Astros All-Time Best Seasons: Center Field

This is the sixth edition of our Astros’ All-Time Best Seasons Series. The Houston Astros have had a history of solid centerfielders, most notably Jimmy “Toy Cannon” Wynn, whose number 24 was retired in 2005.

If you want to catch up on the other positions that we’ve covered in this series, you can check them out here:

• Catchers
• First basemen
• Third basemen
• Shortstops
• Left fielders

According to Baseball-Reference, 27 players have slotted into the CF spot over 53 years as a franchise. That’s an average of a different centerfielder for every ~2 years, but that number has severely skewed over by the positional turnover of this century, which has seen 10 different players roam the spacious center field pasture of Minute Maid Park, as well as climb Tal’s Hill occasionally, just like us! (Get it? Because we’re … yeah, ok)

Tal’s Hill after a game in 2012. Photo by Larry Manch.

The only threshold I have for ranking these players is that they had to have played a full season (> ~130 games) for the Houston Astros as the starting centerfielder. That means I’m not rewarding Carlos Beltran for his incredible power display for 90 games/throughout the 2004 postseason. I do this, for the most part, because I still haven’t forgiven him for the 2004 offseason, and I openly boo him every time I see him on TV. #BeltranSucks.

To see the top 5 seasons by a Houston Astros centerfielder, click through the following slide show of candidates. And if you so desire, you can vote for your favorite at the end of the presentation.

Next: 2005: Willy Taveras