Slightly different format for Friday Stuff this week since we dedicated the week to our alternate March Madness results. We reviewed one Regional per day this week, and today we’ll cover the Final Four. First, here are the link to the Regional results.
Monday, East
Tuesday, West
Wednesday, South
Thursday, Midwest
While we don’t have any of the real-life 1-seeds left in our Final Four, we have a surprisingly realistic group. Two of them, Arizona and Tennessee, are 2-seeds, San Diego State is a 5-seed, and Florida is a 7-seed. That’s a pretty reasonable result considering it was determined with an entirely different sport.
Final Four
2 Arizona vs. 5 San Diego State: The Aztecs are here because of their surprising depth. Most people knew Tony Gwynn would be a tough draw for their opponent in Round 1, but their ability to back him up with Graig Nettles, Mark Grace, and Stephen Strasburg was impressive. All four of them would have won their matchups against Arizona’s representatives in each round to this point, but would the same trend apply in the Final Four?
For their part, the Wildcats certainly have the total numbers on their side. Arizona has sent 108 players to the major leagues, nearly double the 55 major leaguers from San Diego State. Despite that long bench, the quality at the top thinned out a bit faster than you’d imagine, so they had to settle for longtime catcher Ron Hassey as their representative in the National Semi-Final. While his 14.7 WAR is respectable, it seems a bit light, doesn’t it?
The Aztecs countered with lefty hurler Bud Black. Better known to current fans as the manager of the Padres and now Rockies, the truth is that Black had an effective career as a pitcher before that. He won 121 games with a better-than-average 3.84 ERA. That was good enough for 20.9 career WAR, sending the Aztecs into the championship game.
2 Tennessee vs 7 Florida: We already know the Gators’ representative in the this matchup, since, as noted when we outlined the South Regional, both Mike Stanley and David Eckstein were tied at 20.9 WAR and Florida used Eckstein in their Elite Eight game. That mean Stanley goes for them now, and that’s a solid total for your fifth-best player, as we just saw with Bud Black. Would it be enough to get past Tennessee?
The Volunteers turned to Chase Headley. That may not seem like a very strong option at first, but Headley had a well-rounded game, which is usually rewarded in WAR totals. He could hit with some power (31 homers in 2012), and would take a walk, and stole 93 bases while only being caught 29 times. He was also a good defender, winning a Gold Glove in 2012, and played mostly in a difficult park for hitters in San Diego. All of that adds up, allowing Headley to total 25.9 WAR and slide past Stanley, putting the Vols into the title game.
Championship Game
2 Tennessee vs. 5 San Diego State: The Aztecs have very little drop between the Semi-Final and the Final, as they were able to turn to Aaron Harang. He won 128 career games, led the league in wins, shutouts, and strikeouts in 2006, and finished fourth in Cy Young voting in 2007. He compiled 20.0 WAR in his career, a very strong total for SDSU’s sixth-best player.
What could the Vols do to counter that? Well, they were also represented by a pitcher from the early 2000s, R.A. Dickey. The two had very similar career totals: 120 wins for Dickey compared to 128 for Harang; Harang pitched about 250 more innings and nearly 400 more strikeouts, but Dickey’s ERA was about a quarter of a run better, and was better compared to the leagues in which he pitched. Dickey also led the league in shutouts and strikeouts once, just like Harang, but he won the Cy Young that year, and won a Gold Glove the next.
This was going to come down to the wire. If this was decided by how they hit against each other, Harang would win but the slimmest of margins:
Harang against Dickey: 1-for-5, .400 OPS.
Dickey against Harang: 1-for-6, .333 OPS.
But that’s not how this game would be decided. We need to turn to WAR, and that told a different tale:
By a margin of just 3.7 WAR, the Tennessee Volunteers have captured their first NCAA mens basketball championship! And they used nothing but their excellent baseball program to get it done.
Thanks for indulging me in this exercise this week. I know it’s not the norm around here, but sometimes you just have to go for the fun.
Monday
Monday was the 112th birthday of one of the least-known winners of the Triple Crown. Lester Lockett was an excellent player mostly for the Birmingham Black Barons, but spent time with several other clubs as well. He could play all over the field, logging games at every position besides pitcher and catcher. In 1941 he batted .333, and he made the East-West All-Star Game in both 1943 and 1945. He was a solid, respected player.
But it was 1948, the final year of the Negro National League, that capped Lester’s career. He batted .362 to lead the league. The give you some context, Hall of Famer Minnie Miñoso was fourth in the league that year at .344. Lester also tied for the league lead in homers with future Cleveland Indian Luke Easter, finishing one homer ahead of Hall of Famer Monte Irvin and two ahead of Hall of Famer Buck Leonard. To round out his Triple Crown, Lester led the league with 53 RBI in just 58 league games, well ahead of Easter in second place.
Lester was thirty-six that season, too old to be given a shot at making the now-integrated major leagues. He played until he was forty-two in Mexico and independent leagues, but his Triple Crown year was his last one in the big leagues. He is the only hitter ever to finish his major league career by winning the Triple Crown.
Tuesday
Tuesday was the anniversary of the day the Red Sox released third baseman Rico Petrocelli in 1977. He was only thirty-three at the time, but in his last two seasons, 1975 and 1976, he’d batted a combined .229 with a 73 OPS+ and just 10 home runs in over 700 plate appearances. He’d been shifted to third base from shortstop several years earlier, and was a shell of the player he’d once been.
But it should be remembered that Petrocelli was exceptional for about five years. From 1967 to 1971, he averaged 6.0 WAR per 162 games to go along with 25 homers and 80 RBI. He had an OPS+ of 125 and played outstanding defense at shortstop. In 1969 he had one of the finest seasons any shortstop has ever had. There have only been nine seasons in baseball history in which a player mostly played shortstop and also totaled at least 10.0 WAR. Seven of those seasons were accomplished by Cal Ripken, Jr., Honus Wagner, Robin Yount, Ernie Banks, and Lou Boudreau, all Hall of Famers. Another was produced by Álex Rodríguez, a certain Hall of Famer if not for his PED issues.
The ninth was Petrocelli’s 1969.
He hit 40 homers that year, and drew 98 walks, had a 168 OPS+, was worth 2.7 defensive WAR and 10.0 total WAR, which led the league. He finished only seventh in MVP voting that season, but deserved a better result. He wasn’t able to sustain that level of play, but he remained an outstanding, under-appreciated player or many years, and a beloved member of Red Sox Nation.
Wednesday
The only woman in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Newark Eagles co-owner Effa Manley, would have been 127-years old on Wednesday. She was a somewhat controversial selection when she was elected in 2006, but she was a fierce advocate for Negro Leagues owners receiving fair compensation when one of their star players was signed by the White major leagues as integration took hold in the 1940s.
When Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, he didn’t compensate the Kansas City Monarchs at all. Rickey claimed that the Negro Leagues didn’t have valid contracts with their players and he wasn’t bound to honor them, essentially daring those owners to take him to court and run the risk of looking like they were standing in the way of Black players integrating the major leagues. Rickey’s gamble worked, as the teams from which he poached talent never sued him.
But Effa Manley didn’t remain quiet about it. Her stance allowed her and her husband, Abe, to get some minor compensation when their players were signed, and made it clear that major league owners were essentially putting the Negro Leagues out of business by stripping away their best talent without fair compensation. She was proven to be right, as the Negro Leagues soon folded, and she should be commended for standing up for one of the largest Black-owned business in the country.
Thursday
Hall of Famer Chuck Klein died on this date in 1958, and if you ever want to know the affects of ballparks on players’ reputations, look no further than Klein. He made the Hall of Fame based on his overall career totals of 300 homers, 1,201 RBI, a batting average of .320, and winning the Triple Crown in 1933. But, if you look at his career splits between Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl and every other ballpark he ever played in, you’ll see those career numbers were a bit of a mirage:
Inside the Baker Bowl, Klein’s OPS of 1.153 was damn near Babe Ruth’s career total of 1.164. Outside the Baker Bowl, he was essentially Eric Karros, whose career OPS was .779. In case you’re wondering, Klein was a lefty, and the Baker Bowl’s right field foul pole was just 281 feet from home plate.
They made the wall there 60 feet tall to keep every middle-range fly ball from being a homer, but it was still a ridiculous advantage to lefty pull hitters like Klein. To his credit, he took full advantage of those dimensions, but it’s only fair to note that if he’d played anywhere else besides Philadelphia, Klein likely wouldn’t be in Cooperstown now.
Friday
Finally, today is Cy Young’s birthday, so let’s wrap up the week with some of his preposterous accomplishments. Let’s start here:
Young didn’t have his first full season in the big leagues until he was twenty-three, and even that was, but his standards, truncated. He threw “only” 147.2 innings. Still, from the ages of 23 to 29, Young’s 194 wins are the ninth-most in baseball history.
In his thirties, Young won 242 games. That’s 40 more than the next closest pitcher in major league history, Warren Spahn.
In his forties, Young won another 75 games. That’s tied with Spahn for the fifth-most in history. If you take just the ages of 40 to 44, which is when Young stopped pitching, his 75 wins are the most ever (again, tied with Spahn).
Babe Ruth was an excellent pitcher before becoming a full-time right fielder. As a pitcher, Ruth threw 1,221.1 innings, his ERA was 2.28, and his ERA+ was 122. That’s pretty good. But, in just his forties, Cy Young pitched 1,226.1 innings, his ERA was 2.14, and his ERA+ was 124.
There’s a reason they named the best pitcher award after him, folks.
I hope everyone has a Happy Easter!
I've thoroughly enjoyed your March Madness tournament, Paul. But there are a number of college baseball powers whose basketball brothers didn't make the tournament. I'm an LSU fan, so I was thinking of them from that perspective. And had LSU advanced to the Final Four, they would have won. Their 5th highest WAR is Aaron Nola (31.6 and counting) and their 6th best is a tie between DJ LeMahieu (not from Louisiana, despite that name) and Bill Lee (not that one, this one had 22 wins for the 1938 Cubs and is from my grandmother's hometown of Plaquemine, LA).