Second Base
Best—Tony Phillips, 46.6 fWAR, 26th among second basemen
If utility player was a position of its own, Tony Phillips might be a first-ballot Baseball Hall of Famer. In his 18 big league seasons, he played at least 97 games at six different positions and more than a season’s worth of games at five different positions. He gets the nod here because he played more games and innings at second base than any other position.
Phillips spent the first eight years of his career with the Oakland A’s and hit .251/.338/.350 while averaging 376 plate appearances per season. When the A’s made the playoffs in 1988, Phillips played every position except for catcher. He played in 143 games the next season and helped the A’s win the World Series. He even made the play on defense that closed out the A’s four-game sweep in a World Series that was interrupted by the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake.
That offseason, Phillips signed a free agent deal with the Detroit Tigers, and his career took off. He was slotted into the lineup on a regular basis and began reeling off high on-base percentage seasons thanks to a great batting eye. Over the last 10 years of his career, Phillips hit .273/.392/.409. He scored over 100 runs four times and had more than 100 walks five times. In 1995, he launched a career-high 27 homers. Even his final year was impressive. As a 40-year-old back with Oakland in 1999, Phillips hit .244/.362/.433, with 15 homers and 11 steals in 106 games.
Years after his major league career ended, Phillips played with the Yuma Scorpions of the independent North American League. In 2011, he got into a fight with his manager, Mike Marshall (the former MLB outfielder). Four years later, at the age of 56, Phillips played for the Pittsburg Mettle in the Pacific Association of Professional Baseball Clubs. Sadly, Phillips died of an apparent heart attack in February of 2016.
Others—Chuck Knoblauch (38th), Bret Boone (89th), Eric Young (103rd), Jerry Remy (202nd)
Bret Boone was worth 23.0 WAR in his career and 19.1 of that total came in the three seasons from 2001 to 2003. He wasn’t very good before that stretch and wasn’t very good after, but he was a monster for three years in Seattle at the turn of the century.
I’ve been listening to Jerry Remy broadcast Red Sox games for so long that I forgot he played for the Angels the first three years of his career. I also thought he was better than he apparently was (just three average or better seasons in 10 years). He didn’t deserve a Baseball Hall of Fame vote for his playing career, but his call during the 2007 Fenway Park pizza incident is legendary.