AL West: Greatest Individual Season in Each Team's History

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In the American League, the West Division is the youngest in baseball, with just one team founded before 1961. But the AL West division has still had its share of legendary players and historical performances. Which ones were the greatest of all-time?

This year’s American League West seems at nearly the midway point in the season to be a one-team race, as the Texas Rangers continue to be one of the best clubs in all of Major League Baseball. But a look at individual performances shows that the Rangers’ rivals have a lot of firepower.

Entering play on Monday, the top two players in bWAR in MLB, and three of the top ten, all call the AL West their home. Mike Trout, Jose Altuve and Robinson Cano are all putting together All-Star seasons and trying to make winning the West anything but a foregone conclusion.

While the division is home to some of the youngest franchises in the game, historically speaking, Trout, Altuve, and Cano are carrying on a tradition of players that include 10 Hall of Famers, and representing teams that have won 10 world championships. While teams in the Midwest and East may have a big head start, the clubs that comprise the West have made a lot of history in a short amount of time.

With that in mind, we here at Call to the Pen wondered which players have had the greatest individual season for each of these teams. As it turns out, the names are among the biggest the game has known, and span the course of MLB history.

Next: The Halos have a real angel in the outfield.

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim – Mike Trout (2012)

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Mike Trout is pretty good at baseball. In just his fifth season in the big leagues, the product of New Jersey is one of the preeminent stars in the game. Already with an American League Most Valuable Player award under his belt and three runner-up finishes, a Rookie of the Year, four Silver Sluggers and four All-Star nods, Trout is off to an all-time great start to his career.

It should come as little surprise, then, that among every player to put on an Angels uniform, Trout has put together the top three and four of the top six best individual seasons in franchise history. What’s more, he doesn’t turn 25 until August, so he’s just scratching the surface of what he can do between the lines.

2012 was Trout’s first full season with the Angels, and at just 20 years old, he had the finest season the team has ever seen. Slashing .326/.399/.564 with 27 doubles, eight triples, 30 home runs and 83 runs batted in, it took Miguel Cabrera winning the first AL triple crown since 1967 to prevent him from bringing the MVP trophy to Anaheim.

Trout set the Angels franchise record for a position player with a 10.8 bWAR in 2012, leading the league for the first of what has now been four consecutive seasons. He also led the AL in 168 OPS+, offensive win percentage, win probability added, runs scored and stolen bases, putting together a season for the ages.

All Trout has done since 2012 is continue to dominate the WAR leaderboards in the same way he dominates his opposition. No other player in the game today is as valuable by the statistical metrics, and given that he leads the category again in 2016, it seems no other player is a threat to take that title away from him anytime soon.

Next: One of the Killer B’s.

Houston Astros – Craig Biggio (1997)

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The Houston Astros of the late 1990s and early 2000s, then a member of the National League, were a team characterized by a the superstar duo of Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, and later the addition of Lance Berkman. While Bagwell is the franchise’s career leader in bWAR and holds four of the top ten individual seasons in team history, the greatest individual season for any Astros position player belongs to the catcher-turned-second baseman-turned center fielder Biggio.

From 1989 until his retirement after the 2007 season, Biggio was a metronome for Houston. He played in fewer than 134 games only twice, and one of those was the strike-shortened 1994 season, tallied 3,060 career hits and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2015.

In 1997, Biggio helped power the Astros to a first place finish in the NL Central from his customary leadoff spot, slashing .309/.415/.501 at the age of 31, with 37 doubles, 22 homers, 81 RBI and 47 stolen bases. His 146 runs scored led the league as he made his sixth All-Star team, won his fourth Silver Slugger and collected his fourth Gold Glove award.

Biggio’s bWAR of 9.4 that season was second in the NL to only MVP Larry Walker and still stands today as the high mark in club history. With a talented young core in Houston that includes Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and George Springer, though, one must wonder how much longer that will be the case.

Next: Before the Bay Area.

Oakland Athletics – (tie) Eddie Collins (1910) & Jimmie Foxx (1932)

Long before the Athletics franchise made the move out west, legendary manager Connie Mack helmed one of the charter members of the American League in the City of Brotherly Love. Under Mack, the team with the elephant logo was home to several of the most iconic players in Major League Baseball’s first half century.

While in the more recent past the A’s have been known for Rickey Henderson’s baserunning pyrotechnics, the Bash Brothers and Moneyball, the club’s best years arguably took place in Shibe Park, where five world championships were won and players like Eddie Plank, Al Simmons, Napoleon Lajoie and Frank “Home Run” Baker took the field.

The greatest season in the franchise’s history actually ends up in a tie between a pair of Hall of Famers in 3,000 hits club member Eddie Collins and one of the premier sluggers the game has ever known in Jimmie Foxx.

In 1910, Collins had a slash line of .324/.382/.418 with 16 doubles, 15 triples, 81 RBI and 81 stolen bases in leading the A’s to the franchise’s first World Series title. His 10.5 bWAR that season was equal to Ty Cobb’s for the best in the AL and was the greatest total he amassed in a career that still ranks 10th all-time in the metric.

Foxx was a very different player from Collins, playing in a new live ball era that suited his physical prowess. In 1932, Double-X won the first of his three MVP awards with the ridiculous stat line of .364/.469/.749 with 58 home runs, 169 RBI, 161 runs scored, a 1.218 OPS and a 218 OPS+ that all led the league. Historical accounts say that Foxx was fixated on breaking Babe Ruth’s single season mark of 60 homers that season, and he came as close as anyone would for 30 years, good for a 10.5 bWAR, and narrowly missing out on the triple crown, which he would win the following season.

Next: The opening act.

Seattle Mariners – Alex Rodriguez (2000)

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The Mariners are just a baby compared to their division rivals in Oakland, having only been in existence since 1977. But the M’s have already produced three of the greatest players in the last 25 years, and continue to make the Pacific Northwest a tough place to get a win.

While Ken Griffey, Jr. will go into Cooperstown in a Mariners cap in a little less than a month, and Ichiro Suzuki laid the foundation for his 3,000 hits chase in Seattle, the greatest season the franchise has ever seen came from a 24-year-old shortstop who would soon be on his way to greener pastures.

Alex Rodriguez would win his fourth Silver Slugger and go to his fourth All-Star game in 2000, slashing .316/.420/.606 with 41 home runs, 132 RBI, a 1.026 OPS and a 163 OPS+. His 10.4 bWAR that season not only set his own personal single season record, but that of the Mariners franchise, and was first in the AL by a wide margin.

A-Rod picked up and signed the now infamous 10-year, $250 million contract with the Texas Rangers after the 2000 season, following Griffey, who left for the Cincinnati Reds the season before, out the door. The M’s would manage pretty well despite the losses, going on to set the MLB record for wins in a season in 2001, as would Rodriguez, whose next three seasons would would set franchise records in Arlington.

Next: The encore performance.

Texas Rangers – Alex Rodriguez (2002)

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The career arc of Alex Rodriguez took a decidedly downward turn when he joined the Rangers, if only from a public perception standpoint. The largest contract in the history of MLB and PED accusations will certainly do that.

But there’s no arguing that his three-year stint in the Lone Star State was one of the most prolific displays of power the game has seen in quite a while. Texas finished fourth in the AL West in all three of those years, but the combination of A-Rod and Rafael Palmeiro, himself under a PED cloud, had balls flying out of ballparks across the league.

In 2002, Rodriguez put together what is statistically the greatest season of any position player in Rangers history, slashing .300/.392/.623 with league-leading marks of 57 home runs and 142 RBI. With an OPS of 1.015 and an OPS+ of 158, he went to another All-Star game, won the Silver Slugger and a Gold Glove, and posted a league-best 8.8 bWAR.

Next: Ichiro Named All-Time Hit Leader

Somewhat absurdly, Rodriguez finished second to Miguel Tejada of the A’s in the MVP voting that season despite superior stats, and he would spend only one more summer in Texas before being dealt to the New York Yankees. Despite the relatively short stay, he owns three of the four top individual seasons in Rangers franchise history.

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