The All-Time Jacksonville Team: Pick your ace
When Jacksonville faced off against Akron in the “Legends Begin at Home” virtual MLB The Show simulation featuring each club’s all-time best alumni, all but one player on the Jumbo Shrimp’s roster came from the club’s modern era (1962-present), with Henry Aaron understandably being that exception. But what if we included players dating back to the 1904 Jacksonville Jays, which jumpstarted professional baseball in Northeast Florida? How much, if it all, would the roster change in picking the best possible lineup of players who suited up for Jacksonville on their big league journey?
Legends Begin at Home selection: Randy Johnson
Our options: Randy Johnson (103.5 bWAR/110.4 fWAR), Tom Seaver (106.0 bWAR/92.4 fWAR), Nolan Ryan (83.6 bWAR/106.7 fWAR), Clayton Kershaw (65.3 bWAR/64.5fWAR) and Phil Niekro (97.0 bWAR/78.1 fWAR)
Tom Seaver or The Big Unit? Nolan Ryan, Phil Niekro or Clayton Kershaw? No position is as synonymous with Jacksonville’s illustrious baseball history as the congo line of aces who have toed the rubber at Dixieland Park, Barrs Field (later Durkee Field and now J.P. Small Park), Wolfson Park and 121 Financial Ballpark. No matter what, whenever Kershaw is one day enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Jacksonville can boast a five-man rotation in which each member does not just own a plaque in Cooperstown, but can also count themselves as one of the most elite members of baseball’s most illustrious club.
This starting rotation, no matter how it was constructed, would be balanced. There would be two left-handers (Johnson and Kershaw) and three pitchers known for their fierce velocity (Johnson, Seaver and Ryan) mixed in with Niekro, who was a knuckleballer. Perhaps if there was one quibble, it would be the potential for control issues; Ryan has issued the most walks in major league history, with Niekro ranking third, Johnson 13th and Seaver in a tie for 19th. Either way, the tradeoff is well worth it; Ryan, Johnson, Seaver and Niekro rank first, third, sixth and 11th, respectively, in career strikeouts.
At the bottom of the rotation, you’d probably pick some semblance of Kershaw and Niekro, with Ryan as your №3 starter. That leaves Johnson and Seaver.
On one hand, Johnson owns the higher average career WAR from Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs. The Big Unit also possesses a slight edge in bWAR’s 7-year peak WAR (61.5 to 59.3), though Seaver wins the battle in Jay Jaffe’s esteemed JAWS rankings for the Hall of Fame (84.6 to 81.3).
There is obviously no wrong answer, but I’ll pick Johnson over Seaver for the advantage The Big Unit has in strikeout rate (28.6% to 18.8%), which is the optimal result for any pitcher.
Either way, some of the stories about each of these five are spectacular. Niekro learned his knuckleball from his father, who picked it up from a coworker while playing in the sandlots of the Mine Workers League. Kershaw’s relationship with iconic Dodgers left-hander Sandy Koufax is jaw-dropping to read about in this extraordinary Wright Thompson piece.
When Ryan returned from the Army Reserves in 1967, he struck out 18 in seven innings over three outings for Jacksonville. It was a sign of things to come; he is the career MLB leader in strikeouts, walks, no-hitters, stolen bases allowed, errors committed, hits per nine innings, wild pitches and losses. In addition, Ryan’s fastball might have been in the range of 108 miles per hour.
Seaver began playing in the Fresno Little League at nine years old, and within his first three years, had compiled a perfect game and a .540 batting average. By the time the prodigy reached Jacksonville in 1966, Suns manager Solly Hemus insisted Seaver had a “35-year-old head attached to a 21-year-old body.” Future Hall of Fame skipper Earl Weaver, then the manager of rival Rochester in the International League, was so impressed with Seaver that he called Baltimore Orioles general manager Harry Dalton and urged him to try to trade for the right-hander.
As a kid growing up in Walnut Creek, Calif., Johnson would practice his pitching against the garage door, throwing so hard that the nails would loosen in the wood siding during each practice session. His father, Bud, would hand him a hammer once Randy was done to make the young lefty hammer the nails back in. A student of baseball history, Randy was known to call legendary hurlers like Ryan, Koufax, Warren Spahn and Steve Carlton during his big league career to talk baseball and get their advice on how to improve his pitching.
All told, on the all-time Jacksonville team, our rotation looks like this:
- Randy Johnson
- Tom Seaver
- Nolan Ryan
- Clayton Kershaw
- Phil Niekro
No matter how else the rest of this list goes for the All-Time Jacksonville, that rotation alone is probably enough to win a lot of games.
