MLB All-Decade Team 1990s: Who Should Really Make The List?

Major League Baseball (MLB) had many ups and downs during the 1990s, but that decade also produced some of the best players of all time. The MLB All-Decade Team 1990-1999 looks better as time goes by.

Thanks to the Moneyball revolution and the evolution of sabermetrics, fans use different stats to analyze players for something like an MLB all-decade team now than was done during the 1990s.

Furthermore, Cooperstown has started electing players whose prime years came during the 1990-1999 time period. Big Leaguers such as Ken Griffey Jr., Greg Maddux, and Frank Thomas have given their MLB Hall of Fame speeches recently.

Now seems like a good time to look back at that era and come up with a new list for the MLB All-Decade team of the 1990s.

After setting some context, a fresh look at players during the 1990s will reveal an updated MLB All-Decade Team 1990s.

Players on MLB All-Decade 1990s list saw it all

From the lows of the 1994 players’ strike to the exhilarating single-season home run record chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, this was a volatile time for baseball.

Perhaps the earthquake that ravaged the bay area during the 1989 World Series foretold what was coming in the 1990s.

Longtime MLB fans felt like a needle on a waving Richter’s Scale during the 1990s. Some fans were just being born.

In 1993, the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies became expansion teams, and the San Francisco Giants signed Barry Bonds creating a new era in the Bay. In 1998, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays joined the National League and American League respectively.

All of baseball felt some shake when the divisions broke down from four to six in 1994. Furthermore, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig championed and introduced Interleague Play in 1997. The Milwaukee Brewers switched leagues from AL to NL starting in 1998.

The decade began with speed. It took 100 steals to lead the league in stolen bases during the 1980s. This number dropped into the 70s over the coarse of the 1990s.

Cecil Fielder hit 51 homers for the Detroit Tigers in 1990, which, it turns out, was foretelling. No player hit as many as 50 during the 1980s, while guys were bashing in the 60s to lead the league by the late 1990s.

Another for instance, Barry Bonds won the NL MVP with the Pirates in 1990 on the strength of his 52 steals. After the 1990s, he won the NL MVP on the strength of his 73 home runs in 2001.

San Francisco Giants fans screamed for joy and pain extra loud during the 1990s. They might have won the World Series in 1993 if not for a team from Atlanta. The Atlanta Braves won the West division that year. This was  before the aforementioned division shakeup rightfully put the Braves in the East and kept the Giants in the West.

Also, it was Giants third baseman Matt Williams who was on track to break Roger Maris‘s single-season home run record before the strike prematurely ended the 1994 season.

The Braves won whatever division they played in from 1991 throughout the rest of the 1990s. Current MLB Hall of Fame Manager Bobby Cox led all of those teams. The player spine of the teams was its rotation led by recently inducted MLB Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz.

That was then.

"Now, analytics has changed how people look at players and stats."

Cecil Fielder’s 51 home runs made good headlines in 1990. When Chris Carter, a similarly large first baseman led the league in home runs in 2016, it came with skeptics.

In the 1990s, Chris Carter would have been highly valued. In 2017, Carter had a hard time finding a job. Meanwhile, Jason Heyward signed an 8 yr/$184m deal mostly because of his defense in 2016.

Looking at the 1990s now, with sabermetrics considered, will it change how an MLB All-Decade Team is picked from these players that have just begun to enter the Hall of Fame?

Yes, it will. And it starts at catcher.

Here is your updated MLB All-Decade Team, the 1990s.