Here we are in the fifth installment of our series on the best the Red Sox have had at each position. As an added President’s Day bonus for you folks, this one covers all three outfielder positions and a blurb on the DH (there have been very few DH’s in Red Sox history that have the request 1000 plate appearances).

Without further adieu…

Left field:
5. Duffy Lewis

The left flank of what is considered by some to be one of the best defensive outfields of all time (Lewis/Speaker/Hooper), Duffy could handle the bat too. He hit .298/.340/.398 in the Dead Ball era, which against looks worse than the actual value he contributed to the ball club.

Lewis, of course, pre-dated the Monster, but he didn’t have it easy out there. As I’m sure you know, there was a 10 foot embankment in left field where the wall now stands, that was called Duffy’s Cliff. Picture something like what they have in center in Houston, only the peak is 10’. The point is before that, the Sox played in Huntington Avenue Grounds, where Duffy played his first two seasons. The dimensions look completely foreign now, 350’ down the line, 440’ to left center, and 530’ to center. Lewis and Speaker covered that whole area. Dead ball or not, that’s a lot of doubles and triples that died in their gloves.

4. Jim Rice

Sacrilege!!! He’s a Hall of Famer, kept out only by those dastardly reporters that refused to vote for him because he’s a jerk! Sarcasm aside, Jim Rice’s attributes and flaws have been well documented by both his detractors and his advocates. I think Rice was a very good hitter, but had obvious flaws. He couldn’t get on base consistently enough if hits weren’t dropping in. He had tremendous strength, but not tremendous power. He ran well enough to twice hit 15 triples in a season, but not well enough later in his career to stay out of leading the world in double plays. His career was essentially over at 35.

Rice was a very good player, and he was great in 77-79, 1983, and 1986. But he wasn’t a great player.

3. Manny Ramirez

Take the whole package, and there are very few ways that Rice outpaces Manny, which is why I have Ramirez ranked higher than him (shockingly enough). What isn’t so clear is just how much better Ramirez’s stick is than Rice’s was. Bear with me, as I set up a statistical context.

These numbers are adjusted for league and park. Using runs created, you can actually estimate things like how many runs a team of that player would score in a game (RC/27) and things like that. Now, you can create an estimate for what an offense made up of players of that skill set would score…basically, the yearly output for a season of nine Manny Ramirez’s or nine Jim Rice’s. Manny, for his Red Sox career only, would be 1216 runs per year. Rice’s, even with his huge years, would be 909. Does it mean anything significant? Not really…just a fun little look. But it does illuminate the gap between the two guys with the bat.

2. Carl Yastrzemski

He played forever, had some years that paled in comparison to his legendary 1967, and followed Ted Williams, so if it can be believed, Yaz is actually probably underrated by Red Sox fans. He was a legitimate great player…to the point that if Yaz had Rice’s career (ages 22-36) and posted his numbers (Yastrzemski) for those years, he would be a slam dunk Hall of Famer.

Yaz’s place in history will always be linked to both Ted Williams and Jim Rice. He didn’t have the all-around ability of Williams, or the power that Rice had, and he was built like today’s second basemen, but he played the Wall better than anyone, and was a pretty damn good hitter in his own right.

1. Ted Williams

There are no original words I can use to express the player that had the best career as a Red Sox (Ruth really keeps him from being the best player ever to put on the Sox uniform). He’s as much a popular culture icon as a baseball player, and the only member of the oft-mentioned Boston Sports Parthenon that never won a title.

He cast a shadow on the Red Sox, even in retirement, that Yastrzemski could never escape and Rice and Manny could never touch. To that end, it’s almost sacrilegious to mention his name as a comparison to other Red Sox players. And because of the whole “heir apparent” link to Yaz, Captain Carl is afforded almost the same respect. This is why I mentioned Jim Rice in all of the comments…he is the romantic benchmark to Red Sox left fielders. Though there are some people that idolized him, they never worshiped him, and when speaking about players like Duffy Lewis and Manny Ramirez and Mike Greenwell, it’s best to compare them to mortals.