Monday
We began the week by taking a look at the 1990 American League Cy Young Award, which was a classic case of the voters seeing a gaudy win total for a pitcher and losing their minds over it. Those days are long gone since pitcher wins simply aren’t what they used to be, but in 1990 pitcher wins were still the dominant stat most people used to judge a pitcher’s season. And that was probably a mistake.
Monday was also Jim “Catfish” Hunter’s birthday, and it reminded me again that his nickname and his 1974 Cy Young Award are probably the only reasons Hunter is in the Hall of Fame instead of Luis Tiant. I mean…
Hunter: 224-166, 3.26 ERA, 104 ERA+, 3,449.1 IP, 2,012 K’s, 3.66 FIP, 1.134 WHIP
Tiant: 229-172, 3.30 ERA, 114 ERA+, 3,486.1 IP, 2,416 K’s, 3.47 FIP, 1.199 WHIP
There’s very little separating them, and most of the advantages are Tiant’s. But Hunter had that Cy Young Award, and the attention that came from the colorful nickname, and he played for better teams, so he got into the Hall of Fame pretty easily and Tiant was passed over. But is there a real case for Hunter winning that award over Tiant in 1974?
Hunter: 25-12, 2.49 ERA, 134 ERA+, 318.1 IP, 6 shutouts, 144 K’s, 6.9 WAR.
Tiant: 22-13, 2.92 ERA, 133 ERA+, 311.1 IP, 7 shutouts, 176 K’s, 7.7 WAR.
Also, Hunter was given 4.79 runs per game of run support compared to 4.13 for Tiant. Reverse that and Tiant certainly has the better won-lost record as well. Candidly, I don’t think either of them should have won, because both Fergie Jenkins and Gaylord Perry probably had better years. But it’s worth noting that the legacies of both Tiant and Hunter are hinged upon that 1974 season and who got the Cy Young Award at the end of it, despite both of them having nearly the same value to their teams.
Tuesday
We all tend to do silly things when we really like or dislike something, and with a cottage industry having developed around hating on the WAR statistic, sometimes we see that silliness extended to WAR complaints. Like, for instance, someone adoring Frank Thomas, but deciding that since Mike Trout has a better career WAR score, then WAR must be stupid. No, really, someone actually said that.
The best Kansas Jayhawk in major league history was Bob Allison, and Tuesday was the anniversary of his death in 1995. While at KU, Allison played both football and baseball, starting in center field for the baseball team and at fullback and halfback for the football team.
There are no statistics available for him (or anyone else on those Kansas teams) on the otherwise-invaluable Sports-Reference.com website, but we know from newspaper accounts that he rushed for 136 yards in 1953, scored a touchdown in a win over Iowa State, and was expected to be a starter in 1954.
What I didn’t know was why he left Kansas. He played the 1954 baseball season at KU, and many biographies imply that he left college to start his professional baseball career, but he didn’t sign with the Senators until January of 1955. He could have played the 1954 football season in Lawrence, and was apparently expected to be in their backfield.
But newspaper accounts at the time gave the reason why; Allison flunked out of school. He went to summer school to get his grades up to the level needed to keep his eligibility, but didn’t get the scores he needed and was declared ineligible that August, just before the football season started.
It worked out for the best. A bit of a bidding war among baseball teams took place that Fall, with Allison choosing the $4,000 bonus that the Senators offered. Allison was an All-Star as a rookie in 1959, leading the league in triples and winning the Rookie of the Year Award. He made two more All-Star teams during his time with the Senators-turned-Twins, hit 256 career homers, and played in the 1965 World Series. He had a great career.
But it started because apparently his study habits weren’t up to snuff at the Harvard of the Plains.
Wednesday
Clint Thomas was a really good baseball player. He might have been an even better person. He was such a good player and person that his birthday celebrations eventually evolved into full-blown reunions for the Negro Leagues near his tiny hometown in eastern Kentucky. And those, in turn, eventually led to the creation of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
Here’s a quick little quiz. Which of these corner outfielders was better?
Player A: 1,211 games, 130 OPS+, .322/.399/.441, 32.7 WAR
Player B: 1,237 games, 126 OPS+, .310/.398/.434, 30.2 WAR
Pretty equal, right? I guess Player A was a touch better, but by the slimmest of margins. Now let me add this: Player B started as a pitcher before hurting his arm. He won 75 games, including 34 in one season, and led the league in ERA once. He added 12.4 WAR as a pitcher on top of the 30.2 WAR he had as a hitter.
So, knowing that, Player B was obviously better. They were essentially equal as outfielders, but B had a valuable pitching career for a while and that gives him the edge.
Player B is Elmer Smith. He never came remotely close to being elected to the Hall of Fame, and that’s as it should be. He was a very good player in the late 19th century, but he was done at the age of thirty-three and his overall numbers really don’t approach the levels for Hall of Famers.
But that didn’t matter for Player A, Ross Youngs, whose birthday was on Wednesday, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972. He’s there because of two factors that didn’t apply to Smith.
He tragically died at the age of thirty from Bright’s Disease.
Two of his former teammates, Frankie Frisch and Bill Terry, were vocal leaders of the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee in 1972.
I’ll leave it for you to decide if putting him in the Hall of Fame was the correct decision.
Thursday
If a short, stocky, balding, hockey player from New Brunswick decided he’d rather be a major league baseball player, set an all-time home run record along the way, and then went back to his hometown to coach hockey and raise his family, we’d suspect that was the plot of a Disney movie. Instead, it’s Matt Stairs’ life.
Cristóbol Torriente could do anything. He played at least one game at every position. He batted .349 in several seasons in the Cuban Winter League. For Black ballclubs there weren’t part of the Negro Leagues he batted .343. For teams that were part of the Negro Leagues he batted .340. He won 23 games as pitcher across all levels, too.
The numbers for his average 162-game major league season look like something you’d see in an aluminum bat league of semi-pro players:
118 runs, 190 hits, 62 extra-base hits including 13 triples, 23 steals, 81 walks, a 158 OPS+ (the same as Tris Speaker and Johnny Mize), and a batting line of .340/.427/.523.
In other words, he was a remarkable talent whose gifts went largely unnoticed while he played since much of his career took place in the shadows of segregation and he didn’t speak English as his native language. He also had a reputation for difficult contract negotiations, jumping teams, late night carousing, and excessive drinking. He died at the age of just forty-four, with Thursday being the eighty-sixth anniversary of his passing, nine years before the major leagues were finally integrated.
He was ultimately elected to the Hall of Fame in 2006, the one time that former Negro Leagues players were considered by historians and researchers. If his case had been left only to former players and executives, or some writers who didn’t cover his career and would have a hard time finding comprehensive newspaper accounts of it, he likely would still be on the outside looking in.
Now compare that outcome to the one for Ross Youngs noted above and tell me what the proper qualifications should be for the members of the Hall of Fame’s Era Committees.
Friday
Finally, today was a pretty rotten day in Red Sox history.
On this date in 1916, the Sox traded Tris Speaker to the Indians in exchange for pitcher Sad Sam Jones, another player, and cash. Speaker went on to win the American League batting title that season and the World Series title with Cleveland in 1920. In the short term, the move didn’t hurt Boston much. They won the World Series that year and again two years later with Jones being a 16-game winner. But it was the first in what soon became a long string of transactions in which the Red Sox dumped talented players for lesser talents and cash, ruining the franchise for a couple of decades.
Then, on this date in 1980, sixty-four years after giving away the guy who hit the most doubles in the history of the sport, Boston’s second game of the season was a 18-1 rout at the hands of the Brewers. Red Sox pitchers surrendered four homers, including grand slams by both for Red Sox first baseman Cecil Cooper and Don Money in the second inning. In his first-ever big league game, rookie Bruce Hurst surrendered five runs in just one inning, including a homer by defending league homer champ Gorman Thomas.
It was an inauspicious beginning to a season that would see Boston drop to fifth place, lose Jim Rice to a broken wrist, fire manager Don Zimmer with a week to go in the season, and then fail to send out contracts to Carlton Fisk, Fred Lynn, and Rick Burleson once the season ended, leading to them losing all three players.
Most of this probably isn’t terribly interesting to those of you who aren’t Red Sox fans, but I think it’s valuable to periodically give you glimpses into some of the scars they’ve inflicted in their fan base over the years, including yours truly.
In many discussions, you would give a big edge to Catfish Hunter on mustache coolness. It's usually a big advantage for Hunter and certainly part of his cool. But in a debate with Tiant, the mustache battle is a draw.