An idea occurred to me to research former players who compiled year in and year out impressive offense while remaining in relative anonymity, so to speak, and who, by most accounts, are largely forgotten today, with a few exceptions. So I filtered, with the help of Fangraphs, those players who played from 1960 to 2023 with between 5,000 and 5,999 plate appearances and a career Weighted On Base Average, (wOBA) of .350 or higher.

wOBA is perhaps the most-effective way to measure a player’s ability to generate runs. According to Fangraphs: “Weighted On-Base Average combines all the different aspects of hitting into one metric, weighting each of them in proportion to their actual run value.”

The list is surprisingly small and contains names that will surprise. From that list, I selected eight position players as my “5,000 to 5,999 Plate Appearance MLB All-Time Team: 1960-2023.”

It’s a long podcast title, and, for clarification , the cutoff point is 5,999 plate appearances. I say that because I mention “5,000 to 6,000” plate appearances a few times in the podcast. Rather than re-record the entire episode, I include this disclaimer here.

Thank you for listening.

Music: “Field Grass” Sergei Pavkin

email: bcpodcastbaseball@gmail.com

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