Bill James looked at this question several years ago in writing the New Bill James Historical Abstract. Using his Win Shares system, he determined that the Tigers did indeed have some of the finest outfield trios ever. In fact, he ranked their 1915 outfield of Cobb, Crawford and Veach as the best of all time. We now have access to various Wins Above Replacement (WAR) systems, so I wanted to answer the same question from that perspective.
First, remember that WAR is an estimate of the number of wins a player contributed to his team's win total above what you would expect from a replacement level player - a player who could be acquired for league minimum salary. An example of a replacement player would be a player in Triple-A, who is good enouigh to get some time in the majors, but is not regarded as a top prospect. WAR takes into consideration everything a player does on the field, including hitting, fielding and base running.
I'll be using the WAR system developed by Sean Smith, now a statistician for a major league team. For most of my analysuis, I used a database I purchased from Sean a couple of years ago. The data are now housed at Baseball-Reference. There may be a few small discrepancies between the old database numbers I'm using and Baseball-Reference due to recent upgrades of the sytstem, but nothing that should significantly change the conclusions. A very accessible explanation of the system can be found at Beyond The Boxscore.
Basically, what I did was sum the WARs for the three top outfielders on each team each year. However, I only wanted to include outfielders who were regulars. I didn't want to include outfields who had two stars and a group of marginal players sharing the third spot. So, I required that each outfielder have 400 or more plate appearances and played at least half of his games in the outfield.
The 15 top single season WAR totals in the history of the game are shown in Table 1 below. The 1927 Yankees outfield of Babe Ruth, Earl Combs and Bob Meusel (23.5 total WAR) is the best of all-time according to this statistic. That means that, theoretically, these outfielders added 23-24 wins to their team above what you'd expect from three replacement level players. Ruth, Combs and Ben Chapman finished second with 22.4 WAR in 1927.
The Tigers do not do quite as well here as they did in Bill James's study but they are still well represented with three of the top 15 outfields. Cobb, Veach and Hielmann combined for 20.7 WAR in 1917 making them the sixth best outfield ever. The 1907 trio of Cobb, Crawford and Davy Jones is ninth (20.5). In 1915, Cobb, Crawford and Veach had 20.2 WAR which ranks them at number 13.
Table 1: Best Single Season Outfields Accord to Baseball-Reference WAR
Team | Player 1 | WAR | Player 2 | WAR | Player 3 | WAR | Total WAR | |
1927 | NYA | Babe Ruth | 12.8 | Earle Combs | 7.0 | Bob Meusel | 3.7 | 23.5 |
1931 | NYA | Babe Ruth | 11.4 | Ben Chapman | 6.3 | Earle Combs | 4.7 | 22.4 |
1953 | BRO | Duke Snider | 9.5 | Jackie Robinson | 7.3 | Carl Furillo | 4.7 | 21.5 |
1961 | NYA | Mickey Mantle | 11.9 | Roger Maris | 7.2 | Yogi Berra | 2.4 | 21.5 |
1963 | SFN | Willie Mays | 10.2 | Willie McCovey | 6.5 | Felipe Alou | 4.6 | 21.3 |
1917 | DET | Ty Cobb | 11.9 | Bobby Veach | 6.5 | Harry Heilmann | 2.3 | 20.7 |
1895 | PHI | Ed Delahanty | 7.5 | Billy Hamilton | 6.6 | Sam Thompson | 6.5 | 20.6 |
1894 | PHI | Billy Hamilton | 8.7 | Ed Delahanty | 6.7 | Sam Thompson | 5.1 | 20.5 |
1907 | DET | Ty Cobb | 8.4 | Sam Crawford | 7.5 | Davy Jones | 4.6 | 20.5 |
1941 | NYA | Joe DiMaggio | 9.4 | Charlie Keller | 6.6 | Tommy Henrich | 4.4 | 20.4 |
1899 | PHI | Ed Delahanty | 9.3 | Roy Thomas | 6.0 | Elmer Flick | 5.0 | 20.3 |
1990 | OAK | Rickey Henderson | 10.0 | Jose Canseco | 5.5 | Dave Henderson | 4.8 | 20.3 |
1915 | DET | Ty Cobb | 11.1 | Bobby Veach | 4.8 | Sam Crawford | 4.3 | 20.2 |
1980 | OAK | Rickey Henderson | 8.6 | Dwayne Murphy | 6.3 | Tony Armas | 5.3 | 20.2 |
1939 | NYA | Joe DiMaggio | 8.9 | George Selkirk | 5.9 | Charlie Keller | 5.1 | 19.9 |
One criticism of WAR is that the fielding portion of the system is not that reliable if we are only looking at one year of data. It is even more shaky in very early years where less detailed data are available. Thus, I also wanted to look at this with fielding excluded. The Offensive WAR (oWAR) results are shown in Table 2.
In this case, the the 1927 and 1931 Yankees outfields flip flop so that 1931 is now number one (21.8 oWAR) and 1927 is number two (21.4). The 1961 Yankees outfield of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra was third at 20.9.
The Tigers do better on this list than they do on the first one that includes fielding. In this case, they have five of the 15 best outfields ever. The 1915 group moves into fourth with 20.7 oWAR, while the 1917 trio finishes seventh at 19.8 and the 1907 threesome is eleventh (19.2) Two additional Tiger outfields are presented in this table. The 1908 outfield of Cobb, Crawford and Matty McIntyre is ninth (19.5)and the 1925 crew of Cobb, Heilmann and Al Wingo is 15th ( 18.4).
Table 2: Best Single Season Outfields Accord to Baseball-Reference oWAR
Year | Team | Player 1 | oWAR | Player 2 | oWAR | Player 3 | oWAR | Total oWAR |
1931 | NYA | Babe Ruth | 11.6 | Ben Chapman | 5.3 | Earle Combs | 4.9 | 21.8 |
1927 | NYA | Babe Ruth | 11.6 | Earle Combs | 6.2 | Bob Meusel | 3.6 | 21.4 |
1961 | NYA | Mickey Mantle | 11.8 | Roger Maris | 7.1 | Yogi Berra | 2.0 | 20.9 |
1915 | DET | Ty Cobb | 11.4 | Bobby Veach | 4.5 | Sam Crawford | 4.7 | 20.7 |
1895 | PHI | Ed Delahanty | 7.5 | Billy Hamilton | 6.8 | Sam Thompson | 6.3 | 20.5 |
1972 | HOU | Cesar Cedeno | 8.0 | Jimmy Wynn | 6.8 | Bob Watson | 5.4 | 20.1 |
1917 | DET | Ty Cobb | 11.2 | Bobby Veach | 6.0 | Harry Heilmann | 2.5 | 19.8 |
1894 | PHI | Billy Hamilton | 8.2 | Ed Delahanty | 6.1 | Sam Thompson | 5.4 | 19.7 |
1908 | DET | Matty McIntyre | 5.9 | Ty Cobb | 7.1 | Sam Crawford | 6.6 | 19.5 |
1953 | BRO | Duke Snider | 8.7 | Jackie Robinson | 6.1 | Carl Furillo | 4.5 | 19.3 |
1907 | DET | Ty Cobb | 8.2 | Sam Crawford | 7.5 | Davy Jones | 3.5 | 19.2 |
1963 | SFN | Willie Mays | 8.9 | Willie McCovey | 6.4 | Felipe Alou | 3.8 | 19.1 |
1899 | PHI | Ed Delahanty | 8.9 | Roy Thomas | 5.7 | Elmer Flick | 4.2 | 18.9 |
1941 | NYA | Joe DiMaggio | 8.6 | Charlie Keller | 5.8 | Tommy Henrich | 4.1 | 18.5 |
1925 | DET | Harry Heilmann | 6.9 | Ty Cobb | 6.4 | Al Wingo | 5.1 | 18.4 |
So, just as one might expect, the Tigers early outfields were some of the most dominant in the history of the game. Later, I'll explore some more recent Tigers outfields to see where they rank.
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