Monday
Oscar “Heavy” Johnson was one of the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, and accomplished something so rare that every player who has ever achieved it is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Except Johnson, who sadly has been passed over for that honor so far. I took a look at his brilliant career in Monday’s edition of the newsletter.
Here is the full list of players in baseball history who had as many career hits as Joe Judge (2,352) and batted .300 at least nine times, as Judge did, but aren’t in the Hall of Fame despite being eligible. I’m excluding the Manny's, Barrys, and A-Rods of the world since we know why they aren’t in the Hall of Fame:
George Van Haltren
Stuffy McInnis
Jimmy Ryan
Al Oliver
Mark Grace
That’s a pretty small group, and Judge may have had the best career among them.
I know why these guys aren’t in Cooperstown - They each fall just a bit below the usual cutoff point for players to be elected. In the case of Judge, who passed away 61-years ago this past Monday, he’s ranked by Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system as just the 45th-best first baseman ever, and that’s well short of the level needed to be elected.
But Judge had a helluva career. He hit .300 nine times, as noted, and stole 213 bases, and hit 159 triples, which is in the top-50 all-time. He was a good defensive first baseman, leading the league in fielding percentage five times and in double plays twice, totaling +35 Fielding Runs for his career. Stuck on bad Senators teams most of his career, when he finally got a chance to play in the World Series in 1924 he batted .385 and Washington won the title.
That’s a great career, whether he deserves a plaque in upstate New York or not.
Tuesday
WAR is an imperfect statistic. Most of them are in one way or another. Since it’s both new and imperfect, WAR takes a lot of heat from folks who aren’t ready to accept it for what it is, which leads to folks creating entire social media accounts dedicated to pointing out the flaws and quirks of WAR. Usually that’s pretty entertaining, and even valuable since it keeps folks from putting too much faith in the gospel of WAR or any other single statistic. But sometimes those folks folks choose really unfortunate examples when trying to make that point, and I looked at one of them in Tuesday’s newsletter.
It’s a shame that the ballparks he called home worked so hard to keep people from seeing what a great hitter Jim Wynn was. Tuesday would have been his 82nd birthday, and he’s not talking about much anymore unless the subject is Great Baseball Nicknames, because “The Toy Cannon” absolutely belongs on that list.
With the Astrodome and Dodger Stadium, two horrible parks for hitters, being the places he played the most, his career numbers were suppressed pretty badly. In cases like his, I like to look at the Neutralized Batting feature in Baseball-Reference.com to get an idea of what his career might have looked like in a more normal hitting environment. In Wynn’s case, it projects to add 12 points to his batting average, 17 homers, nearly 100 RBI, and over 100 runs scored. Using his neutral numbers, he’d have over 1,200 runs scored, over 300 homers, over 225 steals, over 1,000 RBI, and over 1,200 walks. Here’s the list of all players to reach each of those marks:
Barry Bonds
Willie Mays
Henry Aaron
Álex Rodriguez
Reggie Jackson
Gary Sheffield
Now, Wynn wasn’t really in the class of any of these guys except maybe Sheffield, but that’s a pretty exclusive group. If the Astrodome and Dodger Stadium had been more normal places to hit, I’m guessing folks would remember more about Jim Wynn than just his awesome nickname.
Wednesday
Whether it’s “base running,” two words, or “baserunning,” one word, I decided to look at who could be considered the best to ever run the bases in baseball history. That’s a fool’s errand since full base running stats simply weren’t captured for most of the game’s history, but there are a few tools available to us, and we can make a pretty good guess at who was the best base runner ever. I did that in Wednesday’s edition.
On the occasion of Johan Santana’s 45th birthday, which was Wednesday, I’m going to link to a couple of prior editions of the newsletter in which I mention how great he was.
In this one I wrote about the 2005 Cy Young Award, and how it went to Bartolo Colón for silly reasons that masked the fact that Colón wasn’t even as good as his own teammate, John Lackey, that year, let alone as good as Santana, who should have won it. The decision to give the award to Colón cost Santana the honor of winning three Cy Youngs in a row.
And in this one I wrote about players who had dominant but short stretches of their career, as Santana did, and what constitutes enough dominance to warrant election to the Hall of Fame. Personally, I think Santana should have been elected to Cooperstown, and I think the failure of the baseball writers to A) Give him the 2005 Cy Young he deserved, and B) Give him more than the ten measly votes he received the only time he appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot, is a damn shame.
Thursday
The Pirates’ dream season in 1960 included a World Series title, a Cy Young Award for Vern Law, and the MVP for Dick Groat. I’ve already covered why Law’s Cy Young was likely given to the wrong Pirate, so on Thursday I looked at whether or not Groat’s MVP should have gone to someone else, too. There’s no question that several players had better seasons than Groat did that year, but his MVP doesn’t look quite as bad as you’d think.
It’s players like Marty McManus that make me write my Baseball Remembers series. Thursday was his 124th birthday, and I honestly knew almost nothing about the guy before I discovered that fact. The name was vaguely familiar, but then maybe I was mixing him up with Marty Marion.
McManus played for teams that weren’t very good his entire career and never appeared in the postseason. He batted over .300 in four different seasons, and led the American League in doubles once, and in steals another year, but for the most part he slid under the radar. There were a handful of years in which he got some very down-ballot MVP votes, but he never came close to be recognized nationally as he toiled away for the St. Louis Browns, and Detroit Tigers, and some truly atrocious Red Sox teams.
Still, was his career terribly different from MVP-winner Dick Groat, who we just mentioned?
No, it wasn’t. McManus was a much better hitter, playing a career of roughly the same length. He just did it for much worse teams at a time before the All-Star game existed, and didn’t have the good fortune of having that one season that was just a little bit better than his others so he could receive national recognition for it.
But Marty McManus was a really good player. Look him up. He’s worth remembering.
Friday
As if to illustrate exactly how unfair it is that Marty McManus isn’t remembered much, the anniversary of the death of guy whose name I confused with McManus, Marty Marion, was on Friday, just one day after McManus’ birthday. Marion, like Groat, was also an MVP, and played for championship teams, so he’s remembered more and there have been periodic calls for him to be elected to the Hall of Fame. But Marty McManus had a better overall career than Marion, too.
So here’s a repeat hat-tip to Marty McManus, World War I veteran, ballplayer, manager (including in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League), and advocate for unionizing players. His career and life really deserved a better fate.
Paul, it drives me crazy when you give a list of guys with "at least" in several statistics, when I think you know and Bill James showed years ago how dishonest that is. You draw a line where the guy you are talking about is just over the line, then list all these guys, who are WAY over that line, and say they are comparable when they aren't. Better to do a range: guys with 250-300 career homers, say, and 150-200 stolen bases, batting average .275-.290 or whatnot.
That said, I think Jimmy Wynn has a low-key case for the Hall of Fame, if we properly adjust for ballparks. He was that good.
Another interesting post Paul, you give me a couple of guys I’ve don’t think I’ve ever heard of, Van Haltren & Ryan from the 1800’s, plus Marty McManus and then one of my favorites Jim Wynn. I went to BR to check out McManus and saw he once led the league in strikeouts with 69 in 154 games, made me wonder if anyone in today’s game strikes out less than 69 times in 150 games.