If we considered David Ortiz a first basemen, he’d easily win today’s category. However, Big Papi played over 10 games at the position only twice for Boston. I’m counting him as a career DH, which makes today’s choice much tougher…1
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Mitch Moreland 2017
Tony Perez 1980
Mike Napoli 2013
Cecil Cooper 1975
Carlos Quintana 1991
Justin Turner 2023
Mitch Moreland is not related to Keith Moreland, which would have made him 12-15 percent cooler. Both he and Napoli, the first basemen on recent Red Sox champions, are cut from similar cloth: Midrange first basemen with power, came to Boston as free agents after accomplishing bigger things in Texas. Napoli was the better of the two and posted a better year in his championship season (.259-.360-.482 versus .245-.325-.433). Perez hit 25 homers and drove in 105 runs in 1980, exceeding 20 homers for the first time since 1975 with the Big Red Machine. But he slumped in the strike year, then left town. Cooper wasn't the player he would become in Milwaukee, but .311-.355-.544 in a pennant season is all you can ask of a platoon first baseman/DH. Quintana hit .295 with a .375 OBP and drove in 71 runs, but at 11 homers and .412 slugging, lacked the power you'd want at an infield corner. Turner gave the Red Sox one good year, more at DH than first, with 23 homers, 96 RBI, and an .800 OPS before moving to his third team in three years.
I'll be honest: I have no idea how to sort out Boston's Casas-Dalbec-Turner-Chavis-Cordero-Dominic Smith (wait, seriously? Dom Smith?) muddle of the last few years. It seems to me the lack of a big-time first baseman has been a primary reason for the franchise struggling in two out of three seasons since 2018. Nevertheless, with Dalbec and Casas both hurt, I'll need to post this article long before the team will get this sorted out. So we'll go with Casas, whose '23 season looked promising: .263-.367-.490 with 24 home runs. The OBP gives him the edge over Dalbec, who stalled out at .298, even in his 25-homer 2021 season. Casas is a left-handed hitter from Miami, Dalbec a right-handed hitter from Seattle. That's either a platoon or a sitcom waiting to happen.
Originally reached the big leagues with Boston before going to the Marlins in a trade involving Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell; basically, they traded him for the 2007 championship, then re-signed him after he'd become a star. Ramirez only played well one year out of four in Boston; I'm surprised he did even that well, as I mainly remember his tenure as a disappointment. Still, his .866 OPS with 30 homers and 111 RBI in 2016 were the best performance the Sox have seen from that corner of the infield in a decade. In 2017 he slumped, but also went 8-for-14 in the Division Series after a more pedestrian 3-for-12 in '16. Went on to Cleveland and then retirement after one more partial season.
Dang it, I already made all the nickname jokes in his Pittsburgh comment. I'd need some deep-cut knowledge of the movie to do better, and I've never actually seen Doctor Strangelove. Can I interest you in a breakdown of Anson Mount's performance as Black Bolt in Multiverse of Madness? No? Okay, well the basic deal with Stuart is the same here as with the Pirates, only more so: 42 homers and a league-leading 118 RBI in pitcher-dominated 1963 isn't nothing. But he also led the league in grounding into double plays, and he wasn't done leading the way in errors, either. More of the same at bat and in the field in '64, but he cut the GIDP more than in half, 24 down to 11. You take good news where you can find it...
Esasky played a limited role in Red Sox history, having spent one one season with the team. Boston plays a somewhat larger role in Esasky's career, as the place where he broke through with his career season after multiple useful but unspectacular partial years in Cincinnati, leading to a big-for-the-era contract with Atlanta (which didn't go so well, but that's another story). An .855 OPS with 30 homers and 108 RBI was a legitimately big-time performance, at least to a kid at the height of his baseball fandom in ‘89. The Sox got one good year each out of Esasky and Rob Murphy, but they were acquired for Jeff Sellers, who never played for his new team, and Todd Benzinger, whose teams were probably better off when he didn't play, resulting in a solid deal for the Sox.
This is completely idiosyncratic on my part, as I'm a Mets fan living in New England, but I was never able to stop referring to former Mets DH Daniel Vogelbach as "Brian Daubach." Lefty hitters playing first and DH, the players had superficial things in common besides the last syllable of their names, but not THAT many. Vogelbach was an on-base guy who didn't show as much power in New York as one might have hoped; Daubach hit 20-plus homers four years in a row, but topped out at 53 walks. Daubach finished his career with 25 at-bats as a Met, so I guess they got mixed up in my mind somehow. Daubach also hit two playoff homers with the Sox, to drag this comment back on course.
We know the obvious thing for which Buckner's tenure in Boston is remembered, and if you wanted to assign that thing Negative Times Infinity value and knock him down to Honorable Mentions, that is your subjective call. But he did hit 85 doubles between '85 and '86 with the Red Sox, driving in 212 runs, so there are good things to say about his tenure. On the other hand, in just under four years in Boston (plus 43 at-bats at the end of his career), he never posted an OBP better than .325. If Buckner had generated his mid-80's numbers while with the Dodgers in the 70's, he might have been a big star; the analytics would have disagreed, but not many cared then, and maybe the butterfly would have flapped its wings and rewritten the greatest World Series of the 80's...
Just over a year and a half in Boston, but it featured one of the best years by a slugger who produced many tremendous years: .338-.410-.548, 45 doubles, 117 RBI, 108 runs, 27 homers, and a league-leading 213 hits. Those are some Al Oliver 1982 numbers, or Freddie Freeman numbers for those of you not old enough to remember Noah's Ark. Gonzalez was born in San Diego and originally starred there; the closest thing the Red Sox have had to a star player who was born within the city of Boston was relief pitcher Manny Delcarmen. Traded to the Dodgers in 2012 along with Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford, Nick Punto, and the ghost of Sam Adams.
An oddball player historically, played all over the infield but primarily at first base, where he lacked the power we associate with the position. Runnels compensated with a couple of batting titles, the second of which (.326 in '62) falls within our purview. The Red Sox gave up Albie Pearson to get him, a pretty good player, but after a certain level of success it doesn't matter if you gave up too much to get him; in Boston this is known as the Derrick White-Jrue Holiday Rule. Born in Lufkin, Texas, Runnels sports the third-highest batting average of any Texan with 1,000 plate appearances since 1961, behind Curt Flood and the aforementioned Cecil Cooper.
The Greek God of Walks, which according to Wikipedia comes from the Moneyball book, is probably the greatest baseball nickname of my lifetime, one of the rare modern ones that stands with such fanciful earlier entries as The Splendid Splinter and The Commerce Comet. Although I guess Stuart might have something to say about that, or Stan the Man Usual, Don Stanhouse. The bases on balls made Youkilis a better player than Millar, his higher-ranked predecessor, at his height in 2008-09, but you know how it is: It's not the second World Series win in nine decades that goes down in history. Hit .222 in the World Series (with, of course, three walks) and only .182 in Division Series, but dominated the two ALCS in which he played: 24-for-58 (.414) with five homers. Olympian? Sure, why not?
Burst onto the scene with 27 homers and 90 RBI (along with 152 strikeouts) in 1966, and followed up with his best Boston year in the pennant season: .303-.373-.465, the highest OBP of his long career, although the power numbers (19 homers, 82 RBI) were pedestrian by his later standard. Dealt to Milwaukee in a big trade that didn't work out too well for Boston, Scott enjoyed the best years of his career as covered in our the Brewers article, then got dealt back in exchange for Cooper. This second go-'round lends Scott's Boston career the numerical weight to be one of the team's top options, instead of a historical note from the 60's, classic Star Trek rather than Lost in Space. Scott was only good in the first year of his return, with 33 homers in 1977. After that, he declined fast, his place on the timeline secure.
Can I interest you in a rant about how the 2004 Red Sox dubbing themselves Idiots played into a troublesome strain of anti-intellectualism that has led our culture to the brink of disaster, and if the team had instead embraced the analytical strength of its league-high .360 OBP and referred to itself as Professors or something, we'd be in a far superior timeline with, like, flying cars and less horrifying presidential debates? You're not buying? Well, it was worth a shot. Millar was better in his Marlins stint, but his 2003-04 version still compiled 110 extra-base hits in two years. He also walked five times in the 2004 ALCS for a .379 OBP, not that we're admitting him to the Pantheon...
In my opinion, the best Connecticut-born player in the Expansion Era, although Astros fans could argue for George Springer. Vaughn's 1991 rookie running mate Phil Plantier has an argument for the best player born in New Hampshire, and of course team legend Carlton Fisk wins the Vermont category. Red Sox reliever Bob Stanley is a top choice from Maine, so if we pick Bagwell instead of Glavine from MA and give credit for that controversial trade, only Rhode Island's Paul Konerko stands as a traitor to the region, starring from a New England state but with no connection to the Red Sox. More importantly, Vaughn was a heck of a hitter, with 158 homers between '95 and '98. He seemed to explode out of his stance, unfolding from a semi-crouch impossibly fast to focus considerable power on the unfortunate baseball.
Returning to a theme, Vaughn also took as many as 95 walks, boasting a .420 OBP in back-to-back seasons. The team has had an eventful run at first base, but he enjoyed easily Boston’s top career at the position.
On Sunday: Orioles first basemen.
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