With this being the 60th anniversary season of the Baltimore Orioles, we decided to take a look at some of the great individual seasons since 1954 in our Greatest Seasons in O’s History series.
Thanks to your votes, here are those chosen for the All-Time Single-Season Team.
Now that we have a team, we can take on the task of constructing a lineup containing these players and their exceptional seasons.
Since the Orioles regularly play with a designated hitter, I will use one for this exercise as well. Based on voting results, Boog Powell’s 1964 left field season received the highest percentage of votes (32%) for a non-winning season among position players so he will be my DH. Paul Blair in 1969 (26%) and Eddie Murray in 1984 (24%) were next in line.
With that decided, here’s how I would fill out a lineup card with the selected seasons to choose from.
- Brady Anderson – 1996
- Roberto Alomar – 1996
- Frank Robinson – 1966
- Chris Davis – 2013
- Cal Ripken Jr. – 1991
- Boog Powell – 1964
- Brooks Robinson – 1964
- Chris Hoiles – 1993
- B.J. Surhoff – 1999
Anderson was a relatively easy choice for my leadoff hitter and Alomar slots in nicely behind him in the second spot. I opted to alternate righties and lefties for three through seven. Frank Robinson was never going to bat lower than fourth, but I’m comfortable with him in the third spot and Davis behind him. Ripken and Powell fell into place after that. Brooks Robinson, Hoiles, and Surhoff give me a solid bottom third.
Thanks to lineupsimulator.com, we can see the projected runs per game for my lineup along with individual run and RBI totals over 162 games. I entered the at-bats, walks, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, stolen bases, and caught stealing totals for each player’s season and here are the results.
Avg Runs Per Game: 7.09
Runs For 162 Games: 1148
| Order | Name | G | RBI | R |
| 1 | Brady Anderson | 162 | 142 | 154 |
| 2 | Roberto Alomar | 162 | 104 | 131 |
| 3 | Frank Robinson | 162 | 161 | 152 |
| 4 | Chris Davis | 162 | 162 | 138 |
| 5 | Cal Ripken Jr | 162 | 124 | 119 |
| 6 | Boog Powell | 162 | 134 | 124 |
| 7 | Brooks Robinson | 162 | 102 | 109 |
| 8 | Chris Hoiles | 162 | 115 | 113 |
| 9 | B.J. Surhoff | 162 | 101 | 104 |
Obviously, there are several factors that go into the simulation (you can read more about how it works here), and it’s purely hypothetical, but experimenting with different combinations to see the numbers it generates is fun for imagination purposes.
Baseball Musings also has a lineup analysis tool available. Their version requires you to enter the on-base and slugging percentage for each player and then generates the optimal lineup. You can run the tool based on two different models (1989-2002 and 1959-2004), which weigh offensive production in the two eras separately.
