There are many ways to fill each position over the course of an entire season. Most often, a few players are used by each team. However, there are also teams that are extreme. Some may rotate a truckload of players in and out all season long. Others are able to accomplish the rare feat of using only one player at a particular position for an entire season. Over the next few days I would like to take a look as some of these oddities.

In the early years of baseball it was not uncommon for a player to fill a position for his team for every play of a season. Even into the '30s and '40s it was done on a fairly regular basis. However as the '50s progressed and especially after the schedule expanded in 1961, teams with only 1 player in a position became quite rare, (particularly if Cal Ripken Jr. was not on your team). Here are the teams since 1961 to have only 1 player man a position for an entire season. (National League DHs are not included for obvious reasons.)

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A couple of notes on the list above:

• Ripken's prominence on this list is no surprise. Well before he was close to Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak, Ripken  was setting unofficial records by playing in 8,243 consecutive innings.
• At the time, Pierre was stalwart in CF, playing 162 games every year from 2003-2007.
• After the 2003 season Sexson was traded to Arizona where he was hurt for most of the season.
• Fryman's season was the shortened 1995. He only played 144 games that year and never played 162 in season in his career.
• Staub became the first player to play 162 games in a season without playing the field. (The Tigers only played 159 games the year that Horton DHed every inning for them.)
• Horton, who pulled off this trick with with two separate teams, was an unlikely candidate. With the exception of the two listed years, Horton never played more than 146 games in a season.
• Bando was a player who played consistently. He played at least 160 games four times in his career and at least 150 another 6.
• In the year between his complete seasons, Ron Santo played 161 games. He only missed 1 game that year, but  was also taken out of the game in another 3.

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Next, we'll go position-by position and take a closer look at the history of playing only a few players.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.