The best Northeast Ohio area players in MLB history

Earlier this week I looked at the best Cleveland players in history, focusing on Cuyahoga County and then adding the Greater Cleveland Area: Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties.

Today, we review we'll increase the pool to Northeast Ohio, adding in Ashland, Ashtabula, Carroll, Columbiana, Mahoning, Portage, Richland, Stark, Summit, Trumbull and Wayne counties. Again, I have included players who were born in those counties, and/or played at a high school, junior college, or university there.

Adding in those areas, rich with players from Akron and Youngstown, increased the pool by 79 position players and 80 pitchers.

Northeast Ohio Batters

This team gets some serious upgrades all over the place. Munson was an obvious choice at catcher, while McGuire had some pretty decent numbers in the olden days. I always know him as the Cleveland manager who replaced Nap Lajoie from 1909-1911. John Roseboro was another decent option behind the plate.

Adding Sisler at first was another no-brainer, giving the lineup its third Hall of Famer.The middle of the infield remains as it was, with McKean and Peckinpaugh. Frank LaPointe and Sam Wise were the only other options. There wasn't anyone else to replace Bando, but that's fine, because he was plenty good. I hated bumping Bill Bradley from the bench, but White's numbers were too good to pass up.

The original outfield had two Hall of Famers already, but there were plenty of other options to improve center field, the bench, and DH. Oliver is a good upgrade in center while Woodling can play all three positions. Henrich put up great numbers for the Yankees. Two great names in Topsy Hartsel and Socks Seybold just missed the team.

Northeast Ohio Pitchers

While the hitters received a lot of help from the rest of northeast Ohio, the pitching staff did not. Dean Chance is an upgrade, but not a huge one. Galehouse may or may not be an upgrade. I added Knepper to be the new long man, but I might be better off having kept Bagby Jr. Wilkins as another new face in the pen.

There were 15 starters who made 100 or more starts. That list included Brian Anderson, Bob Rhoads, Dustin Hermanson, Jack Kralick and Dave Dravecky.

Relievers left out include Brian Bruney, Jeff Tabaka, Brad Hennessey and Travis Miller.

This team's lineup would be fantastic, while the starting rotation would be solid and the bullpen would be pretty average, maybe even a it below that. All in all, it's a team that would win a lot of games.