Delving into some alternate history...

[clancyphile]

Assume, for a moment, that during the 1978-1979 offseason, the Brewers make two trades:

 

1. Larry Hisle is traded to Atlanta for Dale Murphy, Jamie Easterly, and Steve Bedrosian

2. Sal Bando is traded back to Oakland for Rickey Henderson.

 

The proposed opening day lineup is:

2b: Paul Molitor

ss: Robin Yount

1b: Cecil Cooper

dh: Gorman Thomas

lf: Ben Oglivie/Sixto Lezcano

rf: Dale Murphy

3b: Don Money

c: Charlie Moore

cf: Rickey Henderson

 

What alterations, if any, would you make to this lineup? As another aside... how far do you think this team goes in 1979 and beyond?

[JohnBriggs12]

Are you kidding? Oakland wouldn't have traded Henderson for a 35 year old Bando who was a Brewer to begin with because Oakland couldn't afford him. Still Henderson would have been in the minor leagues in 79 if he were Brewer property. There was no place to play him. First of all Henderson was a LF, not a CF and a terrible defensive outfielder. Lezcano won the Gold Glove that year and hit .321/.414/.573 at age 25 with 28 HR and 101 RBI and you have him platooning in LF with Oglivie? Did you ever see Sixto's arm? It would be a complete waste playing him anywhere but RF. That would be a great deal for Henderson, but they had no need for him at that point and Oakland couldn't afford Bando. No way they trade for him back at age 35 for a top prospect like Henderson. It's great hindsight, but there was also no way you could know Hisle would get hurt a month into that season and where to you play Murphy on that team, CF? Murphy also would have started that year in AAA had the Brewers had him. Maybe he gets called up once Hisle goes down, but he doesn't help that team much. You going to replace Gorman Thomas with a rookie in CF? It hurt big time losing Hisle to be sure, but they got by with the likes of Dick Davis, Money, and Bando in the DH spot and won 95 games and scored a ton of runs (804).

 

The Achilles Heal that year was the bullpen and a rotation that wasn't as good as Baltimore's. It's as simple as that. Baltimore won 102 games.

 

There's no way they could have known that Lezcano would never be the same player or that Hisle would get hurt and never fully recover. Likewise there's no way they could have foreseen the careers of Henderson and Murphy at that point.

[DocLuna7]

Since he turned into probably the greatest leadoff hitter in the history of the game, I suspect that we would eventually have to slide Molly down in the lineup at some point to put Ricky at the top of the order.

[SRB]

You're demoting Sixto?! Sixto Lezcano was arguably the best player on the 1979 Brewers (5.6 rWAR, 5.2 fWAR) so even adding a Hall of Famer like Rickey Henderson and assuming that Henderson would have been able to immediately start playing near his peak wouldn't have improved the team all that much. The better alternate history move would be to take-back the Darrell Porter trade and thereby substantially upgrade Charlie Moore at catcher.

 

The problem with all these scenarios though is that the 1979 Orioles were a juggernaut and the Brewers would have needed well over 100 wins just to make the playoffs.