Friday Stuff
Monday
We began the week by reviewing how karma caught up to the Cardinals in 1985. They were on the unlucky end of a bad call in the World Series that year. That’s undeniably true, and it may have cost them a title. But that may have just been fate catching up with them for an earlier title they were lucky to win, under very similar circumstances.
Monday was the anniversary of former Giants outfielder Jo-Jo Moore passing away in 2001. He lived a long life, dying at the age of ninety-two after a life spent playing baseball and cattle ranching. He’s not well-known now, but he made six All-Star teams in the 1930s and played in three World Series. A modern comparison to him might be Luis Arráez, in that he hit for high batting averages with very little power, couldn’t really run the bases, was a middling defender, and wouldn’t draw a walk, but also never struck out and played every day. They both were left-handed hitters, were of similar height, and didn’t get a full-time job in the big leagues until they were twenty-four.
I suspect Arráez will finish with a bit better career than Moore, because he’s hitting under much tougher circumstances and already has two batting titles. But, if Moore is an indicator, there’s a shelf-life for a player of that style. Moore was out of baseball at thirty-two, found to be not terribly valuable when he could no longer slap the ball around enough to hit .300.
Here’s hoping Arráez has his own version of a cattle ranch in his future, and also gets to see his ninety-second birthday.
Tuesday
On Tuesday we examined Don Mattingly’s statement that if he hadn’t retired early to see his kids more, he would have played five more seasons, reach 3,000 hits, and probably been elected to the Hall of Fame. It’s sort of nice that he thinks that, and it tells us something about the competitive nature he brought to the field every day. But, sadly, there’s no reason to think that’s true.
Reggie Smith, outfielder mostly for the Dodgers and Red Sox, turned seventy-nine on Tuesday. He was a terribly underrated player during his career, and sadly that continued once he appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot in 1988. The writers gave him just one shot, only three of them voted for him, and then he fell off the ballot for good. That’s a shame, because Smith was probably one of the top-20 right fielders in the history of baseball.
He had a couple of problems that stopped him from getting more attention. The first was that he played a relatively short career by Hall of Fame standards. He was done as a regular player at the age of thirty-three and didn’t reach 2,000 games played.
His second problem was that he was overshadowed on really talented teams by bigger names. While in Boston, Smith played in the shadow of Carl Yastrzemski and Luis Tiant. A brief stop with the Cardinals coincided with the team having Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Joe Torre and Ted Simmons. Then he went to the Dodgers, where Steve Garvey, Dusty Baker, Davey Lopes, Don Sutton, and later Fernando Valenzuela were getting most of the attention.
Still, Smith should have been given more credit for being an excellent all-around player who was very good, though not great, at pretty much everything. Though he played more games in right field, he was primarily a centerfielder for many years, and a good one. He won a Gold Glove there in 1968. He hit as many as 32 homers, and stole as many as 22 bases, and drew as many as 104 walks, and batted as high as .322 in a part-time role in 1980.
He never led the league in any of those categories, though, and that hurt him. Leading the league in doubles, or on-base percentage, or total bases, all of which he did at least once, simply doesn’t grab as many headlines. Larry Walker played a career of almost exactly the same length, and was a bit better player, but the gap isn’t a wide as you would think:
WAR: Walker, 72.7; Smith, 64.5
OPS+: Walker, 141; Smith, 137
Hits: Walker, 2,160; Smith, 2,020
Homers: Walker, 383; Smith, 314
Like I said, Walker was better. But the gap between them doesn’t warrant Walker being in the Hall of Fame while Smith got three measly votes. Smith was better than that, but he didn’t win batting titles like Walker did, or lead the league in homers like Walker did, or win an MVP like Walker did.
And so Smith was overlooked, despite his switch-hitting talents, and the glitzy teams he played for, and the World Series ring on his finger. Apparently, none of that was flashy enough.
Wednesday
I don’t really have anything against Jack Morris, but I’ve always thought he was a misfit in the Hall of Fame. Most players get to the Hall only after a narrative is crafted about their careers, but typically those narratives are based in a bit more reality than we saw in Morris’ case. At least that’s how it seemed to me. And, after looking into it a bit, it turns out I was right.
Harry Simpson is a great example of the damage done to the careers and legacies of Negro Leagues players by the disjointed process by which baseball finally integrated in the 1940s and ‘50s.
Wednesday was the anniversary of Simpson’s passing in 1979 when he was just fifty-three years old. While he lived long enough to see the Hall of Fame finally accept players from the Negro Leagues, he didn’t see those leagues finally recognized as major leagues, or the more recent re-evaluation of the career of the players from those leagues. And Simpson is a good case to be re-examined.
He was a twenty-one-year old outfielder, and a pretty good one, for the Philadelphia Stars when Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier in 1947. Simpson batted .298 that year, and the following year he hit .300 with a 120 OPS+ in the final season of the Negro National League. He signed with the Indians after that, one of the better places for a Black player to land since the team had already shown a willingness to promote Black players to the major leagues.
The bad news was that informal quotas were already in place. Teams wouldn’t include more than a handful of Black players on their rosters, mindful of how it might be received by their White players and how fans might react to an influx of talented Black players. It seems ridiculous now, when teams and fans are thrilled when talented players arrive, regardless of race, but that wasn’t the case at the time.
Since Cleveland already had Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, and Luke Easter on th ebig league roster, Simpson was kept at Wilkes-Barre for all of the 1949 season despite hitting 31 homers there, with 120 RBI and a .305 average. The same thing happened in 1950, only Simpson was in Triple A San Diego for that year, leading that league with 156 RBI as he belted 33 more homers and hit .323. For context, future Hall of Famer Minnie Miñoso was on that team for much of 1950 as well, and Simpson was a bit better than him.
Simpson: 35 HR, 156 RBI, .323 AVG, 225 Hits, 41 doubles, 19 triples
Miñoso: 20 HR, 115 RBI, .339 AVG, 203 Hits, 40 doubles, 10 triples
Miñoso was better defensively, and stole 30 bases, so he deserved the promotion and playing time he got the next year. My point is that Simpson did as well. The Indians had middling players like Bob Kennedy and Dale Mitchell in their corner outfield spots in 1950, and you’d think players like Miñoso and Simpson could have helped them. They had the best pitching staff in the league, but finished fourth in a tight four-way race because they had the worst offense among the contenders.
That wasn’t enough to promote Simpson that year, gaudy minor league numbers or not. When he finally was called up in 1951, he wasn’t given a regular job right away. It wasn’t until 1952 that he was Cleveland’s regular right fielder, and he rewarded them with a 110 OPS+ in over 600 plate appearances. That wasn’t good enough to keep him in the big leagues though. After struggling in 1953, he was kept in Triple A Indianapolis for all of 1954 despite playing well there, and then was traded to the Kansas City A’s early in 1955.
In KC, Simpson was given the center field job and batted .301. The next year he hit 21 homers, knocked in 105 runs, led the league in triples, and made the All-Star team. One year later he was traded to the Yankees mid-year, and led the AL in triples again. Once he had somewhat regular playing time in the major leagues, he proved himself to be a good player.
He likely wasn’t ever going to develop into a Hall of Famer like his teammate Minnie Miñoso, but the timing of integration and the reluctance of major league teams to field “too many” Black players, unfairly interrupted the career Harry Simpson had already successfully launched in the Negro Leagues. Both he and we were robbed of the chance to see the kind of career he might have had.
Thursday
Continuing our Late Bloomers series, we looked at the career of Hank Sauer on Thursday. Like a lot of players in the 1930s, Sauer found himself trapped in the expansive minor league system of the Yankees. Unlike most players, though, Sauer was then also trapped in the Reds’ minor league system of the 1940s, which doesn’t make any sense if you know much about the lack of talent on the Reds during that time.
Thursday was also Tom Herr’s birthday, and he will likely be the answer to a few trivia question for a long, long time. In 1985, Herr drove in 110 runs for the Cardinals despite hitting only 8 home runs. He is the last National League player to have 100 or more RBI in a season in which he hit single-digit home runs.
In 1996, Paul Molitor had 113 RBI with only 9 homers, so he’s the last major leaguer to turn the trick, but Molitor had a few advantages Herr did not. For instance, Molitor batted .341 that season and led the league with 225 hits. Herr batted .302, and didn’t lead the league in anything. Herr had only 49 extra-base hits that year, while Molitor had 58. Before Herr did it in ‘85, the last player to have single-digit homers and under 50 extra-base hits and still manage at least 100 RBI was Dixie Walker in 1946.
No one has come particularly close to doing this since Herr. The Royals’ Joe Randa knocked in 106 runs in 2000 with only 48 extra-base hits, but 15 of those were homers. Bobby Abreu had 103 RBI on just 47 extra-base hit in 2009, but also hit 15 homers. Victor Martinez managed to have 103 RBI in 2011 with just 12 homers and 52 extra-base-hits, but that’s still more than Herr had of each.
I’m not sure this is the sort of record Herr wants, but I hope he does, because he’s going to have it for the foreseeable future.
Friday
Finally, a fun exercise. Here are two players who were mostly designated hitters. You are required to give one of them your vote for Most Valuable Player of the league. Which would you choose?
For a bit of additional context, the player on the left played for a team that won their division with 88 wins, while the player on the right played for a team that won their division with 102 wins.
It seems pretty close overall, with the player on the left having minor edges in some counting stats, most notably RBI, and the player in the right having similar advantages in rate stats, most notably in on-base percentage. That makes his WAR score quite a bit better. Throw in his team’s performance, and I’d think the edge goes to him. If the voting took place after the American League Championship Series, instead of before it, the results might have been different, because the guy on the right batted .375 in that series while his team won, 3 games to 1, over the guy on the left, who batted just .188.
Alas, as you’ve probably figured out by now, in 1979 the voters gave the MVP to the guy on the left, Don Baylor of the Angels, instead of the guy on the right, Ken Singleton of the Orioles.
I wrote my thoughts about the MVP that year a few months back, and I bring it up now because today in the anniversary of Singleton being traded by the Mets to the Expos in 1972 in exchange for Rusty Staub, a decision New York likely regretted for years to come.
Ken Singleton was a really good hitter, and came awfully close to winning an MVP in 1979. He wasn’t the best player in the American League that season, but it’s pretty clear that he was better than the guy who won.