Each player selected by Bill James for the decade was sometime on the contemporary, annual All America Team selected by F.C. Lane for Baseball Magazine. Measured by a simple count of seasons selected, F.C. Lane rated Schang behind Ray Schalk, rated McInnis behind both Jake Daubert and 4-year firstbaseman George Sisler, and agreed on the others.
"seasons". Bill James reports player statistics in "seasonal notation": per full season played, using 45 starts for pitchers and 154 games for regulars in this era. The selection of Cobb in the Oughts is unusual, with only 3.86 "seasons" played in the decade.Bill James' Stars of the Decade
1900-1909 seasons pos. 1910-1919 seasons Roger Bresnahan 6.34 C Wally Schang 4.73 Frank Chance 6.72 1B Stuffy McInnis 8.18 Nap Lajoie 7.95 2B Eddie Collins 9.36 Honus Wagner 9.05 SS Honus Wagner 6.73 Jimmy Collins 7.14 3B Frank Baker 8.15 Mike Donlin 5.22 LF Joe Jackson 7.62 Ty Cobb 3.86 CF Tris Speaker 9.34 Sam Crawford 9.16 RF Ty Cobb 8.67 Christy Mathewson 8.23 P Walter Johnson 9.25 Cy Young 8.64 Pete Alexander 7.55 Mordecai Brown 5.01 Christy Mathewson 5.13 (no fourth) Hippo Vaughn 6.90
Outfield positions. Opinions differ concerning whether the outfield is one position or three. Ty Cobb was the regular centerfielder in Detroit for 17 seasons, but only one during the 1900s decade (1906). Cobb and Crawford played eleven seasons together with Crawford in center for three seasons, 1907-09. Mike Donlin was his team's regular CF in 1905 and 1911, a part-timer on a troubled team.
Star of Two Decades. Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, and Christy Mathewson are All Stars for both deadball decades. Cy Young is the only repeater from the 1890s to the 1900s and Pete Alexander is the only repeater from the 1910s to the 1920s.
Star Teammates. Most "Stars of the Oughts" were teammates for several years: Collins and Young (Collins as player-manager), Boston AL; Cobb and Crawford, Detroit AL; Bresnahan, Donlin and Mathewson, New York NL; Chance and Brown (Chance as player-manager), Chicago NL. Among the "Stars of the Teens": McInnis, Collins and Baker were three-fourths of the "$100,000 infield", Philadelphia AL, and they teamed with catcher Schang during his first two seasons. Collins and Jackson were teammates, Chicago AL, after the rearrangements mid-decade.
Stars from Two Leagues. Bill James selected four regulars each from the American League and the National League for the 1900s, when the AL contested nine major league seasons; seven from the AL and Wagner from the NL for the 1910s.