Author: howard

What he did: This is slightly different than usual here. Today’s column isn’t about how one player would fare, but rather a group of them. Months ago, I wrote a post transplanting some of the best hitters in baseball history to the 1999 Colorado Rockies, proposing they could have hit .400 on that club which boasted five 30-home-run hitters and hit .288 as a team. Today, I’m going in a different direction, rounding up some hard-luck, misfit players, transplanting them all to Coors Field at the height of the Steroid Era. My theory is those circumstances could have made pretty much anyone at least a decent hitter.

The cast: I’ll temporarily depart from the usual format of “Era he might have thrived in” and “Why.” Here are my guys:

C – Mickey Tettleton: A two-time All Star, Tettleton essentially did three things. He hit home runs, he didn’t hit for much average, and he struck out. That’s going to be a common thread for this club, but there’s at least one great year in Tettleton.

1B – Tony Clark: Like a lot of the players here, Clark was something of a baseball nomad, playing for six clubs in his 15-year career. Generally, he was solid for a few years and then abysmal for one or two, before repeating the cycle. That makes him perfect for this club.

2B – Tito Fuentes: I was chatting with a new reader today, telling him how my dad and I used to have epic wiffle ball games on our front yard when I was young. My dad impersonated fearsome hitters he named Mail Murphy and Mickey Mammoth, but when he wanted a change of pace, he brought in his spray hitter, Tito Fuentes. I think it was to help me out when I was struggling. He picked the right guy in Fuentes, who hit .268 lifetime with an OPS+ of 82.

SS – Ray Oyler: I considered going with other famously inept shortstops like John Gochnaur, Don Kessinger, or Paul Popovich (who was more a second baseman) but am electing to go with a hitter so offensively challenged it earned him his own fan club with the Seattle Pilots in 1969. If we transport the lifetime .175 hitter to this club, he’d have a good year, at least by his standards.

3B – Enos Cabell: Years ago, Bill James wrote about Cabell as an essentially worthless player, but he’d be one of the best contact hitters on this team.

OF – Rob Deer: For much of his career, Deer’s weight and batting average were about the same, and the only year he cracked .250 was 1988, a weak year for offense. On these Rockies, those numbers would rise, and Deer would resemble a star. He’d be Dante Bichette.

OF – Dave Kingman: Like Deer and Tettleton, Kingman homered and struck out aggressively without much of a batting average, and like Clark, he made his way around the bigs. But in 1979, already five teams deep in his 16-year career, he hit 48 home runs with a decidedly un-Kingman-like .288 batting average. Playing that season on these Rockies, he might have MVP-caliber numbers.

OF – Jesus Alou: I recently saw a blog listing Alou as one of the 20 worst baseball players ever, primarily on the strength of his career OPS+ of 86 and puny WARP3 scores. That seems a little harsh. Alou had one of his best seasons in 1967, a dark year for hitters. On the ’99 Rockies, that year is gold.

The numbers: I’ll offer two charts, the first with each player and an actual season they played.

Player	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG
Tettleton 1992	157	525	82	125	25	0	32	83	122	137	.238	.379	.469
Clark 2001	126	428	67	123	29	3	16	75	62	108	.287	.374	.481
Fuentes 1971	152	630	63	172	28	6	4	52	18	46	.273	.299	.356
Cabell 1978	162	660	92	195	31	8	7	71	22	80	.295	.321	.398
Oyler 1967	148	364	33	76	14	2	1	29	37	91	.207	.281	.264
Kingman 1979	145	532	97	153	19	5	48	115	45	131	.288	.343	.613
Deer 1988	135	492	71	124	24	0	23	85	51	153	.252	.328	.441
Alou 1967	129	510	55	149	15	4	5	30	14	39	.292	.316	.367

And, with the help of the stat converter on Baseball-Reference.com, here is how these players’ numbers project for the ’99 Rockies.

Player	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG
Tettleton	157	571	126	171	34	0	44	128	167	137	.299	.455	.590
Clark	126	463	101	158	37	4	20	112	80	108	.341	.435	.568
Fuentes	152	691	104	233	38	8	5	86	24	46	.337	.366	.437
Cabell	162	729	158	264	42	11	10	122	30	80	.362	.390	.491
Oyler	148	397	56	106	20	2	1	48	51	91	.267	.351	.335
Kingman	145	564	132	185	24	6	58	157	55	131	.328	.388	.700
Deer	130	536	109	168	33	0	31	132	69	153	.313	.398	.549
Alou	129	556	91	195	20	5	6	51	19	39	.351	.378	.437

Of course, I have no idea how this team would do defensively, and I’m guessing there wouldn’t be much pitching. A 6.01 team ERA helped sink the ’99 Rockies. Beats me how to overcome that on this team in this era. Short of bringing in Lefty Grove or Sandy Koufax, these Rockies would have to get it done at the plate, and even Grove or Koufax might struggle here.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds, Bob Caruthers, Dom DiMaggio, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, George Case, Harmon Killebrew, Home Run Baker, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Nate Colbert, Pete Rose, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays

This post was written by Joe Guzzardi, who contributes articles here every Wednesday and Saturday.

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During the mid-1950s when the New York Yankees consistently fielded championship-caliber teams, Whitey Ford anchored the pitching staff.

But each year, the Yankees would have a hurler pop out from obscurity, pitch effectively for one or two seasons, then get dumped off to Kansas City or some other baseball Siberia.

Among them were Bob Grim who in 1954 won 20 games as the American League Rookie of the Year; Johnny Kucks, 18-9 in 1956 and the complete game, 9-0 winner of the seventh World Series game against the Brooklyn Dodgers; Tom Sturdivant who posted back-to-back 16-8 and 16-6 seasons in 1957-1958 and Bob Turley whose 21-7 1958 record garnered him the Cy Young Award.

In 1955, the Yankees former bonus baby Tommy Byrne turned in his career best season, 16-5. Byrne’s outstanding performance after being recalled from the minor league Seattle Rainers where he won 20 games got named the Associated Press Comeback Player of the Year.

Byrne was on his second Yankee tour. Because manager Casey Stengel could not tolerate Bryne’s slow, deliberate pitching style and because the lefty had trouble finding the plate, in 1951 the Yankees’ skipper dispatched him to the lowly St. Louis Browns.

With the Browns, Byrne pitched one of the most remarkable games in baseball history. On August 22, 1951 Byrne (4-7) walked 16 batters in a 13 inning defeat and tied the previous American League record set in 1915 by the Philadelphia A’s Bruno Haas. On that fateful August day, Byrne also broke his own personal record of 13 walks he established during a June 1949 start for the Yankees.

Byrne’s 1951 line: IP 12.2; H 11; BB 16; SO 5

Remarkably Leo Kiely, Byrne’s Boston Red Sox opponent was no control artist either. Although Kiely (4-2) was credited with the 3-1 win, his line was almost as ugly as Byrne’s:

IP: 12.1; H 10; ER 1; BB 8; SO 8

In an interview with the Baltimore Sun years later, Byrne recalled his game against the Red Sox:

“After walking the bases loaded in the 13th inning, I made a 3-and-2 pitch that was borderline. I recall that that the umpire said ‘ball,’ and in came the deciding run. It may have been a strike, but I guess he was getting tired.”

Byrne won 15 or more games three times during his career. But he could never get the hang of throwing the ball over the plate. His strike out (766) to walk (1,037) ratio of 0.74, compiled over 1,362 innings is one of the worst in baseball history. Byrne led the league in walks three consecutive seasons (1949-1951) and in hit batters an astounding four straight times (1948-1951).

Despite his wildness, Byrne managed to finish up with a winning record. Over 13 seasons with the Yankees, Browns, Chicago White Sox and Washington Senators, Byrne posted a 85-69 mark and played with five World Championship Yankee teams

While Byrne’s managers were always reluctant to send him to the mound where anything might have happened, they no qualms about using him as a pinch hitter. As a batter, Byrne hit .238 with 14 home runs including a grand slam.

Byrne, it should be noted, was a beloved figure. During World War II, Byrne served in the Mediterranean as a gunnery officer on the destroyer USS Ordronaux. A graduate of Wake Forest University, Byrne eventually became the town’s mayor.

Before his 2007 death at age 87, Byrne was induced into several Halls of Fame: North Carolina Sports, Baltimore City College, Wake Forest University Sports and the Maryland Sports. Byrne was also presented the Wake Forest Birthplace Society Distinguished Service Award and in September 2007, was held on the grounds of the Wake Forest College Birthplace Museum.

More than anything else, I admire Byrne for inventing the “Kimono” pitch.

Never heard of it? Byrne, defying all the laws of human physiology threw the “Kimono” from behind his back. To the frustration of batters and umpires, Byrne toyed with the “Kimono” during spring training in 1954. When camp broke and the teams went north, Commissioner Ford Frick outlawed it.

Frick no doubt concluded that if Byrne couldn’t throw the ball over the plate from a traditional wind up, he certainly couldn’t do it from behind his back. So in the interests of batter safety, the “Kimono” pitch died a quick death.

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Joe Guzzardi belongs to the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, as well as the Society for American Baseball Research. Email him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

Here’s the latest guest post from Doug Bird, a regular Sunday contributor here.

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Many people are aware of my opinion of the job baseball commissioner Bud Selig has done during his tenure but for this article I will put aside those opinions and take an objective look at the proposal, discussing the pros and cons as I see them. The feeling is that this will happen despite any negative views one might have and as I am in a positive mood this week I thought I would put pen to paper and take a good hard look at might happen.

The proposal to add two more teams to the playoffs, (one in each league), seems to be scheduled to begin for the 2012 season.   It’s only a proposal and the speculation at this point of when and how many teams is  There have been seasons previous in which a team finishing second has a better won-lost record than any of the other division winners yet fails to make the playoffs. These teams have been unfairly eliminated from playoff contention through no fault of their own, clearly deserving of a post season berth based on their talent and success.  Save for the introduction of the wild card, the American League East with its three powerful teams, would have seen the elimination of two of them on a regular basis, despite their better than average records.

The addition of a wild card team in each league has been very successful from a competitive viewpoint with fewer teams seeing their playoff hopes all but finished by the end of April each season.  The wild card has also given hope to teams who play in a division whereby one team gets off to a terrific start and finds itself with an almost insurmountable division lead by the all star break.  Fans in the majority of major league baseball cities are able to read about, listen to and watch crucial games well into September.  This has been very beneficial for attendance figures, marketing strategies, sales of merchandise and keeping the focus on baseball after the start of seasons by other major sports.

The wild card keeps more players and playing better as they are involved in crucial games much longer into the season. Even professionals with all their ability and pride of game can have difficulty focusing intently on games which are long past meaning anything other than the padding of personal statistics.  Despite what many of us believe, baseball players are only human and humans need to be focused properly and have a goal to perform at the optimum of their abilities.

The cons of the current wild card and the possibility of adding more teams to the playoff picture is one of the watering down of major league talent and the corporate motivations behind the expansion. Pre-wild card, a team with a barely above .500 record was unlikely to qualify for the post season. Certainly it did happen but only rarely and this team was usually quickly eliminated from further advancing. The strong survived and the weak were vanquished, a natural and logical occurrence.  There were no safeguards to prevent this from happening nor should there have been. This, as someone once said, is why we play the game.

The wild card has allowed this to occur much more frequently than in the past, with a season of 83-85 wins– barely over .500– allowing for the real possibility of these weaker teams becoming World Series champions.   There is no advantage gained by finishing first, aside from home field advantage which isn’t important in my opinion. As  the other major sports have shown for many seasons, the incentive to field a highly-talented  team and spend the dollars to acquire good players becomes less and less as more playoff teams are added. Business logic certainly dictates the philosophy: Why spend money if you don’t have to? As a greater number of teams realize this, more and more teams will attempt to present a group of players with only one or two stars amongst them backed up by the necessary warm bodies to fill the other positions. The owners will make more money while spending far less as the revenue generated from an expanded season will sell more television and radio time and fill stadiums well into late October. Any additional playoff teams will only serve the owners and fill their pockets.

I am neither in favor of the wild card nor an expansion of this system. Individual division standings become far less important with teams competing with other teams outside of their division as the season progresses. I am not in favor of this proposal but I am learning to live with those in charge. Baseball is still the best game there is and nothing will change that.

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Email Doug Bird at d.bird@rogers.com

Here’s the latest guest post from Joe Guzzardi, on a Yankee infielder who retired near the top of his game. Derek Jeter, take note.

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While I was writing my post about Derek Jeter earlier this week, New York Yankee great Gil McDougald died.

Reading McDougald’s obituaries, I couldn’t help but think about one major difference Jeter’s will have. Both are career Yankees with special on-field accomplishments that played critical roles in their teams’ World Series Championship years. McDougald famously and willingly played three infield positions with equal skill.

But McDougald never entered into nasty contract negotiations at the end. When it appeared the Yankees would not protect McDougald in 1961 during the first expansion draft, he walked away after ten seasons without regrets. Among McDougald’s motivations were that he wanted to be closer to his wife Lucielle and their seven children.

An interesting footnote to McDougald’s retirement is that Los Angeles Angels owner Gene Autry, a fan of his, begged him to join his newly formed team. As an inducement, Autry promised McDougald that when his playing days were over he would turn over to the managerial reins from Bill Rigney. But because McDougald knew he couldn’t perform up to his standards as a player and he admired Rigney, he declined.

One of McDougald’s former teammates said something about him that sent me deep into my baseball library.

Pitcher and Cy Young Award winner Bob Turley: “Before I was traded to the Yankees, Gil and I played against each other in the minors in the Texas League. He was always one of the most serious guys out there, and he loved to win. But Gil was also a person who got along well with everyone. He was always in good spirits.”

In 1958, Sports Illustrated published a series titled “Big League Secrets.” In it, Sal Maglie, Roy Sievers, Del Crandall, Richie Ashburn and McDougald explained how they plied their crafts.

McDougald told readers how from each of his three positions he executed the pivot, fielded the bunt, applied the tag and made the long throw.

As an example of what Turley meant when he spoke of his old infielder’s competitiveness, McDougald told reporter Robert Creamer how he executed the pick-off play:

I can’t stand to see this play go more than two throws. It’s sort of an obsession with me, especially if I’m in it, because if it goes more than two throws, we did it wrong. The runner should never, never get away in a rundown, no matter how great he is.

As much as I admire Jeter, I’m a product of my time. I miss talented, underrated, underpaid team-oriented players like McDougald. The era of a player who will play 599 games at second base, 508 at third and 284 at shortstop without missing a beat are long gone.

I wish McDougald had more financial leverage. But he played in the baseball’s Golden Era which had to be more satisfying to him than living in a 30,000 square foot Florida mansion like Jeter’s.

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Joe Guzzardi belongs to the Society for American Baseball Research as well as the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America. Email him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

What he did: I mentioned Howard a few months back in a column on Harmon Killebrew. Both were 1960s sluggers whose batting averages suffered because their career peaks occurred while pitchers dominated. Killebrew got into Cooperstown, on his fourth try with the writers, because despite his .256 career batting average, he smacked 573 home runs (back when that meant something.) Howard was an afterthought on the writers ballot, his .273 clip and 382 homers good for 1.4 percent of the vote his only year eligible, 1979. But if he’d played 30 years earlier than he did, Howard might have been a Hall of Famer, too.

Era he might have thrived in: Howard joins Killebrew and Jimmy Wynn as another player who would have triumphed in the 1930s. Like Wynn, Howard was a Hall of Famer in everything except his era.

Why: In the Killebrew column, I ran his numbers through the stat converter on Baseball-Reference.com, seeing how he’d do playing every year of his career on the 1936 Indians. I found Killebrew would have 687 home runs and a .300 batting average. Doing the same for Howard, he comes out with 469 home runs and a .325 batting average. It’d make him the poor man’s Foxx, who hit .325 with 534 home runs. Foxx needed seven years on the Cooperstown ballot before being enshrined in 1951, but this was mainly because he was inducted in the early days of Hall voting, when the ballot was packed with greats. In other words, I think Howard gets in with the writers, too.

We can take this one step further. Howard and Foxx have similar career trajectories, each debuting young and sitting the bench their first few years before blossoming. We can take Howard’s career, 1958 to 1973, and superimpose it onto the first 16 seasons of Foxx’s, 1925 to 1940. It’s not unreasonable to assume Howard would have played a few more years in this scenario, since he’d be over draft age and in his late 30s as younger players would start leaving for World War II. Foxx got in a few extra seasons this way, and while the results weren’t pretty, it added to his totals. He even pitched a little in 1945. Perhaps Howard would reach 500 home runs, too, finishing out in these years.

Of course, the major benefit for Howard is that his best seasons, 1968 through 1970 are transported to the 1935 Philadelphia Athletics and 1936-37 Boston Red Sox. Here’s how his numbers would look for those years:

Year	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG
1935 A’s (’68)	150	615	115	202	34	4	54	154	66	134	.328	.397	.660
1936 Red Sox (’69)	153	613	164	217	21	2	59	164	126	91	.354	.467	.684
1937 Red Sox (’70)	153	573	118	187	17	1	51	165	154	119	.326	.467	.627

This is opposed to his actual totals of:

Year	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG
1968 Senators	158	598	79	164	28	3	44	106	54	141	.274	.338	.552
1969 Senators	161	592	111	175	17	2	48	111	102	96	.296	.402	.574
1970 Senators	161	566	90	160	15	1	44	126	132	125	.283	.416	.546

The huge boost in stats mostly has to do with the fact that Howard would be hitting in one of these greatest times for hitters instead of one of the worst (1968 might have been the worst year for hitters since the Deadball Era, so bleak that the height of the pitchers mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10 the following year.) My guess is Howard would have held his own with the likes of Earl Averill, Hank Greenberg, and Chuck Klein. One can only wonder if those men would have fallen short of Cooperstown playing in Howard’s actual era.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds, Bob Caruthers, Dom DiMaggio, Fritz Maisel, George Case, Harmon Killebrew, Home Run Baker, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Nate Colbert, Pete Rose, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays

Here is the latest guest post from Joe Guzzardi, a regular Wednesday and Saturday contributor.

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Several years after he retired, Mickey Mantle told reporters that his one baseball regret was he played too long. In his final 1968 season, Mantle hit .237. Had Mantle retired in 1967, when his .245 batting average made it clear to all he was finished, he would have ended his career with a .302 average instead of .298

Mantle’s hindsight provides a good object lesson for Derek Jeter should he care to learn from it.

Jeter, according to all accounts, has two choices: to accept the 3-year $45 million contract the New York Yankees have offered (or some compromise between that and the $22 million, five year deal he’s seeking) or test the free agent market.

But Jeter has a third and much better option: to retire now before he embarrasses himself by playing out the string as a 41-year-old bench warmer and the inevitable object of baseball ridicule. Joe DiMaggio retired as a Yankee at 36. Jeter should too.

No doubt Jeter would have a hard time making the decision to hang it up. But if, as we are repeatedly told, Jeter treasures his image, then he should project how the media will be talking about him in 2013, when he’s batting about .225 as an occasional designated hitter.

All Jeter has to do is watch how the ESPN talking heads have described the iconic but also aging Brett Favre: “useless,” “washed up,” and “the Vikings biggest problem.” If Jeter substitutes his name for Favre’s in those searing evaluations, he’ll get the picture.

But, you’re asking, what about the tens of millions that Jeter will leave on the table if he retires?

I assume Jeter has had sound financial advice during the 10 years when he has earned nearly $200 million plus millions more from endorsements. Judging from his 30,000-square-foot home he built in Tampa, Jeter doesn’t have any worries. (See it here.) If worst comes to worst, Jeter could always rent out rooms.

But I’m confident that Jeter could talk the Yankees into a comfortable package to not play that would allow him to easily meet his monthly mortgage obligations.

Jeter should approach Hank Steinbrenner with the suggestion that at a salary of, for example, $4 million annually he be named roving scout, Yankee good will ambassador, spring training batting instructor, assistant to the president, bench coach or any other of the innocuous non-jobs that abound in baseball. Jeter would serve at his own pleasure; do pretty much whatever he wants, whenever he wants to. When Jeter wants to travel with the team and hit fungoes, that’s great. If he wants to sit in a corner office with his feet up, that’s fine too.

While it will be disappointing to Jeter not to get 3,000 hits, missing that goal means little since Jeter is a lock for the Hall of Fame. Nothing is less appealing to fans than players who linger too long to reach a milestone that’s insignificant in the big picture. The difference between Jeter’s 2,926 hits and 3,000 won’t alter his legacy.

My proposed solution provides Jeter a dignified way out that allows him to gracefully step aside, protect his status as a Yankee all time great yet still get the bonus income he feels he’s owed for his years of dutiful service.

If you ask me, that’s a lot better for Jeter than being maligned in the press every day for the next three seasons as another player who didn’t recognize when it was time to say good-bye.

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Joe Guzzardi belongs to the Society for American Baseball Research, as well as the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America. Email him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com