NDF 2003-04 Winter Fun - 1907 NL Award Winners

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For the season referenced in the subject line of this thread, who would be your pick for Best Positional Player (Include defense and position played in your determination), Best Pitcher, Best First Year Player and any other topics of discussion from this season.

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Some numbers:

Win Shares leaders:
Players; Honus Wagner (Pittsburgh) 44, Sherry Magee (Philadelphia) 38, Fred Clarke and Tommy Leach (Pittsburgh) 29, Ginger Beaumont (Boston) 28, Frank Chance and Jimmy Sheckard (Chicago) 23, Dave Brain and Fred Tenney (Boston), Tim Jordan (Brooklyn), Johnny Evers and Jimmy Slagle (Chicago), Art Devlin (New York) and John Titus (Philadelphia) 22 each.

Pitchers; Orvie Overall (Chicago) 32, Mordecai Brown (Chicago) and Christy Mathewson (New York) 29, Carl Lundgren (Chicago) 25, Tully Sparks (Philadelphia) 24, Ed Reulbach (Chicago), Bob Ewing (Cincinnati) and Ed Karger (St. Louis) 21 each.

WARP3 scores: Wagner 10.9, Magee 8.2, Clarke 6.9, Leach 7.2, Beaumont 8.6, Chance 5.6, Sheckard 5.0, Brain 4.9, Tenney 5.9, Jordan 3.1, Evers 6.2, Slagle 4.4, Devlin 5.9, Titus 4.4.

Pitchers; Overall 7.0, Brown 6.2, Mathewson 8.4, Lundgren 5.5, Sparks 4.0, Reulbach 4.0, Ewing 5.3, Karger 7.8 in his career year.

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Best player? Glad you asked! Honus Wagner! It's the standard answer, and the right one since Honus led the league in average, on-base, slugging, doubles, extra-base hits, and steals. He was also playing his usual excellent shortstop. No one else was really close, although Magee had a very good year with the bat.

Best pitcher is more interesting. I'll take Christy Mathewson, who led in wins and strikeouts. I have a soft spot for Ed Karger, 15-19 with the last-place Cardinals. Put him second. The Cubs staff always benefitted from that strong defense, which made them all look great.

For putting together that great team defense, the Best Manager is again Frank Chance. It was quite a team that the Cubs put on the field, with no real standout stars. They just played together like a fine-tuned machine.

Top rookie to Nap Rucker, 15-13 with a 2.06 ERA for Brooklyn.

[WiredTiger]

Best Hitter: Honus Wagner
No contest. Wagner's OPS+ was almost 20 points higher than the nearest player and 40 points over the third place finisher.

Best Pitcher: Carl Lundgren/Mordecai Brown/Jack Pfiester/Orval Overall
The Cubs pitching staff was awesome that year. Tough to differentiate between the four. Brown was the ace and pitched more innings, Overall was as good as Brown and Lundgren and Pfeister were more effective when they pitched.