The Best MLB Lineup of All Time — Build Your Own, Any Player, Any Season
Pick nine of the best single seasons in baseball history, hand them to a batting order optimizer, and the result is not the order most people would write. Ted Williams leads off. Barry Bonds bats second. Shohei Ohtani, with a 1.036 OPS in his 2024 season, bats ninth.
Every line below came out of the free Baseball NUT Lineup Builder, which pulls any MLB player’s real season stats and sorts them into a batting order. Here is the lineup, why it came out this way, and how to build your own.
The all-time lineup
One season per player, picked from each hitter’s peak. The optimizer set the order.
Lines are AVG / OBP / SLG for that season.
Why it came out this way
The Lineup Builder fills the order by rule. The top two spots go to the two highest on-base percentages, because they bat most often and start the most innings. Third goes to the best remaining OPS, cleanup to the most slugging, fifth to the next-most slugging, and the bottom four by OPS.
· Williams leads off because his .551 OBP in 1941 is the best of the nine. He is also the last .400 hitter in the majors.
· Bonds bats second, not third or fourth. His 2001 season has the highest OPS here (1.378) and the highest slugging (.863), but his .515 OBP is second best, so the on-base rule places him first.
· Ruth bats third as the best remaining overall hitter, Gehrig cleanup on a .765 slugging percentage. In 1927 they batted back to back for the Yankees too.
· Ohtani bats ninth with a .310/.390/.646 line and a 1.036 OPS, the lowest of this group. On a normal team it is a middle-of-the-order season. The spot says more about the other eight than about him.
How to build your own all-time lineup
1. Open the Lineup Builder and tap MLB Search.
2. Search any player, active or retired. Babe Ruth and this year’s rookies are both searchable.
3. Pick a season from the dropdown, or Career for his whole career line, then tap Add to Roster. Each player can go in once, with one season.
4. Add at least nine hitters, then tap Optimize Lineup. Add more than nine and the rest go to the bench, ranked by OPS.
It only uses hitting stats, so a pitcher with no batting line can’t be added. It also doesn’t know positions, so it will happily bat four first basemen in a row. That’s the fun part of an all-time lineup.
Lineups worth building
· Your team’s all-time lineup. The best single season at each spot in franchise history.
· Best lineup by decade. The 1990s against the 1930s, same rules.
· Career vs. peak. Build the same nine players with career lines, then again with best seasons, and see how the order moves.
· This year’s best lineup. Nine 2026 seasons. To see who is actually producing the most right now, check the NUT leaderboard.
Want to compare two of these seasons head to head instead? The Stat Comparison tool puts any two players side by side.