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Our All-Time Top 50 Oakland Athletics are now up

Our All-Time Top 50 Oakland Athletics are now up
26 Apr
2020
Not in Hall of Fame

Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we here at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the 50 of each major North American sports team.  We have a new one to unveil today, that of the Oakland Athletics. 

The Athletics were a charter member of the American League in 1901 when they were located in Philadelphia. While they played on the East Coast, they were owned and ran by Connie Mack, who had his share of success and failures.  When they were good, they boasted Hall of Fame players like Lefty Grove, Chief Bender and Jimmie Foxx, and they won five World Series Championships (1910, 1911, 1913, 1929 & 1930) in their first half of existence.

While they had five more World Series Titles then their National League rivals, the Phillies, they struggled financially, and they relocated to Kansas City.  They were there for 13 unremarkable years, and they then went all the way to West, to Oakland.  

With players like Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers and Catfish Hunter, they rattled off three consecutive World Series wins (1972-74).  Ownership let their stars go, but by the late 80s, they were back with Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Dennis Eckersley and Dave Stewart, and they won three American League Pennants (1988-90), winning the one in the middle.  

At present, Oakland follows a Moneyball strategy, and though that tenth World Series has been elusive, they have shown competitiveness despite a low payroll.

As for all of our top 50 players in baseball we look at the following: 

1.  Advanced Statistics.

2.  Traditional statistics and how they finished in the American League.

3.  Playoff accomplishments.

4.  Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles not reflected in a stat sheet.

Remember, this is ONLY based on what a player does on that particular team and not what he accomplished elsewhere and also note that we have placed an increased importance on the first two categories.

This list is updated up until the end of the 2018-19 Season.

The complete list can be found here, but as always we announce our top five in this article.  They are:

1. Lefty Grove

 

2. Rickey Henderson

 

3. Jimmie Foxx

 

4. Eddie Plank

 

5. Al Simmons

We will continue our adjustments on our existing lists and will continue developing our new lists.  

Look for our All-Time Top 50 Seattle Mariners coming next!

As always we thank you for your support.

Last modified on Monday, 27 April 2020 23:32
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Committee Chairman

Kirk Buchner, "The Committee Chairman", is the owner and operator of the site.  Kirk can be contacted at [email protected] . Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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