Boston Red Sox: Ranking the top 10 players from the 1990s
By Drew Athans
The Red Sox of the 1990s had some very good teams but weren’t quite good enough. Here’s a list of their ten best players from that decade.
Having been born at the very beginning of 1980, I’ve always considered myself a child of both the 1980s and 1990s. The earlier decade encompassed my elementary school years and I started middle school in 1990. So the latter decade spanned the entirety of my high school and college years and I feel fully a part of both.
Even though the 1980s Red Sox teams are the ones I look back with the most nostalgia when I think about my childhood (especially the 1986 team), I have a lot of good memories of the 1990s teams as well. Like the 80s, the 90s started off with some bad Red Sox teams but by the middle of the decade, they were competitive once again.
The 90s Red Sox had the misfortune of playing during the heyday of the great New York Yankees dynasty that won four World Series between 1996 and 2000. The Cleveland Indians of the decade, who won two pennants and six division titles that decade, also stood in the way of the Red Sox.
Boston made the postseason three times in the 90s (in 1995, 1998, and 1999) and in each case lost before reaching the World Series, only once making it to the ALCS (in 1999). Their teams were very good but not good quite enough, a label that seemed to follow them until they finally broke through and won the World Series in 2004.
However, the teams of the mid-to-late 90s were fun to watch and showcased some great players, many of whom are on the following list. The joy of winning in 2004 eased the angst of the teams from the past that came up short, so let’s just have some fun with this one.
Having just done this list for the best Red Sox players of the 1980s, I knew I had to continue and look at the best from the 1990s. Those two decades encompassed the totality of my first twenty years while, so let’s begin in no particular order.