First base was to be one of the least predictable positions on the Red Sox roster this season. Could Mitch Moreland stay healthy? Would Michael Chavis regain his early 2019 production? How soon could Bobby Dalbec take over (and would he live up to the hype if he did)? We’ll have to wait to find out.

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For this list, we’re holding each player to only one spot (otherwise, it would be four or five names repeating over and over again).

MORE TOP 10 SOX SEASONS: RF | CF | LF | SS | 3B | 2B | 1B | DH | C | RP | SP

1. Jimmie Foxx – 1938

This is not the best season on this list – that’s coming up next – but it is the best true first base season in Red Sox history.

In his third year with the team, Foxx did not quite have a career year, but 1938 was the only year in which he led the American League in all three slash categories, and he had a career-high 175 RBIs. He hit .405 at Fenway Park that season and won his third and final MVP award.

Foxx had a few Philadelphia seasons that were better, but this was his best in Boston, helping cement his place as the best first baseman in Red Sox history.

If you limit the search to those who played 100 games at first base, Foxx’s 7.6 WAR in 1938 is easily the best in franchise history. In fact, by that 100-game standard, Foxx has three of the top five first base seasons for the Red Sox.

2. Carl Yastrzemski – 1970

By WAR, clearly a better season than Foxx in ’38, but we’re dropping it to second because Yaz started 65 games in the outfield. He was primarily a first baseman – first time in his career that he played more games at first than in left – but his 1970 was not purely a first base season.

Yastrzemski began that 1970 season in his usual left field, but in mid-June, George Scott moved from first to third, Yastrzemski took over at first, and Billy Conigliaro – brother of right fielder Tony – finally got a chance to play every day in left. Conigliaro finished with his best season in the majors, and Yastrzemski had his second-best. He finished fourth in MVP voting and was named All-Star Game MVP (he had four hits while playing center field and first base). In 328 at-bats as a first baseman that season, Yastrzemski had 22 home runs and a 1.060 OPS, numbers slightly better than when he played left field.

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If not this season, we could have included Yastrzemski’s 1973 when he played even more first base and had a 5.5 WAR.

3. Adrian Gonzalez – 2011

Nine months after this season earned him a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger and a seventh-place finish in MVP voting, Gonzalez was traded to Los Angeles in perhaps the most famous salary dump in Red Sox history (at least, until the Mookie Betts/David Price deal two months ago).

How good was Gonzalez’s one full season in Boston? Go to FanGraphs and rank the highest career WAR of all Red Sox first basemen, and Gonzalez ranks in the top 10 despite playing fewer than 300 games for the organization.

The Red Sox acquired him from San Diego in December 2010, a trade that cost the Sox sixth-round draft pick Anthony Rizzo.

Gonzalez immediately lived up to his billing. He had a 1.006 OPS in the first half of 2011 and started in the All-Star Game ahead of Miguel Cabrera. Gonzalez’s 213 hits led all of baseball (tied with Michael Young) and he finished third in the American League in OPS.

He was putting up remarkably similar numbers the following year when he was traded to facilitate the Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford salary dump with the Dodgers.

4. Mo Vaughn – 1998

The hardest choice on this list was picking which Vaughn season to include. From 1995 through 1998, the left-handed slugger had four straight seasons of at least a .963 OPS. And that stretch really includes 1994 as well, when he played only 111 games. His lowest OPS+ during that time came in 1995, when he won MVP. He was also beloved for his work with the Jimmy Fund Clinic.

But which of his seasons was the best? By most metrics, his MVP season doesn’t quite measure up, which makes it a draw between 1996 and 1998. Baseball-Reference credits 5.6 WAR for each season, so it really is a toss-up.

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Our gut instinct was to go with 1996 – lower OPS+, but a whopping 71 additional plate appearances – but the tiebreaker became Vaughn’s performance in the 1998 division series. The Red Sox lost that series to the Indians, but Vaughn was a monster, hitting .412 with two home runs, two doubles and an .882 slugging percentage. He and Nomar Garciaparra drove in 18 of the 20 Red Sox runs.

5. Kevin Youkilis – 2008

For reasons similar to Yastrzemski, Youkilis is tough to place on a list like this. Youkilis was rarely only a first baseman. His highest WAR season was 2009, but he split that season almost perfectly between first base and third base, and his highest OPS+ came in 2010, but he played only 102 games total.

We’ll go with his 2008 season as the first base standout. He was not yet playing a lot of third base, with only 32 starts at the hot corner. Mike Lowell was still playing every day – but Youkilis was emerging as one of the best hitters in the American League.

Up to that point, Youkilis had lived up to his reputation for elite on-base ability, but he was only a .434 career slugger through four seasons. In 2008, the power really emerged with career highs of 29 home runs and 43 doubles. Youkilis also finished third in MVP voting, the highest such finish of his career.

6. Buck Freeman – 1901

The Society for American Baseball Research has called him “the first legitimate home run hitter in baseball history,” and that was not a celebrated achievement at the time. Many in the game didn’t like home runs at the turn of the last century, and Freeman had hit 25 of them in 1899 (more than double the next-closest slugger).

He wound up joining the Red Sox franchise – then called the Americans – for its inaugural 1901 season, and promptly set a strong standard at first base.

Freeman led the team in batting average and had the second-highest OPS in the league. His 12 home runs – half of them inside-the-park — were also second-most in the American League. Freeman would go on to lead the franchise in home runs and RBIs each of its first four seasons. No Red Sox player would break his single-season home run record until Babe Ruth in 1919. His single-season RBI record would stand until Jimmie Foxx surpassed it in 1936.

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Freeman stayed with the Red Sox until 1907 and was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2018. Though he was mostly an outfielder, his debut season at first base still stands out in franchise history.

7. George Scott – 1967

During the Impossible Dream season, Scott’s OPS jumped more than 50 points in the second half, and he slashed .342/.419/.526 in the decisive final 10 games. He finished the year with the second-highest WAR and second-best batting average on the team (behind, of course, Yastrzemski). His OPS was behind only Yaz and Tony Conigliaro. He finished 10th in MVP voting.

Perhaps just as significantly, Scott won his first of eight Gold Glove awards in 1967. It was only his second year in the majors, and he was quickly building a reputation as one of the best defensive first basemen of his generation. Scott would go on to have a few arguably better seasons in Milwaukee, but the best of his nine seasons with the Red Sox was the Impossible Dream of ’67.

8. Dale Alexander – 1932

Remarkably, this is a partial season. Not only that, it’s a partial season within one of the worst years in Red Sox history.

The 1932 Red Sox were awful. They lost 111 games, still the most in franchise history, and on June 13, they traded right fielder Earl Webb to the Tigers for two players. It was a steal for the Red Sox because of Roy Johnson’s four seasons and Alexander’s one.

Replacing the underwhelming duo of Al Van Camp and Johnny Watwood at first base, Alexander had 15 hits in his first nine games with the Red Sox, then he went on to hit at least .371 in each of the final three months of the season. He’d arrived with a .250 batting average but wound up leading the American League in hitting at .367, the first Red Sox player to do so. The Society for American Baseball Research notes that his limited playing time – only 392 at-bats – would not have qualified for the batting title under today’s standards, and it was actually Foxx who finished second. He otherwise would have won the Triple Crown.

For Alexander, though, it was a crowning achievement. Add 55 walks against 19 strikeouts, and his on-base percentage was similarly robust, and he finished 11th in MVP voting. The next season, though, would be his last in the majors. It was his first year hitting below .300, and SABR notes that a botched medical treatment badly damaged his leg: “He was so badly burned that there was worry he might lose the leg. Fortunately, amputation was never necessary.”

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9. Jake Stahl – 1909

An interesting player in Red Sox history because he was with them briefly in 1903, the year they won their first title as the Americans, then he returned to the organization in time to play a role in their 1912 championship.

In between, he led the league in strikeouts three times and led in home runs once. That was in 1910, when he homered just 10 times. Two of his teammates, Duffy Lewis (eight homers) and Tris Speaker (seven), also ranked top four in home runs that season. What a time.

That 1910 season actually generated a slightly higher WAR, but we’ll single out his 1909 season because of his 153 OPS+, which would have been fourth-best in the American League last season. If the league calculated such a thing back then, Stahl’s regular OPS would have ranked fourth in the league, ahead of Speaker, Nap Lajoie and Home Run Baker. He was ninth in batting average, sixth in slugging percentage and third in home runs (with six). An impressive year from a very different time.

10. Mike Napoli – 2013

There’s a strong case for George Burns in this spot. He finished 10th in MVP voting in 1923, and he had a higher WAR (but a lower OPS+) than Napoli in 2013, but there are some intangible elements to consider. Most notably: Can you imagine that 2013 championship season without Napoli?

One of the offseason stopgaps signed by second-year general manager Ben Cherington, Napoli had the second-highest OPS on the team behind only David Ortiz. He was also second in home runs and RBIs as he adjusted to his first full season as a first baseman (he’d caught 72 games the year before).

As one of the bearded leaders on a team of overachievers, Napoli makes our list.

(Photo of Vaughn: John Mottern / AFP via Getty Images)

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