Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #11: Adrian Beltre

Why do we love the ones we love? Some of the people we love, they loved us first. Loving them back felt natural without us ever really thinking about it. I don't remember a time when I didn't love my parents and my sister. There may be ups and down, but love is the blackboard, whatever else goes on it only chalk dust. Some of the people we love, it's through the accumulation of shared experiences and survived battles. Most of my closest friends are people I've known for decades. Those relationships have had their share of tumult, but we've come out on the other side, and now it's hard to imagine those bonds ever being broken. Some of the people we love, almost immediately they're exactly the person we needed. I met my wife when I was seven years removed from really having my feet under me, at a moment when another relationship, one that had never been quite right, was in the process of disintegrating. It took some time for me to find the courage to ask her out, but within weeks of our first date I had the ineffable something I'd been missing.

Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #12: Frank Thomas

Frank Thomas was the best hitter the American League has had in the thirty years this project is focused on. He finished his career with a batting line of .301/.419/.555 and a wRC+ of 154, a figure which puts him among the top 20 in baseball history. He hit 521 home runs and 495 doubles. He scored 1494 runs and had 1704 RBI. He hit massive home runs, and he combined that awesome power with patience and plate discipline held by few players in history, which helped him draw 100+ walks in ten different seasons, a total topped by only Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Ted Williams. In 1993 and 1994 Thomas became the first player since Roger Maris in 1960 an 1961 to win back-to-back American League MVP Awards. There should be no doubt about Thomas' excellence as a hitter. Having said that, allow me to also say this:

There's no player I've hated more than Frank Thomas.

Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #13: Curt Schilling

Curt Schilling started 19 postseason games in his career, with a 2.33 ERA in 133.1 innings. He went 7+ innings while allowing no more than two runs in 13 of those starts, including two shutouts. In the 2001 postseason he pitched a complete game in Game 1 and Game 5 of the NLDS, and then pitched another in the NLCS, striking out 12. He started three games in the World Series, going 7+ innings in each of them, and allowing a total of only four runs. In his six starts that postseason, Schilling had a record 56 strikeouts in 48.1 innings, with a 1.12 ERA. During the 2004 ALDS, a tendon in Schilling's ankle tore. He underwent a procedure to stabilize the ankle before Game 6 of the ALCS, then went out and won. The suture began to give way during the game, leading Schilling's sock to famously soak through with blood. He underwent the procedure again a few days later, so that he could help the Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years.

If Schilling had done nothing else in his life, he'd still be rightly remembered as one of the greatest postseason players in baseball history.

Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #14: Mike Mussina

Mike Mussina's career seems to have been marked by bad timing. In the process of working my way through this project, I've already written about other pitchers from the last thirty years having to face unfair comparisons to Rogers Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez, four of the dozen or so greatest pitchers in history. Mike Mussina also spent his entire 18-year career in the higher scoring American League, during just an era when offense ruled baseball. Mussina played for good Orioles teams that were stymied in the ALCS. He joined the Yankees in 2001, when they'd won four of the last five World Series. They made the postseason in seven of his eight seasons there, but didn't win the World Series. Mussina won 20 games and posted a 3.37 ERA in 2008, but decided to retire, giving him the best final season by any pitcher since Sandy Koufax. The Yankees proceeded to win the World Series in 2009. As I said, bad timing, and that probably goes a long way towards explaining why Mussina doesn't get his due. And to be clear, Mussina doesn't get his due.

Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #15: Mike Piazza

Mike Piazza will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this weekend. Given that I've got him as the 15th best player of the last thirty years, it's an honor I obviously believe is much-deserved. I'm not sure there's ever been a Hall of Fame player who made it after less was expected of him at the start of his professional career though, not in the 50+ years the MLB Draft has existed anyway. Piazza was a child of privilege, his father having made a fortune selling cars and real estate. When Piazza was a boy, he received hitting instruction from Ted Williams. Baseball is incredibly difficult though, and even with those advantages, Piazza wasn't viewed as a real talent. As you're probably aware, Piazza wasn't drafted until the 62nd round in 1988, and only as a favor to Piazza's father, a lifetime friend of then Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. More than 1300 other players were chosen ahead of Piazza that year, but we went on to outplay them all.

Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #16: Derek Jeter

In 1996 Derek Jeter was a unanimous American League Rookie of the Year winner, and was an important part of the Yankees winning the World Series for the first time since 1978, ending the team's longest drought since winning its first championship in 1923. By the end of 2000, Jeter had played little more than a quarter of his career, but had already won four World Series rings and played in more nationally televised games than just about any player in history. He was the face of the Yankees, which in many ways made him the face of baseball, and he was still only 26 years old. Unsurprisingly, being the most beloved player on the Yankees made Jeter a divisive figure. In the three decades I've been a fan, no player has received as much adulation, and few have received as much scorn.

Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #17: Jim Thome

When I was young, being a baseball fan meant playing the game, collecting cards, and checking the sports section of the newspaper my dad brought home at the end of every workday. Each year I went to a couple games at Wrigley and a couple games at Comiskey, but otherwise, watching baseball was pretty infrequent. We didn't have cable, I was in school or playing somewhere when the Cubs were on WGN, and while the All-Star Game and postseason were already a big deal to me, they were rarities. I'd become an Indians fan at the age of six, but I bet I could count on my fingers the number of Tribe games I actually watched before reaching junior high. Julio Franco was my first favorite Indian, but he and the others I liked in those early years, I liked for what I could see on the front and back of their baseball cards. It was an appreciation for static things. In the mid 90s we got cable, the Indians got good, and I could suddenly enjoy my favorite team far more dynamically.

Enter Jim Thome.

Best MLB players of the last 30 years, #18: Manny Ramirez

To be a teenage Indians fan during the 1990s was to have a wealth of fantastic offensive players to cheer for at a time when you were too young to fully appreciate it. At the time I graduated from high school, in June of 1998, Manny Ramirez had finished runner up in the AL Rookie of the Year voting, had been named an All-Star and won a Silver Slugger, had received mention on MVP ballots, and had a career OPS close to .940, but he'd never been the Tribe's best or even second-best hitter, and having luxuriated in the warmth of Albert Belle, Jim Thome, Kenny Lofton, and David Justice over the years, I didn't fully grasp how good Ramirez was. As the 1998 season continued though, Ramirez drew more and more of my attention, and then in 1999 and 2000 Manny put up two of the best seasons by any hitter in any era. You could argue he was too good for the Indians, because by hitting so well, he played his way out of their price range and signed with Boston, going on to far greater fame than he'd found in Cleveland.

Teammates with long hitting streaks in the same season

Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts just finished up a 26-game hitting streak going. His teammate, Boston outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. recently had a 29-game hitting streak. Two players on the same team each putting up a streak that long seemed liked a rarity, and while most people would have been content to leave it at that, I've never been one to back down from hours of research to answer a question few people are asking. It turns out my hunch was correct; since 1913 (the first season there are box scores for at Baseball-Reference), Bradley and Bogaerts are only the sixth pair of teammates to each have a hitting streak of 25+ games in the same season.

Best players of the last 30 years, #19: Kevin Brown

I don't have nearly a large enough readership for anything I write here to generate controversy, but if I did, and if one thing from this countdown were going to cause a stir, I'm certain it would be this entry. Kevin Brown simply doesn't strike most baseball followers as having been excellent, and every one of the pitchers I've already written about in this countdown would beat Brown in a landslide if they were pitted against him in a head-to-head voting amongst baseball fans. If there was some sort of crowdsourced ranking of players from the last thirty years, I don't believe Brown would finish anywhere in the top 50. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm going to say the crowd is wrong on this one. Kevin Brown was outstanding.