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Detroit Tigers All Stars: 1970-1979.
Detroit Tiger Tales
This week, I present the Detroit Tigers All Star team for the 1970-1979 decade. All Star teams for previous decades are found below:
1901-1909
1910-1919
1920-1929
1930-1939
1940-1949
1950-1959
1960-1969
Detroit Stars: 1919-1930
In each decade, I select nine position players, one for each position on the field plus one other hitter. This ninth player could be a designated hitter, a multiple position player who didn't fit neatly into one position and/or the best hitter who didn't get selected as a position player. I refer to this final hitter as the utility player. Then I select five pitchers: four starters and one reliever. In earlier decades when relievers were not frequently used, it will just be the fifth best starting pitcher.
Some further general rules are as follows:
A player must have played at least half of his games with the Tigers at a given position or played that position more than any other position. In rare cases, I might cheat a little bit if none of the players qualifying at a given position are any good at all and there is a superior player who played a good number of games at that position.
A player must have played at least two full seasons with the Tigers, preferably at the assigned position.
Only games played with the Tigers are considered.
If a player played other positions with the Tigers besides his assigned position, his hitting performance in those games does count.
Many statistics and sometimes, especially for fielding evaluation, anecdotal information will be considered. For hitters, some of the statistics I consider are:
Games Played (G)
Plate Appearances (PA)
Wins Above Replacement (Baseball-Reference WAR),
Adjusted Batting Runs (ABR)
Adjusted On Base Plus Slugging (OPS+)
The follow are among those I use for evaluating pitchers:
Games (G)
Innings Pitched (IP)
Wins Above Replacement (Baseball-Reference WAR)
Pitching Runs (PR)
Relative ERA (ERA+)
While I first became a fan of baseball and the Tigers in 1968 at the age of five, I became more aware of what was going on during the 1970s and fell in love with the game. So, the decade teams now become part of my experience as well as Tigers history. It was a decade of Big Hair and Plastic Grass (See Dan Epstein), zany characters, the "three-year" designated hitter "experiment" and more expansion. Most importantly it was the decade where the long-lasting management and player union battle finally changed sports forever.
The reserve clause came to a historic end and "Catfish" Hunter signed the first free agent contract after the 1974 season.
For the Tigers, it was a decade of transition. The aging version of the 1968 championship team had winning seasons from 1971-1973 including a playoff appearance. In the strike-shortened 1972 season, they finished 86-70 just a half game ahead of the Boston Red Sox. They ultimately lost to the world champion Oakland Athletics in a close five-game series.
The Tigers then suffered four consecutive losing seasons from 1974-1977 including a hapless 102-loss team in 1975 that suffered nineteen consecutive defeats that summer. They did have some bright spots including the epic comeback of reliever John Hiller, the rag to riches story of outfielder Ron Leflore and the magical 1976 season of Mark Fidrych. The late 1970s saw the emergence of several young stars including Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, Lance Parrish, Jack Morris and Dan Petry which resulted in winning records in 1978 and 1979.
The team WAR leaders were
Mickey Lolich 33
John Hiller 27
Bill Freehan 20
Joe Coleman 16
Ron Leflore 14
The decade All Star team is listed in Tables 1 and 2 below and player profiles follow.
