SF Giants all-time starting lineup by WAR

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While most of the attention is currently on where the San Francisco Giants sit in the standings and whether or not they will be able to get into the 2023 playoffs, it is fun to look back at years past and appreciate just how good some of the all-time great Giants were.

At a basic level, it is easy to remember the greatness of guys like McCovey and Mays and it is still fun to get people mad online at the mere mention of Barry Bonds' career. However, another way of looking at it is by going position by position and figuring out who are the best Giants players of all-time at each position and dreaming about what that lineup would look like.

Here's the SF Giants' all-time starting lineup by WAR

The problem with this sort of exercise is that it can be very subjective. Some people will look at a guy's best season and decide that is who they want at a given position. Others will hand wave at numbers and just go by their gut/preference. As always, there are those that just have their favorite players even if they weren't actually particularly good and want to slot them in.

All of those methods are fun, but this list is going to be strictly by total WAR accumulated at each position in a Giants uniform to remove as much subjectivity as possible. To be eligible, a player had to play at least 50% of their games with the Giants at the chosen position. There are a few different WAR measurements out there, but Baseball-Reference's formula gets the nod here solely because their database for researching this sort of thing is really easy to use. All of the metrics have their own pluses and minuses.

Anyways, let's get into the Giants' all-time starting lineup by WAR.

Catcher - Buster Posey: 44.8 WAR

To the surprise of exactly no one, Buster Posey get the nod here with 44.8 rWAR in over 5,600 plate appearances with the Giants from 2009 to 2021. Posey was the best catcher in all of baseball for a big chunk of his career and won Rookie of the Year and a MVP trophy to go along with his seven All-Star Game appearances to prove it. Putting up a .302/.372/.460 line for his career as a catcher is still completely absurd especially given how good he was in the field as well.

A pair of early Giants catchers fill out the rest of the podium. Second place went to Buck Ewing with 33.2 rWAR who played for the Giants from 1883 to 1892. Taking home bronze was Roger Bresnahan for his 28.1 rWAR from 1902 to 1908.

First Base - Willie McCovey: 59.4 WAR

First base was closer than expected, but Willie McCovey still took it home with 59.4 rWAR from 1959 to 1980. McCovey is one of those Giants' Mount Rushmore guys as he, too, won a ROY and MVP title with San Francisco. His peak in the late 1960's was a sight to behold and his career .274/.377/.524 line with 469 homers with the Giants was enough to get the starting first base spot and helped him get elected to the Hall of Fame in 1986.

Surprisingly, Bill Terry was pretty close to McCovey in second place with 56.5 rWAR for his work from 1923-1936 where he posted an .899 OPS with the Giants. Roger Connor put up a good showing as well as his 53.0 rWAR placed him third as the Giants' first baseman from 1883 to 1894.

Second Base - Larry Doyle: 42.7 WAR

The Giants had another somewhat tight battle at second base as well, but Larry Doyle won out for his 42.7 rWAR from 1907-1920. Despite the fact that Doyle had 6,812 plate appearances with the Giants, Doyle only managed to hit 67 home runs. As it turns out, playing that much with a career .292/.359/.411 while stealing 291 bags adds up. He also walked more than 200 times more than he struck out in his career which is pretty neat.

The silver went to Frankie Frisch and his 38.1 rWAR from 1919 to 1926. Frisch's WAR pace was much better than Doyle's, but he went on to play the second half of his Hall of Fame career with St. Louis and his numbers there don't count here. Robby Thompson comes in third just edging out Jeff Kent's 31.6 rWAR with 33.8 rWAR from 1986 to 1996.

Shortstop - George Davis: 44.6 WAR

It was somewhat surprising to see Brandon Crawford outside the top 3 at shortstop, but George Davis took home a very tight race for the top spot with his 44.6 rWAR from 1893 to 1903. His .860 OPS in over 4,800 plate appearances is pretty impressive when you consider he only hit 53 homers. Stealing 357 bases and putting up a .332 batting average helped the cause there.

In second place, Travis Jackson just missed out on the starting shortstop spot with 44.2 rWAR for his work from 1922-1936. His 6,682 plate appearances with the Giants remains the most of any Giants shortstop by a significant margin over Crawford. Art Fletcher comes in third with 42.3 rWAR from 1909 to 1920.

Third Base - Matt Williams: 34.1 WAR

With just a 0.1 rWAR margin, Matt Williams won the Giants' starting third baseman spot here with 34.1 rWAR from 1987 to 1996. Williams obviously would have had a much more comfortable margin if the baseball strike hadn't happened and he did put up some real numbers for Arizona later in his career as well.

Just behind Williams is Art Devlin who played for the Giants from 1904 to 1911 at 34.0 rWAR. Comparing Williams to a guy with 10 home runs in a Giants uniform is pretty funny, but Devlin did steal 266 bases and Baseball-Reference liked him defensively. The bronze goes to Jim Ray Hart with his 25.1 rWAR from 1963 to 1973. For those wondering, Pablo Sandoval's 20.8 rWAR came in seventh.

Left Field - Barry Bonds: 112.5 WAR

This one is no surprise and was not even remotely close as Barry Bonds' staggering 112.5 rWAR with the Giants more than tripled the second place finisher. All of the PED speculation and controversy aside, what Bonds did on the baseball field is the stuff of legends. He broke records that are very unlikely to ever be broken and his 1.143 OPS during his time with the Giants is just absurd. Just put him in Cooperstown already.

The poor soul in second place for left field is George Burns whose 36.4 rWAR from 1911 to 1921 is dwarfed by Bonds. There is another pretty substantial drop-off to third place with Kevin Mitchell's 19.2 rWAR from 1987 to 1991.

Center Field - Willie Mays: 154.6 WAR

Yet another no-brainer here in center field as Willie Mays absolutely crushed the competition with 154.6 rWAR in over 12,000 plate appearances with the Giants. Mays could and did do it all. He hit 646 homers with the Giants to go along with 336 stolen bases, 3187 hits, a ROY and 2 MVP awards, and a mind-blowing 19 straight All-Star appearances. One of the absolute best to ever do it, period. If you are making a Mount Rushmore for all of baseball, Willie is most assuredly on it.

In second place, the man who made baseball history with "the shot heard 'round the world", Bobby Thomson, gets the nod with 26.4 rWAR with the Giants from 1946 to 1957. Third place goes to George Van Haltren who put up 25.0 rWAR from 1894-1903.

Right Field - Mel Ott: 110.9 WAR

Yet another all-time great graces the Giants' all-time lineup in right field as Mel Ott easily won the starting job with 110.9 rWAR from 1926-1947. His line with the Giants over 11,000+ plate appearances was .304/.414/.533 with 511 homers. Ott's greatest gets lost because of how many absolute studs played in his era, but he finished in the top 10 of MVP voting six times and made 12 All-Star teams.

Mike Tiernan is who got crushed by Ott and pushed to second place with 42.3 rWAR from 1887-1899. Another Bonds gets a mention here as third place went to Barry's dad, Bobby Bonds who put up 38.1 rWAR from 1968-1974 along with some crazy high strikeout numbers especially for his era.

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