Friday Stuff
Black and White Edition
Monday
Here are the career statistics of a pair of shortstops whose careers overlapped for about a decade. Take a look and decide which one was better.
That’s just offense, obviously. To give you a sense of their defensive abilities, here are a few other details:
Left-column shortstop: Finished with +68 career fielding runs and 12.2 defensive WAR. Led the league in dWAR three times, led the league in fielding percentage 13 times, in putouts seven times, and in range, assists, and double plays six times each.
Right-column shortstop: Finished with +118 career fielding runs and 23.3 defensive WAR. Led the league in dWAR four times, led the league in fielding percentage eight times, in double plays five times, in putouts four times, and in assists and range twice each.
The most obvious differences between them are that the second guy played way more games, while the first guy was obviously the better hitter, but that’s misleading because the first guy played in the Negro Leagues, and had enormous chunks of his career go undocumented. In reality, he played a considerably longer career (21 recorded years) than did the guy in the right-hand column (15 years). It might help to break there numbers down to 162-game averages to give a more apples-to-apples comparison.
Left-column: 8.2 WAR, 145 runs, 201 hits, 40 doubles, 10 triples, 22 homers, 132 RBI, 27 steals, 76 walks, .328/.409/.538 batting line, +10 fielding runs, 1.8 dWAR
Right-column: 6.2 WAR, 85 runs, 175 hits, 38 doubles, 6 triples, 7 homers, 78 RBI, 5 steals, 78 walks, .295/.380/.415 batting line, +12 fielding runs, 2.3 dWAR
Okay, we should have enough to make a decision here. The player on the right was a slightly better defensive shortstop, but both of them were very good. Meanwhile, while the right-hand guy was a good offensive player for a shortstop, the guy on the left was an outstanding hitter in every way. He had a better average, hit for more power, and stole more bases, each by a lot, all while playing nearly as well defensively and doing it for six extra big league seasons. There really isn’t any contest; game-for-game, the shortstop on the left was considerably better than the one on the right.
The guy on the right was Lou Boudreau, who died on this date in 2001. He was elected to the BBWAA in 1970 on his 12th appearance on the ballot. Candidly, the writers should be ashamed of themselves for waiting as long as they did to elect him, but Boudreau had a comparatively short career and was also a bit of a divisive personality. He’d been a player/manager since he was 24 years old and a certain amount of arrogance came with that.
But everyone involved should be even more ashamed that it took so long to elect Willie Wells. He’s the guy on the left, and he was born on this date in 1908. Known as “El Diablo” to the crowds he played for in Mexico for many years, Wells has a very good case for being the greatest shortstop in history. Personally, I’d still take Honus Wagner, but by a very slim margin.
Despite that fact, Wells wasn’t elected to Cooperstown until 1997. He never got to enjoy it, having passed away in 1989, while Boudreau, clearly the lesser player of the two, got to enjoy the final 31 years of his life with the status of a Hall of Famer. That’s good, he deserved it.
But Willie Wells deserved it more.
