As far as Major League Baseball history, what was it that set the 1990s apart? You mean, besides the start of two different dynasties? Adding four new teams? How about a season without a World Series? Or how Cal Ripken Jr. surpassing Lou Gehrig's record helped bring the game back from that low point, a comeback for the sport sealed by the 1998 season, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa raced to surpass Roger Maris' single-season home-run record?
With that much going on, we turned to three of our baseball experts -- David Schoenfield, Sam Miller and Bradford Doolittle -- for their evaluation of who was overrated, who measured up and which ballclub owned the '90s.
Coolest player of decade
David Schoenfield: Sorry, Barry, it's Ken Griffey Jr. and you're not.
Sam Miller: I'll take a different Ken -- Kenny Lofton, the premier speed player of the decade. Imagine a highlight of Griffey smoothly chasing down a fly ball in deep center field; now play it at 1.5x speed and you have Lofton. Imagine the highlight of Griffey planting his foot in the outfield wall to make a homer-saving catch; now raise that fly ball by another foot and you have Lofton doing the same. He led the league in steals five years in a row -- he looked as if he were moving fast in every baseball card photo -- and had .400 OBPs at the top of the era's best lineups. He was also close to a two-sport player in our minds, since he had been the starting point guard for top-seeded Arizona in the 1989 NCAA tournament.
Bradford Doolittle: Bonds was easily the best player of the 1990s. It's not really close. But cool? Even then, his reputation was that of the prototypical (and stereotypical) rich, detached, self-centered athlete. After all, wasn't that the germ behind the idea of the not-good 1996 film The Fan? So the answer is probably Griffey, but I knew Dave would jump on that. So I'll go with Greg Maddux. Those "chicks did the long ball" commercials, where Maddux and Tom Glavine weren't supposed to be cool? It worked because they actually were cool.
Want more 1990s baseball? Watch ESPN's new 30 for 30 film "Long Gone Summer," the story of the 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, airing Sunday, June 14 on ESPN
Most overrated player of the decade
Schoenfield: Dante Bichette hit .300 every year for the Rockies from 1993 to 1998. He hit as many as 40 home runs, and from '95 to '99 he averaged 128 RBIs per season. He made four All-Star teams and nearly won the 1995 MVP Award -- when he is credited with 1.2 WAR. His total WAR from '95 to '99 looks like a misprint: 0.8! But he was a terrible outfielder and his numbers aren't even that spectacular when compared to other Rockies hitters of the era. As Rockies fan Dan tells me, "I'm on record as saying this many times, I LOATHE Bichette's Rockies career (except for his amazing walk-up music). He's the guy who ruined Coors Field for everyone else, and the worst defensive outfielder I've ever seen."
Miller: Juan Gonzalez won two MVP awards. He finished in the top 10 in WAR once -- seventh, and not even in either year of victory. He was a run-producer when producing runs was still often seen as a one-man act, and before we had easy access to park-adjusted metrics. His negative defensive value wasn't measured, and his high batting average was on scoreboards and baseball cards while his so-so OBP wasn't. He was a very good ballplayer, terrifying and strong. But that 1996 MVP race -- he narrowly beat 20-year-old Alex Rodriguez, a great defensive shortstop with better offensive numbers -- is wild.
Doolittle: Cecil Fielder finished 11th in MVP points during the '90s, right between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. In reality, he wasn't one of the best 100 players during the decade. He was great in that 51-homer year, his first after returning to the majors from Japan. He was decent his second year. After that, it was mostly empty stat lines with catchy counting numbers, but in reality, he was producing runs at a rate well under what was expected of AL first basemen of the time.
Underrated player of the decade
Schoenfield: I was going to go with Lofton, but Sam just wrote about him and he did make six straight All-Star teams, so he wasn't exactly ignored. How about Kevin Appier? He ranks sixth in the decade in pitching WAR -- ahead of Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina or John Smoltz, and if you think that is silly, well, check out their ERAs for the decade: Glavine 3.21, Smoltz 3.32, Appier 3.47, Mussina 3.50. And unlike Glavine or Smoltz, Appier spent the entire decade in the higher-scoring American League; his adjusted ERA is better than both Braves pitchers. But because he played for mediocre and then lousy Royals teams, he went 120-90 while Glavine went 164-87 and Smoltz 143-95. Yet Appier made only one All-Star team and received Cy Young votes in only one season.
Miller: Tony Phillips is the best player ever by career WAR to never make an All-Star Game. He scored more runs in the 1990s than Albert Belle, Larry Walker, Edgar Martinez and Barry Larkin, 150 more than Mark McGwire -- the eighth most in all of baseball, in fact. He reached base more often than Griffey, Gary Sheffield, Tony Gwynn -- also the eighth most in all of baseball. He did it while playing seven positions -- at least 25 games at every position except catcher and pitcher -- as the ultimate super-utility player. And, when the decade began, he was already 30 years old. He produced more WAR in the 1990s than Juan Gonzalez, and was so much as mentioned on an MVP ballot only once, when he finished 16th in 1993.
Doolittle: I'd rate Chuck Knoblauch as one of the 25 best position players or so of the decade. He won Rookie of the Year honors, made four All-Star teams and earned mention on a few MVP ballots here and there, so it's not like nobody noticed. Still, he didn't rank in the top 100 by MVP points for the decade, so a lot of voters were missing on him. From 1995 to 1997, he had WAR totals of 6.7, 8.7 and 6.8. From his rookie season (1991) through the rest of the decade, Knoblauch had a .388 OBP, ranked sixth in stolen bases and only Craig Biggio scored more runs. His career took some odd turns with his throwing problems and ended early and abruptly. But he was a legitimately elite player during the '90s.
Team that owned the decade
Schoenfield: Is it fair to look back at the Braves winning only one World Series as a failure? That feels like a harsh judgment, especially when the line between winning and losing is so slim. If only Lonnie Smith hadn't lost sight of the ball in 1991's Game 7. The Braves went 1-4 in World Series, but I suspect it's the three losses in the NLCS that still sting even more. To the Phillies in 1993, after winning 104 games and a grueling NL West race over the Giants. To the Marlins in 1997. To the Padres -- the Padres! -- in 1998, after winning 106 games with their best team of the decade.
Miller: The Yankees are a great answer, an unimpeachable one. But the Braves won 52 postseason games to the Yankees' 37; they won 74 more regular-season games than the Yankees did (and 102 more than No. 3 Cleveland); and they had four of the top eight single-season win totals in the decade -- the other four split among four different clubs. They had the most division titles in the decade and (thus far) the most Hall of Fame caps from the decade. I think they'd trade it all for the Yankees' decade, but the Braves owned the decade in a slightly different way and are a fine pick.
Doolittle: I'd go with the Yankees if the Braves hadn't gotten that one World Series crown in 1995, but they did, so Atlanta is my pick. The Braves had the majors' best overall winning percentage in the 1990s, even though they finished in last place the first season of the decade. They made the playoffs eight times, and it would have been nine if not for the 1994 strike. They won five pennants. World Series losses aside, that is sheer dominance.
Team that would most like to forget the decade
Schoenfield: Not including the expansion teams, the Tigers had the worst record of the decade. After 11 consecutive winning seasons from 1978 to 1988, the team suddenly got old in 1989 and fell apart with 103 losses. With an abysmal farm system, it turned into a decade of futility, including a 109-loss season in 1996. That team gave up a mind-numbing total of 1,103 runs. The staff ERA was 6.38. Only one other team in the decade gave up 1,000 runs (the 1999 Rockies) and they gave up 146 more runs than any non-Rockies team in the decade. How did they get into this mess? Well, hiring former Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler as team president in 1990 didn't help. Midway through his third season, team owner Tom Monaghan fired him via fax.
Miller: This was when the no-parity era (1993-2012ish) began, and a handful of teams that sunk into last place couldn't get out of there for more than a decade. The Pirates weren't the losingest team by a mile -- those would be the Tigers, Twins and Royals, all funnelled into the same AL Central by 1994 -- but they're the team I most associate with the 1990s' competitive collapse. After three consecutive division titles in 1990-92, they lost stars Barry Bonds and Doug Drabek to free agency, tumbled into fifth place, and didn't have another winning season that decade -- or the next.
Doolittle: When the Royals reemerged as a contender last decade, the narrative was that they had broken three decades' worth of misery. However, there were some pretty good teams between the 1985 champs, through George Brett's last season in 1993, and into 1994, when K.C. was in prime position to make a run at a playoff spot. The strike killed those chances and the franchise plummeted after the labor stoppage. It was the '90s when Brett retired and when the misery on the field truly began.
If I could only own one '90s baseball card it would be ...
Schoenfield: I was not collecting cards by this decade so am not too familiar with the best and hottest of the decade, but I don't think you can go wrong with this Mariano Rivera rookie card.
Miller: The 1990 Frank Thomas Topps card, where he's wearing his Auburn uniform, and he's down on one knee applying a tag to a baserunner who, standing up, is barely taller than he is. His right thigh looks like a 50-kilo sack of flour. I was a 65-pound fifth-grader and I used to stare at that card trying to imagine what it would be like to be big.
Doolittle: Like Dave, I was out of the card collecting hobby by the dawn of the '90s. I resumed picking up cards here and there about 10 years ago but even so, I mostly just look to fill in my sets between 1968 and 1989. (My uncle passed down his old sets when I was a kid, which is why my collection goes back so far.) I have no mental image of a single baseball card from the 1990s. But I can say my favorite player during that decade -- albeit for one season -- was Bob Hamelin. So I'll go with his rookie card, which I now know has that nifty all-rookie Topps trophy logo.
Best trade/worst trade
Schoenfield: So, so many bad trades in this decade. I mean, Pedro Martinez was traded -- twice! Keeping on the Kenny Lofton theme, Cleveland stole him from Houston for Ed Taubensee and Willie Blair. But any list of worst trades of all time features Jeff Bagwell for reliever Larry Andersen (who pitched one month for the Red Sox). Man, imagine Lofton hitting in front of Craig Biggio and Bagwell in those Astros lineups.
Miller: Tempted to pick, as a bunch, the Marlins' fire sale after the 1997 World Series, but that's a whole separate category (and did yield a few good players). Instead, I'll go with the Mariners trading Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe for Heathcliff Slocumb, a lapsed closer with a 5.79 ERA at the time. That's how we describe it now, anyway.
At the time, Slocumb was fairly famous, Varitek and Lowe had both seen their prospect stock drop, and the Mariners' bullpen needed help. It was the sort of trade that happens every summer and, in most cases, doesn't come back to bite anybody. Heck, Red Sox GM Dan Duquette reportedly hesitated and initially rejected the offer. (On the other hand, urban legend has it that Duquette asked for Lowe or Varitek, and Mariners GM Woody Woodward misheard and agreed to both, so who really knows.) That trade arguably led more than any other transaction to the Red Sox finally winning a World Series.
Doolittle: In 1987, the Royals traded David Cone to the Mets for catcher Ed Hearn, along with a couple of pitchers. I'm pretty sure Hearn was the primary target. He was out of the majors after 1988 with a whopping 39 plate appearances on his Royals résumé. (To be fair, Hearn hurt his shoulder.) What really stung was that Cone was a third-round draft pick in 1981 out of Rockhurst High School in Kansas City and had worked his way through the Royals' system. He had made only 11 relief appearances for the Royals when this trade happened.
What's that you're saying? That happened in the '80s? Right. After years of regret, the Royals then went out and signed Cone back on a fat free-agent deal before the 1993 season. In 1994, Cone won the AL Cy Young. The prodigal son returns in grand style! Then, after the strike was settled, the Royals traded Cone again -- this time to the Blue Jays for infielder Chris Stynes and a couple of throw-ins. Stynes had a decent big league career, but not in K.C., where he was minus-0.6 WAR over two seasons. Incidentally, the Blue Jays then dealt Cone to the Yankees at the 1995 deadline for Mike Gordon, Jason Jarvis and Marty Janzen, a deal that netted minus-0.5 future WAR for the Blue Jays.