First Gloves: Harvey Kuenn

What would a shortstop who routinely batted .300 be worth these days?

That’s a question we can pretty much answer. Since 2000, there have been 67 individual seasons in which someone played more than half their games at shortstop, got enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, and had an average of .300 or better. Those ranged from Nicky Lopez batting exactly .300 for the Royals in 2021 to Nomar Garciaparra winning the batting title by hitting .372 for the Red Sox in 2000.

Lopez was making the league minimum that year since he was still not eligible for arbitration. Garciaparra was making $3.7 million. Both of those numbers are pretty low by today’s standards. Corey Seager has a couple of those .300 seasons and he makes more than $35 million annually. I could look up all 67 seasons, find the salary each player had, and come up with a simple average, adjust for inflation, service time, and so on. I’m not going to do all that, but it’s clear that the answer would have two commas, and probably eight digits. It’s a lot of money.

Harvey Kuenn didn’t make that much. Nowhere close. When Wilson was cranking out glove like this one in the 1950s with Kuenn’s signature in the palm, he was making less than $40,000 a year.