North Carolina's Baseball All-Time Dream Team
What would a dream team roster look like for major league players born in North Carolina?
Issue #138
This is the 25th 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, Missouri, Hawaii, California, Nevada, North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Oklahoma.
Next up is North Carolina, which was one of the original 13 colonies and became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution on November 21, 1789 (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 North Carolina towards the end of this article (and vice-versa, those born elsewhere but who went to high school in North Carolina.)
Here is the all-time dream team I came up with for players born in North Carolina:
This roster is pretty solid and includes seven Hall of Famers. The best of them I think is Buck Leonard, who was a Negro Leagues All-Star in 11 of his major league seasons, and according to the numbers at baseball-reference.com ended his career with a .346/.453/.593 slash line and 180 OPS+. He led his league in HR three times, triples three times, batting average two times, and OBP five times.
The other Hall of Famers are SS Luke Appling, RF/LF Enos Slaughter, C Rick Ferrell, SP Gaylord Perry, SP Catfish Hunter, and RP Hoyt Wilhelm. Some have argued against Hunter and especially Farrell as Hall of Famers, but I won’t go into those cases here. And for 10-time All-Star Enos Slaughter, he played RF the most often but I’ve listed him as the top LF here because the other OF candidates were stronger in RF in Buddy Lewis and Trot Nixon.
There are of course many other stars on this roster beyond those seven, such as Corey Seager at SS who could one day deserve to be the starter here over Appling. Josh Hamilton had several standout seasons, including 2008 when he led the AL with 130 RBI, 2012 when he hit 43 HR with 128 RBI, and in 2010 when won the AL MVP after leading the AL with a .359 average, to go with 32 HR and 100 RBI. Others who were stars for at least parts of their careers include 3B/1B Ryan Zimmerman, 1B Mark Grace, 3B/LF Jim Ray Hart, 3B Kyle Seager, RF/3B Buddy Lewis, C/PH Smokey Burgess, and the four 2B listed as well: Ray Durham, Brian Roberts, Brandon Phillips, and Billy Goodman.
Starting lineups for this all-time dream team could look like this:
Against RHP:
Ray Durham / Brian Roberts (S) 2B
Luke Appling (R) / Corey Seager (L) SS
Enos Slaughter (L) LF
Buck Leonard (L) 1B
Josh Hamilton (L) CF
Kyle Seager (L) 3B
Mark Grace (L) DH
Buddy Lewis / Trot Nixon (L) RF
Smoky Burgess (L) C
Against LHP:
Ray Durham / Brian Roberts (S) 2B
Luke Appling (R)
Ryan Zimmerman (R) 3B
Buck Leonard (L) 1B
Enos Slaughter (L) RF
Jim Ray Hart (R) LF
Josh Hamilton (L) CF
Charley Jones (R) DH
Rick Ferrell (R) C
Plenty of left-handed hitters to face off against RHP! At 2B, both Durham and Roberts are switch hitters and make sense as leadoff hitters. You could go with Appling as the starter at SS in both lineups, but I wanted to include Corey Seager as well to get him some at-bats against some of the RHP. I slotted Slaughter at both LF and RF, in order to get a mix of Buddy Lewis, Trot Nixon, and Jim Ray Hart into these lineups.
Both Buck Leonard and Mark Grace were great defensive 1B, but I deferred to Leonard at 1B. I got Grace’s bat into the lineup as a DH against RHP, platooning him with old-timer Charley Jones who played from 1875-1888, mostly in LF and CF, and had a 150 OPS+.
There also seemed like a good platoon at C. Even though Ferrell hit RHP slightly better than LHP, Burgess had even more extreme splits. Burgess is also well known as a great pinch-hitter, and rightly so as he slashed .284/.376/.433 with 16 HR in 591 pinch-hit plate appearances. Similarly, Otis Nixon would make a great pinch-runner on this dream team roster, as he had 620 SB in his career, including 11 consecutive seasons with 35+ SB, and five with 50+ SB (and he had 64 SB as an actual pinch-runner).
As for the pitching staff, Gaylord Perry is a solid ace as a five-time All-Star and two-time Cy Young Award winner (the first to win it once in each league). How you rank the next several SP could be argued, but I went with Wes Ferrell next based on his six 20+ win seasons, overall 193-128 record (.601), 116 ERA+, and leading the AL in complete games four times. He was well-respected as a hitter too, slashing .280/.351/.446 over his career with 38 HR in 1,176 at-bats. He had a raw ERA of 4.01 and WHIP of 1.481, and was only an All-Star twice, but surely would have been a few more times had there been an All-Star game during his first four full-seasons.
Catfish Hunter was an All-Star eight times, and won 20+ games in five consecutive seasons with a career 224-166 record (.574). He had a nice 3.26 ERA, but pitching in a very different time than Ferrell, that translates to only a 104 ERA+ (meaning barely better than league average). Hunter was a key member of the Oakland A’s World Series dynasty from 1972-74, and went 7-1 with a 2.28 ERA for them in the post-season during those years.
At the very least, Gaylord Perry’s older brother Jim is deserving of the fourth spot in this dream team’s starting rotation. A three-time All-Star, he pitched most of a 17-year career for the Twins and the Indians, led the league in wins twice, and was the AL Cy Young Award winner in 1970 after going 24-12 with a 3.04 ERA over 40 games started.
After those top four, you could again debate who should get the fifth rotation spot and how to rank the rest of the starters I included on this roster. One candidate is Madison Bumgarner, who is only 34 but has struggled the past several seasons so its not clear if his career is over or not. He has been an All-Star four times and received down-ballot Cy Young Award consideration five times, with a 110 career ERA+ and seven seasons with 190+ strikeouts. Although not the hitter that Ferrell was, Bumgarner has batted .172 with an impressive 19 HR in 633 at-bats. And Like Hunter, Bumgarner has done well in the postseason, with a 2.11 ERA in 102.1 IP.
Max Lanier pitched parts of 13 seasons in the majors from 1938-53, and retired with a 3.01 ERA and 126 ERA+. He was an All-Star twice, including in 1943 when he led the NL with a 1.90 ERA. And General Crowder pitched in the AL from 1926-36 for Washington, St. Louis, and Detroit. He won 20+ games three times, including leading the league in wins with 26 in 1932 and then 24 the following year.
The bullpen is led by one of the all-time greatest relievers in knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm. He served in the military from 1943-45, then toiled in the minors for four years as a starter before joining the Giants at age 29 in 1952 and promptly going 15-3 in relief, with 11 saves and an NL-leading 2.43 ERA in 159.1 IP. He pitched for nine different major league teams, and through the age of 49 when his major league career finally ended with a 2.52 ERA, 147 ERA+, and 228 saves.
Greg Holland is a closer of the more contemporary variety, notching 30+ saves four times, including leading the NL with 41 in 2017 while toiling for Colorado. An All-Star three times, his best two years came earlier with the Royals, when he had 47 saves and a 1.21 ERA in 2013, and then 46 saves and 1.44 ERA in 2014.
And I liked Ted Abernathy for the third spot in this dream team bullpen, as he pitched for seven teams spread over 14 major league seasons, leading the NL in saves twice with 31 for the Cubs in 1965 and then 28 for the Red in 1967.
What about players who went to High School in North Carolina?
As noted at the outset of this article, and as I’ve done for my other US State dream team write-ups, what if you change the criteria from players who were born in the state of North Carolina to players who grew up—which we’ll define as going to high school—in the state of North Carolina?
First off, some of the players on the roster above were born in North Carolina but went to high school elsewhere, including:
SS Luke Appling – Georgia
1B Mark Grace – California
3B/1B Ryan Zimmerman – Virginia
2B Brandon Phillips – Georgia
RP Bobby Parnell – California
If we eliminate those players from the above roster, we definitely lose some key hitters. But for each position impacted the remaining players are still strong (Corey Seager at SS, Buck Leonard at 1B, and several at 3B and 2B).
However, there are also some interesting players who were born elsewhere, but went to high school in the state of North Carolina and would deserve consideration for such a dream team:
2B/OF Whit Merrifield – South Carolina
RP Daniel Bard – Texas
RP Paul Shuey – Ohio
Whit Merrifield would go into the mix for both RF and CF, but also at 2B along with Durham and Roberts. And I think Bard and Shuey would more than replace Parnell in the bullpen, and would rank somewhere after Wilhelm, Holland, and Abernathy.
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.
