Hawaii's Baseball All-Time Dream Team
What would a dream team roster look like for major league players born in Hawaii?
Issue #116
This is the 18th article in a series where I am creating all-time dream teams for players born in each of the fifty US states. I’m publishing each write-up on the anniversary date that the particular state joined the union. So far I’ve covered Maryland, Louisiana, Minnesota, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Virginia, Idaho, Wyoming, New York, Colorado, and Missouri.
Next up is Hawaii, which became the 50th and most recent state admitted to the union on August 21, 1959 (according to Wikipedia.)
Important caveat to what follows: I’m creating these all-time dream teams based on the birthplace data available at baseball-reference.com. I realize this might mean some players will appear for a state’s all-time dream that seems odd, e.g., a player who was born in one state but lived there only briefly, while then spending most of his youth, or especially critical years playing baseball in high school in another state. So that is an important caveat to the below dream team roster—and I’ll discuss the players that I know went to high school in a state other than Hawaii towards the end of this article (and vice-versa, those born elsewhere but who went to high school in Hawaii.)
Here is the all-time dream team I came up with for players born in Hawaii:
Hawaii of course is not a very large state, and few major league players would have come from Hawaii until say the last 50 years or so. So it isn’t surprising that this roster has several positions that are lacking in star names.
I found the position players to be weaker than the pitching staff, with CF/RF Shane Victorino, 2B Kolten Wong, and the versatile Isiah Kiner-Falefa the most notable names. In fact, the depth chart above obscures the fact that overall there were barely enough guys to cover the field.
Starting lineups for this all-time dream team could look like this:
Against RHP:
Kolten Wong 2B (L)
Benny Agbayani LF (R)
Shane Victorino CF (R)
Mike Lum 1B (L)
Kila Ka'aihue DH (L)
Isiah Kiner-Falefa 3B (R)
Kurt Suzuki C (R)
Mike Huff RF (R)
Lenn Sakata SS (R)
Against LHP:
Kolten Wong 2B (L)
Benny Agbayani LF (R)
Shane Victorino CF (R)
Mike Lum 1B (L)
Joey Meyer DH (R)
Isiah Kiner-Falefa 3B (R)
Kurt Suzuki C (R)
Mike Huff RF (R)
Lenn Sakata SS (R)
Without many reserves available, I didn’t have many options for platoons, with one being at DH where I went with Kila Ka’aihue vs. RHP and Joey Meyer vs. LHP.
The pitching on the other hand was a bit stronger, with the top three spots in the rotation going (in some order) to ageless knuckleballer Charlie Hough, and the two 1980s Mets stars Sid Fernandez and Ron Darling. How you then flesh out a starting five could be debated, but I like Milt Wilcox for the fourth spot at least.
The bullpen isn’t quite as strong, but has more depth than the position players on this roster. I went with Kirby Yates at the top here, given his outstanding 2018/2019 seasons, and then included his brother Tyler a bit further down the list. How you rank these relievers could certainly be argued based on length of career vs. peak performance.
To wrap up, several of the above players were born in Hawaii but grew up and in particular went to high school in other states, including five out of the seven starting pitchers listed above:
Mike Huff - Illinois
Charlie Hough - Florida
Ron Darling - Massachusetts
Milt Wilcox - Oklahoma
Scott Feldman - California
Steve Cooke - Oregon
Brian Fisher - Colorado
Brandon Villafuerte - California
Doug Capilla - California
Taylor Saucedo - Washington
What about the other direction—born elsewhere but went to high school in Hawaii? I only found three such players:
3B Chris Truby - California
RP Mike Fetters - California
RP Brandon League - California
If I were to include these players on a Hawaii roster, then I’d slot Truby as the starting 3B and shift Kiner-Falefa to RF in place of Huff, as IKF has played many positions in his career thus far, including all three OF spots. Fetters and League had solid careers and so would join the bullpen that would be losing four others. But the starting rotation would be decimated by this change in criteria, with only Darling and Williams remaining.
All data is from Baseball-Reference.com, and also their subscription service Stathead.com. If you are a big sports fan, be sure to check out the latest features at Stathead and the Sports Reference family of sites. The state map, flag, flower, and bird images are from Wikipedia.
Did you know? I wrote a book with the same title as this Substack newsletter / blog: Now Taking the Field: Baseball’s All-Time Dream Teams for All 30 Franchises. It was published in early 2019, by ACTA Sports, the publisher of the annual Bill James Handbook and other popular titles. You can learn more about it at www.NowTakingTheField.com, or buy directly at Amazon and other booksellers.
