Buster Olney, who I read with regularity, just did this piece on the top 10 outfields of all time (sorry, need insider access to view the article). Baseball news is slow right now, so perfect time for a series of top 10 lists. Anyway, he (sort of) puts the '22 Tigers at #4 overall. My only problem with that is dead-ball era stats have to be taken with a giant grain of salt, and the vestiges of the dead ball era were still lingering in 1922 (Olney's list of top 10 rotations includes 2 dead-ball era teams, which is just cherry picking).
Anyway, I was slightly surprised none of the Al Kaline outfields even got an honorable mention. You could go with 1968, even though Kaline was injured and only had 327 at bats (he included the 1994 Expos, which was a strike shortened season of 114 games).
Horton had his best season, Kaline was good in only 102 games, and Northrup was also pretty good. The OPS+ compares well with others that made Olney's top 10 : the '94 Expos (ranked 10th) had OPS+ of 153, 151 and 99, the '02 Braves (8th on the list) had OPS+ of 153, 138 and 127, and the '75 Red Sox (7th) had OPS+ of 162, 128 and 120.
The 1969 Tigers outfield was pretty good (combined for 74 homers), but deserves to be left off Olney's list. The '62 Tigers were probably good enough, however.
Combined for 82 homers, decent other numbers... It was pretty obvious Olney was staying away from anything tainted by steroids (although Albert Belle made it in there). He avoided any of the early-'90's A's outfields. I'd have gone with 1990 myself. Rickey had 28 HR, batted .325, had 65 steals and an OPS+ of 189, Canseco had 37 HR and an OPS+ of 159, and Dave Henderson (always underestimated) had 20 HR, and an OPS+ of 126.
I supposed there are a multitude of deserving outfields that were passed over, but I thought I'd mention a couple of good Al Kaline outfields.
Pistons won last night in grand fashion (Red Wings lost, no signs of that stopping either), and Drummond continues to make his case for the starting lineup. The only thing that SHOULD be limiting his minutes is his FT%, which is in the basement. Other than that, the kid has earned his spot. Frank has been S L O W L Y ramping up Drummond's minutes, from 17.3 per game in November to 22.1 in December to 24 last night. I've already said I'd like to see him getting at least 30 at this point. We'll see.
The win puts the Pistons' record at 16-25, 4 games behind Boston for the 8th spot in the playoffs. So at the half-way point there's an outside shot at the playoffs. Which is where I more or less thought they'd be before the season started, but then the season started (0-8, ugh). Anyway, here's the obligatory Drummond highlight from last night:
And Rodney Stuckey justified his existence for once, courtesy of Will Bynum):
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