Top 50 All-Time Indians

After more than a year, we have just finished the first batch of 50 All-Time Indians articles. As part of this milestone, all previous articles have been updated to include links to other All-Time Indians articles and pictures have been added of the plaques in Heritage Park at Progressive Field. For the most part the players that are already done are the top 50 Indians of all time and include all players in the Baseball Hall of Fame as an Indian. We have also started posting the top ten positional lists in Indians history. Every player profile created to this point belongs to a top ten player at his position except Willis Hudlin, who made the list due to his extremely long career.

The 50 started with the players who have had their numbers retired by the Tribe, like Bob Feller and Earl Averill, and continued with the Hall of Famers, like Early Wynn and Joe Sewell. Since the first 19 players were posted, every fifth player has been a modern player (from 1990 or later), in order to avoid having players from the same era bunched together. Seven players (and Mike Hargrove) from the 1990's Indians have already been covered and they will continue to be posted every fifth player until every player worthy of a page is done. Players that are currently active are ineligible to be considered as an All-Time Indian so players like Jim Thome and Omar Vizquel will get pages created for them the moment they announce their retirements, much like Manny Ramirez did earlier this year (maybe).

Going into the next 50 players, there will be many more marginal players included who did not have great careers, but were important for the franchise. In fact, the next scheduled profile will be of Louis Sockalexis, the original Indian. There will also be players who had short careers, but either won awards or had an impressive feat (like a perfect game). So far, only two players outside of Indians history (starting in 1901) have been profiled, Jesse Burkett and Cy Young. Expect a lot more in the future including the original Blues team, the Spiders and even the Negro League Buckeyes. Also, to this point there has been just one person profiled more for their time as manager than as a player, but that will change as well with Al Lopez and Frank Robinson scheduled for the next 50.

The Top Ten Indians Positional count downs will also continue and will be linked to each players personal profile. This way you will be able to get more details about any player just by clicking on them. These are being posted with the weakest positions first, so most of the players in the top 10 so far do not have profiles yet, but as they continue, the lists will be more and more complete. There are nine more positional break downs scheduled between now and the start of next season.

All-Time Indians articles will continue to be published at the rate of two a week (every Monday and Thursday) until Spring Training starts when they will drop to one every Monday. Through the regular season they will go down to one a month as it was during 2012. If there are any players that you would like to see in particular, send me a tweet to @BRBBLOG on twitter or e-mail to [email protected]. If they are already on my list of over 200 Indians, I may bump them up in order and post them sooner then planned and if they are not on the list I can put them on.