Offseason Primer - Part 2: First Base and Designated Hitter

By Jonathan Northrop - Angelswin.com Columnist Extraordinaire This is the second of a seven part series; part one, the introduction and rundown for Catcher can be found here. Look to see new parts published two or three times a week over the next few weeks. Preamble: A Tradition of MediocrityIf you take a look at Angels position players throughout the team's 51-year history, there is a noted lack of superstars. Certainly there have been some big names that have played on the Angels--from Reggie Jackson to Rod Carew to Dave Winfield to Eddie Murray--but most have been in the winding down phases of their careers (to long-term fans of the team this was, of course, a defining feature of the team from the late 70s to the early 90s). If we loosely define "superstar" as being a player who is among the ten or twenty best in the game, we can find superstar-caliber performances by Angels players, from Darin Erstad and Troy Glaus in 2000 to Tim Salmon in 1995 to Doug DeCinces in ...