Houston Astros’ All-Time Best Seasons: Left Field

Climbing Tal’s Hill sixth installment of the Astros’ All-Time Best Season Series covers left fielders. Throughout the past 53 years there have been 24 regulars, according to Baseball-Reference.  Only one of those has had their jersey number retired by the Astros organization: Jose Cruz.

In case you have missed the discussions regarding catcher and the infield positions, they are linked below:

• who made the cut at catcher?
• Bags, Davis, and more
• a pair of hall-of-famers and a third in the making
• steady diet of third basemen in history
• Adam Everett makes an appearance, who else fits in there?

This has been one of the more difficult tasks as a writer at Climbing Tal’s Hill. My youth means that I only have about 15 years to assess players visually. To try to stay objective in assessing numbers, I will try to use consistency with home runs, runs batted in and batting average. But OPS+ is a very nice tool as well.

In terms of games played the cut-off is 523 games: Lance Berkman. Bob Watson, Luis Gonzalez, Carlos Lee, and Jose Cruz are included in the rest of that list.

Please click through the following slide show of candidates. Also, be sure to vote for your favorite at the end of the presentation.

Next: 1973: Bob Watson