Sean McAdams, Mindreader?

Check it out

It looks like someone over at ESPN reads Sons of Sam Horn. About a week ago, Theo emailed me a thread from SOSH about where Ortiz and Ramirez stand in the history of great and relatively long-lived 3-4 hitter combinations. This is an excellent question since they are obviously the best out there today (although the combination of Pujols and anyone, especially someone as productive as Jim Edmonds is when he's healthy is pretty close behind, in my opinion). This afternoon, I was checking the mlb page at espn.com, as I regularly do after I take my lunch, and, lo and behold, the featured article, written by Sean McAdams, states that not only are Ortiz and Manny the premier 3-4 hitter combination in baseball today, they should also be considered one of the best combos of all time.

Instead of answering the initial question of where Manny and Ortiz stand in the all time rankings, I was content to merely try to come up with what other duos should be thought of as great 3-4 hitter combos. In addition, instead of trying to think of great duos from every era, I decided to try to think of some of the best in since the early 90's. I made this decision since it seems like the kind of question that, to be answered well, needs to be answered by someone who has either memorized the baseball encyclopedia or intensely followed MLB on a day to day basis in the period in question. Luckily for me, we now have an all time list (sorry it is insider only), courtesy of Rob Neyer.

Now, on to my not even close to authoritative, not even thoroughly investigated, unranked list (if you want to look at their stats I would check out either baseballprospectus.com or baseball-reference.com):

Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome, Cleveland Indians, 1996-2000
Ken Griffey Junior and Alex Rodriguez, Seattle Mariners, 1996-1999 (this is sketchy since I think in some of those seasons ARod was hitting second and Griffey was hitting third)
Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado, Toronto Blue Jays, 1998-1999
Jeff Kent and Barry Bonds, San Francisco Giants, 1997-2002 (minus '99 when Bonds was injured)
Jeff Bagwell and Ken Caminiti, Houston Astros, 1994-1998 (when Caminiti was healthy he had great stats, doesn't have the overall compiled numbers but check out his OPS+, nothing to scoff at)
Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla, Pittsburg Pirates, 1988-1991 (this duo, ironically, suffers from the ridiculous, steroid aided number of the mid and late 90s. Check out they're respective OPS+ and then look at their numbers, this will give you a good perspective on how crazy the numbers from the latter part of that decade were. These guys were far and away the most feared duo in the NL at the time)

Out of these duos, only ARod and Griffey Jr. and Bonds and Kent are on the same level as Ortiz and Ramirez. This just shows you how great they really are.