Team of the 1970s

Here is the Team of the Decade.

Sort of.

If the winner at a certain position is in no doubt, I've included only his name. Usually this is because he had at least five more WAR than the next best. If, however, there is room for argument I have included the players who are bunched together at the top of the list. Also important to remember is that this is only WAR accumulated in the 1970s. Finally, many of these players got innings at positions other than the position for which they are listed here - I had to make determinations for these guys and I went with listing them where they had the most innings during the 70s. They'll be more notes for pitchers, but I'll leave those for further down.

Catcher

Nick McCarty (37.02 WAR)

Brad Sweet (38.38 WAR)

Alex Salcido (39.2 WAR)

First Base

Travis Pinkard (41.86 WAR)

Second Base

Scott Blohm (55.13 WAR)

Third Base

Jessie Weisberg (67.41 WAR - the most of any player in the 1970s)

Shortstop

Chris Seubert (55.26 WAR)

Left Field

Alex Searcy (49.02 WAR)

Center Field

J.D. Johnson (61.25 WAR)

Benito Salgado (58.05 WAR)

Right Field

Zachary Cannefax (37.20 WAR)

Chad Pace (35 WAR)

Designated Hitter

James King (43.28 WAR)

Starting Pitchers

Matt Myer (67.69 WAR)

Joe Coggins (66.37 WAR)

Larry Abramowski (60.68 WAR)

Dave Anderson (60.31 WAR)

Those four are the clear cut winners for Starting Pitcher. However, a team typically carries five starters. But the 5th spot is up for debate...

Nick Hymer (49.22 WAR)

Cody Strunk (47.80 WAR)

Frank Nava (47.54 WAR)

For Relief Pitchers, it's tough to separate purely by WAR, since they are lumped in with starters for that stat. So we (Thanks Ryan!) looked at Reliever of the Year award winners from the 70s. There are two clear leaders:

Carter Moomey (32.64 WAR)

David Teter (33.87 WAR)

After that, it's a lot more difficult, but Ryan and I settled on Evan Richards (15.61 WAR) as he was the only other repeat Reliever of the Year award winner and, of the pitchers in his WAR range, he didn't start any games (which some relief pitchers did).