Top 50 Sox Seasons: Honorable Mentions and Links

Well, the Top 50 Red Sox seasons are done, culminating some months of work. Thanks again for all the great feedback. Credits go to "Red Sox Century" by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson, which provided many dead-ball era anecdotes, as did the New York Times and Sporting News free archives. Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs, of course, remain indispensable for their ability to sort and disseminate a large array of the statistics on which I based my list.

When I started this whole thing, I began by using the B-R Play Index to determine the Top 20 seasons in about 10 or so categories each for hitters and pitchers -- from batting average to OPS+ to runs created, or ERA to ERA+ to wins for pitchers. That gave me a total of 63 hitting seasons, 58 starting pitching seasons and 28 relief pitching seasons, or 148 in all. I whittled those down to a "final 89," which, as I ranked them, I was able to cut further to 75. I initially was going to write up a Top 75 list, but chose instead (out of laziness or perhaps realization that my time before Opening Day was running out) to write up only the Top 50.

Still, that leaves 75 honorable mentions, which I list below, in chronological order with the other 50. You can tell which are the honorable mentions because they don't have links to their individual posts, like the Top 50 do. Without further ado...

Of course, there are actually more than 75 seasons here, as I cheated and combined some of Williams' similar seasons. Notice some big years with multiple players -- 1939 (Foxx, Grove and Williams), 2000 (Nomar, Lowe and Pedro), 2002 (Lowe, Pedro, Manny and Wakefield) and 2007 (Beckett, Ortiz and Papelbon). Amazing that only once could the Sox even make the playoffs.

1901 -- Cy Young
1903 -- Cy Young
1908 -- Cy Young
1911 -- Joe Wood
1912 -- Tris Speaker
1912 -- Joe Wood
1913 -- Tris Speaker
1914 -- Rube Foster
1914 -- Dutch Leonard
1915 -- Ernie Shore
1916 -- Babe Ruth
1918 -- Babe Ruth
1919 -- Babe Ruth
1935 -- Lefty Grove
1936 -- Lefty Grove
1938 -- Jimmie Foxx
1939 -- Jimmie Foxx
1939 -- Lefty Grove
1939 -- Ted Williams
1940 -- Ted Williams
1941 -- Ted Williams
1942 -- Ted Williams
1944 -- Bobby Doerr
1944 -- Tex Hughson
1944 -- Bob Johnson
1946 -- Ted Williams
1947 -- Ted Williams
1948 -- Ted Williams
1949 -- Ted Williams
1949 -- Mel Parnell
1951 -- Ted Williams
1953 -- Ellis Kinder
1956 -- Ted Williams
1957 -- Ted Williams
1958 -- Ted Williams
1963 -- Dick Radatz
1964 -- Dick Radatz
1967 -- Jim Lonborg
1967 -- Carl Yastrzemski
1969 -- Rico Petrocelli
1970 -- Carl Yastrzemski
1972 -- Carlton Fisk
1972 -- Luis Tiant
1975 -- Fred Lynn
1978 -- Jim Rice
1979 -- Fred Lynn
1979 -- Jim Rice
1980 -- Tom Burgmeier
1981 -- Dwight Evans
1986 -- Wade Boggs
1986 -- Roger Clemens
1987 -- Wade Boggs
1987 -- Roger Clemens
1988 -- Wade Boggs
1990 -- Roger Clemens
1991 -- Roger Clemens
1992 -- Roger Clemens
1994 -- Ken Ryan
1995 -- Tim Wakefield
1996 -- Mo Vaughn
1998 -- Tom Gordon
1998 -- Pedro Martinez
1999 -- Derek Lowe
1999 -- Pedro Martinez
2000 -- Nomar Garciaparra
2000 -- Derek Lowe
2000 -- Pedro Martinez
2002 -- Derek Lowe
2002 -- Pedro Martinez
2002 -- Manny Ramirez
2002 -- Tim Wakefield
2003 -- Pedro Martinez
2004 -- Keith Foulke
2004 -- Manny Ramirez
2004 -- Curt Schilling
2005 -- Mike Timlin
2006 -- David Ortiz
2006 -- Jonathan Papelbon
2007 -- Josh Beckett
2007 -- David Ortiz
2007 -- Jonathan Papelbon

Comments

[tells-yf]

I'm so glad I didn't read any of them.

[LocklandSF]

We're all so glad you put your two cents in.

[tells-yf]

I said that because for the past month or so this site had pretty much become a red sox nation blog. It may have been more interesting if there was a back and forth countdown between the top 50 yankee seasons and top 50 red sox seasons. If there were similar posts for the top 50 yankee seasons, I probably would not have read most of them anyway since I come to this site for the (relatively) intelligent yankee/red sox rooting and bashing.

Anyway, the past hardly means anything now that the season has started... play ball.

[attackgerbil]

tells, I respectfully disagree with about everything you say.

> for the past month or so this site had pretty much become a red sox nation blog

Nah, that's a pile of hooey. What happened was that Paul generated a significant volume of work at a level of quality and pace that left all of the authors with their jaws on the floor.

> may have been more interesting if there was a back and forth countdown between the top 50 yankee seasons and top 50 red sox seasons.

Maybe. I was plenty enough interested to read the Sox vignettes without any care about Yankees companion piece.

> If there were similar posts for the top 50 yankee seasons, I probably would not have read most of them anyway

So this is an argument over nothing.

> Anyway, the past hardly means anything now that the season has started... play ball

History means far more than "hardly anything", but I agree on "play ball".