Last week, I was probably a bit unfair to Luis Gonzalez.
I wrote about my experience attending a Diamondbacks game at Chase Field, and noted that team has retired only two numbers besides Jackie Robinson’s. Randy Johnson’s is one, and I doubt anyone questions that decision. The #20 of Ganzalez is the other retired number in Arizona, and I said that was a head-scratcher along the lines of the Reds retiring Adam Dunn’s number, or the Red Sox retiring Mo Vaughn’s, or the Tigers retiring Rudy York’s.
That was probably a bit unfair. Gonzalez was a lot better with Arizona than Dunn was in Cincinnati, and he was a touch better than York was in Detroit.
Those numbers are slightly off for Dunn because he was traded at the deadline during the 2008 season and I don’t think Stathead has a function to let me split a year, but they’re close enough.
And it’s important to note that Gonzalez was the only truly great hitter on a World Champion, the driving offensive force on the 2001 Diamondbacks, and famously drove in the Series-winning run in Game 7. I mean, sure, it was a pretty soft little bloopy single, but a single to walk-off the World Series is still a single to walk off the World Series.
So, I understand why the Diamondbacks have retired his number. I’m still not sure I would have done that, but it’s defensible. It’s certainly not the worst retired number decision that’s been made. This wasn’t Steve Garvey with the Padres or Wade Boggs with the Rays. It’s somewhat reasonable.
Also, Gonzalez had an overall career worth honoring, in that he spent nearly 1,000 games and all of his twenties being a pretty middling player that didn’t appear he’d have any retired numbers or postseason heroics in his future.
The University of South Alabama has sent some pretty good players to the big leagues over the years. Lance Johnson, David Freese, Juan Pierre, Jon Lieber, and Marlon Anderson were all Jaguars, and they’ve even had a handful of first-round picks. Gonzlaez wasn’t among them, having been drafted in the fourth round by the Astros in 1988, but he turned out to be the best of them.
At the time, he was a corner infielder, alternating between first base and third base, and he hit well enough (.312/.354/.510) at his first professional stop in Low-A Auburn that he was promoted to High-A Ashville before his first season ended. He struggled a but at Osceola of the Florida State League in 1989, but after belting 24 homers and stealing 27 bases at Double-A Columbus in 1990, Gonzalez earned a September call up to the Astros at the end of that season.
He opened the 1991 season as Houston’s everyday left fielder, and had a pretty good rookie campaign. He batted .254/.320/.433, good for a 117 OPS+ in 526 plate appearances. He also managed 13 homers and 10 steals, and played really good defense in left. The season was worth 3.6 WAR, a very strong beginning for a guy who had skipped Triple-A.
But then he was maddeningly inconsistent for the next several years. His OPS+ dropped to 94 the next year, and his WAR dropped to 2.6, then both figures shot up to 123 and 5.3 in 1993, then mysteriously dropped again, to 108 and 1.6 the next year. He had shown good speed and an ability to steal bases in the minor leagues, but that largely disappeared in Houston. In his final full season there he stole 15 bases but was caught stealing 13 times. He mad good contact, never striking out more than 83 times after his rookie season, but it was all pretty soft. Gonzalez never hit more than 15 homers for the Astros, or had a slugging percentage better than .457. He was just sort of fine, overall.
In the middle of the 1995 season, the Astros traded Gonzalez to the Cubs. The move helped demonstrate that maybe part of his problem was the Astrodome. He’d had a .385 slugging percentage there that season, but he added nearly 100 points to that while playing for the Cubs. But then, in 1996, his only full season in Chicago, he was exactly the same sort of player he’d been for all those years in Houston. Gonzalez hit just 15 homers, and had a fine but not special 108 OPS+. He slugged .443, a pretty mundane figure for a 6’2” corner outfielder in Wrigley Field. Gonzalez still played good defense, and didn’t strike out, but he also still couldn’t run or draw walks or hit with real power. He was a solid regular player worth about 2.0 WAR per season, and nothing more.
Granted free agency, he signed a one-year deal back with the Astros before the 1997 season, and posted exactly the same kind of season he’d always had (10 homers, 10 steals, 2.0 WAR). He turned thirty toward the end of that season, and his twenties hadn’t been terribly noteworthy. His 162-game averages in his 20s looked like this:
554 at-bats
75 runs
149 hits
34 doubles
6 triples
14 homers
80 RBI
13 steals (and 10 caught stealing)
59 walks
.268/.342/.425
109 OPS+
3.4 WAR
Then something clicked.
Gonzalez signed with the Tigers before the 1998 season, and managed a career-high 23 homers and .475 slugging percentage with them and a 110 OPS+. That wasn’t a terribly notable improvement, but the power jump was a bit unexpected given his track record.
Detroit traded him to Arizona after that season, and that’s when the Luis Gonzlaez that would have his number retired finally emerged.
In 1999 he batted a career high .336 and hit 26 homers with 111 RBI. He made his first All-Star team and led the league with 206 hits.
In 2000 he increased his homer output to 31, with 114 RBI and a .311 batting average.
In 2001, he had a monster season, blasting 57 homers, driving in 142 runs, batting .325, and finishing third in MVP voting.
He came back down to Earth a bit in 2002, but still hit 28 homers, surpassed 100 RBI for the fourth straight year, and made the All-Star team again.
His 2003 season was more of the same, with 26 homers, 104 RBI, a .304 average and another All-Star team.
Gonzalez was thirty-six by the time that season ended, and his final four years looked a lot more like the earlier part of his career than his remarkable first five seasons in Arizona, but he still managed another 24-homer season and a final All-Star appearance in 2005.
Overall, Gonzalez hit markedly better in his thirties than he had in his twenties:
There were some obvious rumors about possible PED usage given the timing of his enormous power spike at the height of steroid use in the major leagues. Gonzalez vehemently denied using anything illegal, never tested positive for any banned substance, didn’t appear in the Mitchell Report, and never showed any of the telltale physical changes that typically accompanied steroid use.
Barring any evidence to the contrary, it appears Gonzalez simply improved with age and a move to ballparks that were more favorable to him. He was stuck in Houston during the final years of the Astrodome, where he had a career slugging percentage of just .406 despite being in the peak years of his mid-twenties while he was there. In all other ballparks, Gonzalez had a .492 career slugging percentage, and only his remarkable 2001 season is very far out of line with that.
I think he’s earned the benefit of the doubt. After a pretty sluggish start to his big league career, with his home ballpark sapping much of his power, Luis Gonzalez persevered and became a World Series hero who got his number retired.
That’s a pretty good result for a fourth-round pick from South Alabama.
GGood article but I wish you would have gone a bit deeper on Rudy York. He was a seven time Allstar and hit 18 home runs in a single month! Plus (and most importantly) I had a Rudy York first baseman’s mitt when I was a kid!!!