Boston Red Sox: Ranking the top 10 players from the 1970s
By Drew Athans
Carl Yastrzemski
To the surprise of no one, Carl Yastrzemski is on this list. His twenty-three year career, all of which was spent with the Red Sox, spanned the entirety of the 1960s and 1970s before it ended in 1983. While Yaz’s best seasons were between 1967 (when he won the American League Triple Crown) and 1970 (with another batting title won in 1968), he was still very, very good in the 1970s.
After hitting forty or more home runs in 1967, 1969, and 1970, Yaz never again even hit over thirty in a season for the rest of his career, but his steady production at the plate and defense in the field (he won Gold Gloves in 1971 and 1977 in addition to the five he won in the 1960s) helped lead the Red Sox to their most successful decade in a long time.
For the 1970s, Yaz hit .282 with 202 home runs, 846 RBI, 1492 hits, 846 runs scored, a .382 OBP, and an OPS of .832 between 1970 and 1979. His production was steady and dependable and he played no fewer than 144 games in any season during the decade. Yaz also started playing a fair amount of first base during the 1970s although he still remained primarily a left fielder.
While Carl Yastrzemski would come up short of making the postseason a few times in the 1970s and narrowly missed out winning a World Series in 1975, he was the undisputed leader of those teams and one of their best and most productive players of the decade.