Friday Stuff
Monday
Monday would have been Bobby Murcer’s 78th birthday. He was a really good player, but he’s rarely included in the list of players who lost stats to military service. Murcer spent the entire 1967 and 1968 seasons serving in the Army during the Vietnam War. Upon returning he was instantly a successful big leaguer, hitting 26 homers, driving in 82 runs, and posting an OPS+ of 119 at the age of twenty-three in 1969.
Before leaving for the Army, Murcer had posted a .750 OPS at Triple A Toledo when he was twenty, and had already been called up for a couple of stints with the Yankees. Since the Yankee outfield in both ‘67 and ‘68 featured some pretty mundane performances by Tom Tresh, Steve Whitaker, and Andy Kosco, I think it’s safe to say that Murcer would have won a regular job a couple of years sooner than he did if not for his time in the Army.
In Murcer’s first three seasons he had the following averages: 152 games, 90 runs, 156 hits, 25 homers, 85 RBI, 12 steals, 76 walks, a batting line of .279/.364/.470, an OPS+ of 137, and 4.4 WAR.
So let’s give him credit for a couple of additional seasons at that level of performance. If we do, his career totals look like this: 2,212 games, 1,152 runs, 2,174 hits, 333 doubles, 53 triples, 302 homers, 1,213 RBI, 151 steals, 1,014 walks, a batting line of .277/.359/.449, an OPS+ of around 126, and 40.9 WAR. Now, that’s not a Hall of Fame career, but it’s a really, really good career. That’s sort of Paul O’Neill’s career, right?
Well, the Yankees retired Paul O’Neill’s number a couple of years ago. He played in 1,254 games as a Yankee. Murcer played in 1,256, and would have played in about 300 more if not for serving his country. It seems only fair that he be considered for the same honor. Granted, Murcer’s primary number with the Yankees was #1, which has since been retired in honor of Billy Martin, but they’ve retired the same number in honor of multiple players before, #8 for both Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra.
Since O’Neill is the standard for number retirement that the Yankees have set, and it wouldn’t take any other numbers out of the rotation with #1 already being retired, it would be fitting if the Yankees would make that gesture for Murcer, a guy who had the same sort of career O’Neill had and literally wrote a book called “Yankee For Life.”
Tuesday
Now that I’ve lauded one under-appreciated Yankee, let me immediately use up that goodwill by taking a shot at a Yankee who has been lauded a bit too much. Kent Hrbek turned 64 on Tuesday, which gives us another reason to post this graphic that Don Mattingly fans really don’t want to see.
Now, I will happily note that Mattingly won nine Gold Gloves while Hrbek didn’t win any. I will also note that Hrbek had more Fielding Runs than Mattingly in 1984, 1985, and 1989, and had the same amount as him in 1983, 1993, and 1994. I will point out that Mattingly won an MVP, though it’s pretty clear he shouldn’t have, but should also note that Hrbek finished second in MVP voting in 1984, and also probably shouldn’t have. I’ll gladly note that Mattingly had an outstanding OPS of 1.148 when he finally made the playoffs, while also noting that Hrbek won two rings that Mattingly didn’t.
Was Don Mattingly a better player than Kent Hrbek? Yes, he was, particularly at his healthy peak. But,
A) Was Hrbek way better than you likely remember? And,
B) Was Mattingly probably a bit worse?
Yes to both. The difference between them simply isn’t that great. It certainly wasn’t enough to warrant Mattingly getting fifteen chances at the Hall of Fame ballot and a high of 28% of the votes cast while Hrbek got 1% and was promptly thrown off after just one ballot. I wrote about this in more detail last year if anyone is interested, but the truth is that Don Mattingly’s Hall of Fame case rests on four great years, from 1984 to 1987, then a couple of good ones, then a handful of pretty average ones. Lots, and lots of players have that sort of résumé without getting anywhere near the attention. Including Kent Hrbek.
Wednesday
What would you think of a shortstop who could do all of the following?
Lead the league in batting average.
Lead the league in defensive WAR.
Lead the league in steals.
Lead the league in doubles.
Have an adjusted OPS of 134 for his career.
Average 126 runs scored per 162 games.
Average 221 hits per 162 games.
Average 6.6 WAR per 162 games.
I mean, that’s a superstar, right? For some context, that gives this player the same OPS+ as Corey Seager or Gunnar Henderson. It gives him roughly the same WAR per 162 as Alex Rodriguez or Lou Boudreau. It gives him about the same defensive WAR per 162 games as Omar Vizquel. Pretty good.
Well, that’s Frankie Austin, who would have turned 107 on Wednesday. He was a star for the Philadelphia Stars (no pun intended) of the Negro National League in the 1940s, making six All-Star teams in those years while posting a career batting line of .343/.404/.442 and playing stellar defense.
Austin isn’t in the Hall of Fame, and apparently has never even been seriously considered by the various committees over the years that have evaluated players from the Negro Leagues. That’s almost certainly because he came from Panama and had no record of playing until he joined the Stars in 1944 at the age of twenty-seven. On top of that, once the Negro National League folded he signed on with Portland of the Pacific Coast League and essentially disappeared from view. He was a regular with the unaffiliated Beavers for seven years, basically for his entire thirties, and was never signed by any big league clubs beyond a brief 19-game stint with the Yankees’ Triple-A team in Newark and a season in Baltimore’s system when he was already thirty-nine.
It’s a shame, because Frankie Austin was a great, great player, and we should take the opportunity of his birthday to remember that.
Thursday
I hadn’t planned on pointing out a bunch of birthdays in this edition, but I can’t let the anniversary of the birth of Lennie Pearson go by without noting how good he was. A one-time teammate of Austin’s very briefly, Pearson had a much more substantial record of his career. He played twelve seasons, almost entirely with the Newark Eagles, where he mostly played first base on teams that featured all-time greats like Leon Day, Willie Wells, Mule Suttles, Larry Doby, Ray Dandridge, and Monte Irvin.
Pearson was a staple in those lineups, twice leading the league in home runs and RBI, and winning a batting title as part of the Triple Crown he won in 1942. He made six All-Star teams, and when the Eagles played the Kansas City Monarchs in the 1946 World Series, he destroyed Monarchs pitching to the tune of a .393/.414/.536 batting line as Newark won the title.
He, too, hasn’t been given serious consideration for the Hall of Fame, and his .296 batting average and 124 OPS+ might be a bit light for first basemen in the Hall, but Lennie Pearson was an outstanding player.
Friday
Finally, on the 89th anniversary of the first night baseball game in major league history, a 2-1 win by the hometown Cincinnati Reds over the Phillies, let me remind you that none of that would have been possible without the inventive spirit of J.L. Wilkinson of the Kansas City Monarchs and a little bit of help from the town of Lawrence, Kansas.
I wrote about this for a few months ago, and I’ve linked to that article below. The basic story is that Wilkinson was looking for a way to make more money for the Monarchs and decided that night baseball may be the way to do that. Before investing in a light system, though, he first wanted to test out his players under the lights to see if they felt they could see the ball well enough to play.
The closest place he could do that was down the road in Lawrence, Kansas, where both the University of Kansas and the Haskell Institute (Now Haskell Indian Nations University) had installed lights at their football stadiums. Wilkinson approached the folks at Haskell, who agreed to let him run a scrimmage for the Monarchs on their football field.
The experiment worked. His players reported that they thought they’d be able to see well enough, so Wilkinson ordered a set of mobile lights built just for the Monarchs, which they towed from town to town so they could play exhibitions at night. That invention is now listed on Wilkinson’s Hall of Fame plaque, and was the impetus for Larry MacPhail’s decision to install light on the Reds’ ballpark in Cincinnati five years later.
This Week’s Editions
Monday: Retroactive Morality and the Hall of Fame
Tuesday: Educating Twitter: Phony WAR Complaints
Wednesday: The Aaron Judge Double Play Watch
Thursday: Decisions, Decisions: Albie Pearson’s Rookie of the Year Award