The Best Players in Athletics History, Position by Position

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 12 min read

An all-time Athletics team, lineup and rotation, built from franchise career leaders, award winners and Hall of Famers across Philadelphia, Kansas City, Oakland and Sacramento. Includes the criteria and the near misses.

The Athletics are the rare franchise that has to be sorted by city before it can be sorted by player. The club played in Philadelphia from 1901 through 1954, in Kansas City from 1955 through 1967, in Oakland from 1968 through 2024, and in 2025 under the plain name Athletics while playing at Sutter Health Park. In that span the franchise won 15 pennants and nine World Series, and it produced one of the deepest Hall of Fame rosters of any club: the historical record lists 17 Hall of Famers who spent at least four seasons in an Athletics uniform.

That depth makes the all-time team hard to build, and not because of any shortage of candidates. The problem is that the great Athletics came in three separate waves: the Connie Mack teams of the 1900s and 1910s, the Mack teams of 1929 to 1931, and the Oakland dynasty of 1972 to 1974 followed by the Bash Brothers years of 1988 to 1990. Each wave left a full lineup of qualified candidates. Picking one player per position means leaving a Hall of Famer or an MVP on the bench almost everywhere.

This article builds the team in the open. It states the rules first, shows the lineup in a table, argues each choice using the franchise leaderboards, and then lists the players who lost close calls.

The rules used to pick the team

Every figure in this article counts only what a player did while with the franchise. Rickey Henderson's career totals are far larger than his Athletics totals, and Reggie Jackson's famous October reputation was partly built in other uniforms. The lists below use the historical record, which runs through the 2025 season, and treat the franchise as one continuous club from 1901 to today.

Four criteria decided the close calls, in this order:

1. Peak and total value together. A player who was dominant for five years can beat one who was good for fourteen, but only when the five years included a major award or a pennant.
2. Franchise leaderboard position. A player who leads the club in a category, or sits near the top, has an advantage because the leaderboards measure what he did for this team and no one else.
3. Awards and Hall of Fame status. An MVP, a Cy Young Award, or a plaque in Cooperstown counts as evidence of how his peers and the voters saw him, which is imperfect but real.
4. Era balance. Where two candidates were close, the tie went to the era that is otherwise underrepresented, so the team is not simply the 1970s Oakland club with a few extra names.

The honest limit is that the database carries no WAR and no park adjustments. Comparing a Deadball hitter at Shibe Park with a 1990 slugger at the Oakland Coliseum, or a 1973 pitcher with a 1913 pitcher, cannot be done precisely from counting stats. Where this article says one player was better than another, it is a judgment based on the evidence listed, not a calculation. Positions come from general baseball knowledge of where these players mainly played, since the career leaderboards do not list a position.

The lineup at a glance

Here is the starting nine and the rotation, with the single most relevant franchise number for each player. All figures are from the historical record and cover only time with the Athletics.

The pitching staff: Eddie Plank, Lefty Grove, Rube Waddell, Catfish Hunter and Vida Blue in the rotation, with Dennis Eckersley closing. Connie Mack manages.

One note on the table: the outfield is a compromise. Henderson and Simmons were both primarily left fielders, so one of them has to cover a position that is not quite his. The team takes the best hitters over the labels.

Catcher: Mickey Cochrane and the quiet case for catchers

Mickey Cochrane's average with the franchise was .321, and his 823 runs scored put him eighth on the club list in a category dominated by corner players and leadoff men. He won the 1928 American League MVP award with the Athletics and was a Hall of Famer who spent nine seasons in the Philadelphia uniform. Catchers rarely hit like that. A catcher who hits .321 over nine years is worth more than the bat alone shows, because the work of catching, which is mostly handling pitchers and controlling the running game, is exactly what counting statistics undersell.

Nobody else on the franchise list challenges him. The Athletics have had useful catchers in every era, but the other names on the career-leader boards are almost all first basemen, outfielders and infielders. When one man at a hard position clears the others by this much, the choice is easy.

The infield: Foxx, Collins, Baker and Campaneris

First base goes to Jimmie Foxx, and it is one of the least contested spots on the team. He hit 302 home runs for the club, second on its all-time list, and drove in 1,075 runs, with a franchise batting average of .339 that ranks second to Al Simmons among hitters with at least 3,000 at-bats. His back-to-back MVP awards in 1932 and 1933 are two of the club's thirteen. Mark McGwire has 363 homers and a good case, but he gets the designated hitter slot, partly because Foxx's overall package is stronger and partly because the DH is otherwise a hole in a team built from before 1973.

Second base goes to Eddie Collins. He has 373 stolen bases for the club, third in franchise history behind Henderson and Campaneris, and a .337 average that ranks third among hitters with 3,000 at-bats. He won the 1914 American League MVP award with Philadelphia, and his span with the club, 13 seasons, runs from 1906 to 1930. There is no obvious second baseman to set against him in the later eras, so the choice is mostly a question of whether any later infielder deserves it more, and the answer is no.

Third base is the closest call on the team. Frank "Home Run" Baker is in the Hall of Fame, hit .321 for the club, and played seven seasons for the Philadelphia teams that won pennants in the early 1910s. Sal Bando drove in 796 runs and drew 792 walks for the Oakland dynasty, while Eric Chavez hit 230 home runs and knocked in 787 runs between 1998 and 2010. Any of the three is defensible. Baker gets the nod because of the Hall of Fame standard and the era balance rule, but a fan who watched the 1970s clubs will not be wrong to choose Bando.

Shortstop is Bert Campaneris. He is the Athletics' all-time leader in hits with 1,882 and second in stolen bases with 566, and he did it as a shortstop, the position where offense is hardest to find. He played for the club from 1964 through 1976, which means his span covers both the last Kansas City seasons and the Oakland title years. Miguel Tejada won the 2002 MVP award at short, but he does not appear on the franchise leaderboards, and Campaneris holds the records that matter.

The outfield and the designated hitter

Rickey Henderson is the left fielder and the leadoff hitter. His Athletics totals are 867 stolen bases, 1,270 runs scored and 1,227 walks, each the top mark in club history by a wide margin: the next-best runs total is Bob Johnson's 997, and the next-best walks total is Max Bishop's 1,043. He also had 1,768 hits and won the 1990 MVP award. He came and went from Oakland several times, so the franchise totals understate his career, but even this partial record would carry the position.

Al Simmons is the other outfield starter. The numbers are close to unreal: a .356 batting average, the highest on the franchise list of players with 3,000 at-bats, plus 1,827 hits and 1,178 runs batted in, the club leader in RBI. He did this across 12 seasons for the Athletics, within a span that runs from 1924 to 1944. His hitting was the engine of the pennant winners of 1929 to 1931, and a .356 average over a career-length sample for a single club is a mark that nobody else in franchise history has reached.

Reggie Jackson takes right field. His 269 home runs rank third on the franchise list and he won the 1973 MVP award, in the middle of three straight World Series titles. He spent 10 seasons with the club overall, and some of his best known moments came later with the Yankees and Angels, which is a reason to be careful about leaning on reputation. The Athletics numbers alone justify the spot.

Designated hitter is Mark McGwire. The club leader in home runs with 363, he also has 941 RBI and 847 walks, and he won the 1987 Rookie of the Year award. His case suffers from a documented fact that deserves plain mention: he later admitted to using steroids during his career, which affects how the Hall of Fame voters have treated him. This article uses only his Athletics counting numbers and takes no position on what they would look like without that history, because the database cannot answer that.

The rotation: Plank, Grove, Waddell, Hunter and Blue

The rotation has five starters from three eras, and the order below is a ranking of value, not a game-one order.

Eddie Plank is the franchise's all-time wins leader with 284, and his 1,985 strikeouts and 59 shutouts are also club records. A Hall of Famer with 14 seasons with the team, he pitched in an era when complete games were routine, which inflates the totals relative to modern pitchers. Even with that discount he leads the list easily.

Lefty Grove won 195 games for the club in nine seasons, which is a remarkable rate. He won the 1931 MVP award, the season the club went 107-45, and his franchise ERA of 2.88 is notably good for a pitcher who worked in a high-scoring period. His 1,523 strikeouts rank fourth in club history.

Rube Waddell leads the franchise in ERA among pitchers with at least 1,000 innings at 1.97, and he is second in strikeouts with 1,576 in only six seasons. The ERA is a Deadball number, which means it sits in a low-run world, so it should be read against the league average of his day and not against modern pitchers.

Catfish Hunter won 161 games for the club and the 1974 Cy Young Award, in the middle of the three straight championships. His 1,520 strikeouts rank fifth in club history and his 31 shutouts rank fourth.

Vida Blue gets the fifth spot. In 1971, Blue won both the Cy Young Award and the MVP award, one of very few pitchers ever to do so. His 124 wins, 1,315 strikeouts and 28 shutouts keep him among the club leaders, though his peak was shorter than that of the other four.

Charles Bender, with 193 wins, 1,536 strikeouts and 36 shutouts, is the hardest pitcher to leave out. He is third in club wins and a Hall of Famer with 12 seasons. Any list that omits Bender is a list that has chosen the more recent names over the stronger ones, and the final slot was a close call between him and Blue. Barry Zito (2002 Cy Young) and Dave Stewart (1,152 strikeouts) also rate mentions.

The closer, the manager and the bench

Dennis Eckersley closes. His 320 saves are the club record by a wide margin; the next is Rollie Fingers with 136. Eckersley also leads in games pitched with 525, and in 1992 he won both the Cy Young Award and the MVP award as a reliever. Fingers, a Hall of Famer with nine seasons for the club, sets up. Fingers pitched for the Oakland club from 1968 to 1976 and Eckersley from 1987 to 1995, so the bullpen is the most modern part of the roster.

Connie Mack manages, and the record is almost silly. He was with the club from 1901 to 1950, and his record in 7,466 games was 3,582 wins and 3,814 losses. The losing record tells you how long he stayed after the club stopped winning, and the wins tell you how many seasons he managed. The more useful measure is the pennants: the Philadelphia club won nine pennants and five World Series between 1901 and 1931, all under Mack. Among later managers, Bob Melvin won 853 games from 2011 to 2021, Tony La Russa won 798 from 1986 to 1995, and Dick Williams went 288-190 from 1971 to 1973, with two titles in those years.

A bench would include Bob Johnson (1,617 hits, 252 home runs), Jason Giambi (2000 MVP, 198 homers), Jose Canseco (1988 MVP, 254 homers), Max Bishop (1,043 walks), Eric Chavez, and Sal Bando.

Players who just missed

Nearly every position has someone who deserved more than a bench seat:

• Jose Canseco won the 1986 Rookie of the Year award and the 1988 MVP award and hit 254 home runs for the club. He lost the DH slot to McGwire's longer record.
• Bob Johnson is third in club RBI with 1,040 and fifth in club history in home runs with 252 across 1933 to 1942. He hit for power and drew 853 walks, and would start for most clubs.
• Sal Bando and Eric Chavez lost third base to Baker.
• Jason Giambi, the 2000 MVP, hit 198 homers.
• Miguel Tejada won the 2002 MVP award.
• Charles Bender, discussed above, is the toughest pitching cut.
• Rollie Fingers is the closer who lost to Eckersley.
• Jimmy Dykes collected 1,705 hits, fourth on the franchise list, and later managed the club for three seasons.

What the numbers cannot tell you

The biggest gap is the one nobody can close from these lists: how good were players of different eras relative to their own league? A .356 average in the late 1920s was against a league that hit well; a 1.97 ERA in 1902 to 1907 was against a league that hit little. The historical record shows only the raw counts, so every cross-era comparison above is a judgment about context, not a measurement.

A second gap is defense. Campaneris's reputation as a shortstop and Henderson's as a left fielder rest partly on fielding, which this database does not measure well for the older years. A third is segregation. Black players were barred from the major leagues during most of the Philadelphia years, so the great players of the Negro Leagues never faced these Athletics in a regular-season game. The historical record carries Negro Leagues statistics for 1920 to 1948, but those players are not Athletics and sit outside this comparison, which is a fact about the sport's history and not only about the data.

Finally, a few of these players had careers that were not confined to the Athletics. Reading the franchise totals as a full career for Henderson, Jackson, Eckersley or Collins would understate all four. For their full careers, use the site's player pages.

Common questions

Why is Rickey Henderson not in the middle of the order? His job on this team is the leadoff job, where his 1,227 walks and 867 steals do the most good. A team with McGwire, Foxx, Simmons and Jackson behind him is built to bring him home.

Is this the best team the Athletics could field in a single game? Probably not in a literal sense, because the era problem makes it impossible to say. It is the best set of players by the criteria stated, and the exercise is meant to start an argument.

Why no Kansas City players? The Kansas City years, 1955 to 1967, are the thinnest stretch in the franchise record. The names that appear on the club lists from that time are mainly players who started there and became stars later: Campaneris's span begins in 1964 and Hunter's in 1965.

What about the 2025 team? The Athletics played the 2025 season in West Sacramento at Sutter Health Park, a Triple-A ballpark with a capacity of about 14,000, while a new ballpark is built in Las Vegas. Nick Kurtz won the 2025 Rookie of the Year award with the club; one season is too short for a position on an all-time team.

How many Hall of Famers does the franchise have? The historical record lists 17 who played at least four seasons for the club, from Eddie Plank and Rickey Henderson (14 seasons each) down to Herb Pennock, Nap Lajoie and George Kell (four each).

Where to go next

For the full story of the three cities and the title runs, read the History of the Athletics and the best seasons and every October run. Fans of the park should look at the Sutter Health Park guide, and the larger October context is in the history of the World Series. The club's live record and schedule are on the Athletics team page, with the ballpark page alongside.