that did. But the biggest headline was this: According to Baseball Reference, his 72.5 Wins Above Replacement in the '10s meant he was worth 18.3 more wins than any other position player in the sport, despite the fact he essentially gave everyone else a two-year head start! And there has never — we said never — been any player who blew out the field in WAR by that crazy a margin in any — we said any — decade. The old record was 16.3, and that was set by Honus Wagner over 100 years ago (1900-09). ...
2. Joey Votto — Only two players in the sport had a .300/.400/.500 slash line in the '10s. One was Trout. The other was Votto (.306/.428/.516). This guy has been way too underappreciated. More on him later.
3. Adrián Beltré — There were just four players who were worth at least 50 wins in the '10s, according to the Baseball Reference WAR computations. Beltré was one of them even though he didn't play a game in 2019. Did you know that only one player in baseball finished in the top 10 on the offensive and defensive WAR leaderboards for this decade? Yep, that was Adrián Beltré. ...
The five best pitchers of the 2010s
1. Clayton Kershaw — Let's debate Kershaw's October struggles some other time, OK? That's because we're talking about a man who had an ERA under 2.00 for 197 consecutive regular-season starts between 2011 and 2018. That's amazing. And we're talking about a man whose 164 ERA-plus is the greatest by any starter, in any decade, since Walter Johnson hung a 177 in the first quasi-decade (1913-19) after earned runs became an official stat in 1913. That's mind-blowing. And if we use 1,500 innings as the minimum, we're talking about a man whose ERA (2.31) was 72 points lower than the next-best pitcher of this decade. And that's unheard of. Just a reminder that Clayton Kershaw in his prime was something special.
2. Max Scherzer — Scherzer led the sport in strikeouts (2,452) and wins (161) in the '10s. And he's about to make his seventh top-five Cy Young finish in a row. The only other pitchers in history who can say that? Greg Maddux and Kershaw.
3. Justin Verlander — Verlander is going to finish with five top-two Cy Young finishes in this decade. That's dominance. And if we use WAR as a measuring stick, nobody had more 6.0-win seasons (six) or 7.0-win seasons (four) in the '10s than Justin Verlander did.
4. Chris Sale — What Votto is to that hitters' list, Sale is to this pitchers' list. A better ERA (3.03) than Verlander. A better strikeout rate (11.08 per nine innings pitched) than Scherzer. A better WHIP (1.03) than anybody except Kershaw. ...
MOST WINS ABOVE REPLACEMENT, PITCHERS, IN THE 2010s
Kershaw, 59.3
Verlander, 56.2
Scherzer, 56.1
Hamels, 46.2
Sale, 45.4
Greinke, 44.0
Price, 38.6
Kluber, 33.2
deGrom, 32.7 ...
Best postseason pitcher of the 2010s: Madison Bumgarner
Based solely on the pure raw numbers, maybe you'd give this to Stephen Strasburg, the guy with the 1.46 career postseason ERA. But just when I started mulling that thought, I looked back on MadBum's epic October of 2014, his shutouts in two wild-card games, his absurd and unprecedented 0.25 career ERA over four World Series starts. And I thought: Will we ever see anybody do that again? Did you know that in those four World Series starts, Bumgarner gave up a total of one run? Did you know that in his 16 career postseason starts, he has allowed zero runs in six of them (not even counting his five shutout innings in relief in a Game 7 you might remember)? Did you know that he and Randy Johnson are the only two left-handers since Sandy Koufax to throw multiple shutouts in the same postseason? Did you know that in the Giants' three championship runs, MadBum made at least one postseason start of at least seven innings and no runs in all three of them? Oh, and he gets like a billion extra-credit points for basically winning the 2014 World Series all by himself. (All other Giants starters in that World Series combined for a 9.37 ERA and got through only the third inning twice in five starts.) So one more time, let's ask: Will we ever see anybody do that again? ...
Best pitcher who never won a Cy Young: Chris Sale
Not only is Chris Sale by far the best pitcher who never won a Cy Young in this decade, but he's also a contender for best pitcher who never won a Cy Young, period. For instance, Sale's WHIP for the '10s was an awesome 1.03. Ready for a list of all the other pitchers in the last 100 years who had a WHIP that low in any decade (with at least 1,500 innings)?
Clayton Kershaw, 0.96 (2010s)
Sandy Koufax, 1.01 (1960s)
Juan Marichal, 1.05 (1960s)
-That's a wrap –
It was Kershaw who dominated this decade. But it was Sale who finished in the top two in ERA, strikeout rate, opponent average, opponent slugging, opponent OPS and FIP — among other stuff. He has six top-five Cy Young finishes to show for it but no trophies. Juan Marichal and Curt Schilling feel his pain. ...
BEST ON-BASE MACHINE OF THE 2010s — Votto walked 1,046 times in this decade. Only one other player — Carlos Santana — was within 200 of him. Only four other players — Santana (944), José Bautista (812), Trout (803) and Andrew McCutchen (769) — were even within 400 of him!
BEST WORKHORSE OF THE 2010s — Verlander faced 8,635 hitters, just in the regular season, in the '10s. Only two other pitchers — Scherzer (8,300) and Lester (8,236) — were within (gulp) 500 hitters of him. We continue to show way too little appreciation for pitchers who provide that much volume, especially when it comes with Verlander-esque domination. ...
What goes up must come down — except possibly at the Trop. So lastly, here's to the men who "led" the '10s in all those departments they'd rather we never looked up!
LOWEST BATTING AVERAGE (min. 3,000 PA) — Danny Espinosa, .221
LOWEST OBP — Adeiny Hechavarría, .290
LOWEST SLUGGING PCT. — Billy Hamilton, .326 ...
MOST STRIKEOUTS — Chris Davis, 1,597 (most by any player in any decade in history)
MOST LOSSES — Rick Porcello, 109
MOST GOPHERBALLS — James Shields, 262 ...
Chad Jennings: The 10 Most Significant Red Sox Decisions Of The 2010s
Tim Britton: The 20 Best MLB Games Of The 2010s
The Athletic: The Athletic's MLB All-Decade Team
Right field
Mookie Betts (19/28)
From 2010 to 2019, 1,838 position players made at least one plate appearance in the major leagues. Of those, only 742 stuck around long enough to log just short of a season's worth of plate appearances (600). Within that group, 14 position players earned the sport's greatest individual honor, the Most Valuable Player award. But none could top Betts' MVP campaign in 2018. When measured by FanGraphs' version of WAR (10.4), it ranked as the most valuable single season in the entire decade. That edged out Trout's 2013 (10.2), and Posey's 2012 (10.1). In an era in which some of the best players in the league can be classified as one-dimensional, Betts has become a star by excelling in every aspect of the game, a tribute to his athletic versatility. In high school, Betts was a standout star in basketball, baseball and bowling. He has participated in the World Series of baseball (2018) and the World Series of bowling (2015 and 2017). Among right fielders, Betts' 42.0 WAR for the decade, according to Baseball-Reference, ranks ahead of Stanton's 39.9. And Betts reached that total despite playing in 368 fewer games and swatting 169 fewer homers, a testament to his defense and baserunning.
Betts in the 2010s: 42.0 WAR, .301/.374/.519, 2018 AL MVP, four All-Star selections, four Gold Gloves, 965 hits, 229 doubles, 139 homers, 25 steals
The quote: "To come up as a second baseman and turn himself into the type of right fielder that he is just shows how athletic he is, for one, but also how dedicated he is to making himself better. Offensively, he's the MVP, but he runs the bases really, really well, he plays a Gold-Glove right field and puts up video-game-like numbers in the box. He can do it all." — Former Red Sox player Brock Holt
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