Baseball: Past and Present

Anyone who reads here regularly may have noticed that the posting schedule has slowed a bit lately. My apologies. My laptop is currently in the shop, I’ve been dealing with a little BPP burnout, and I’ve been preoccupied writing for other outlets. I should have my computer back sometime this week, and I intend to get back to business here shortly thereafter. I apologize again for my lapse in output and thank everyone for their patience.

Mothers Day is the most important day of the year.  Sure we love our fathers but it’s mom who rules the roost and it’s mom who we all have to do right by.  Everyone knows this and everyone does their very best to make certain that mom is happy. None of us want to make our mother cry or hear that she is disappointed.  None of us want to feel her wrath or see her tears. You just don’t mess with them.

With that in mind, here are two players in 2012 thus far who have made their mom unhappy, angry or happy as in that’s my boy and I’m proud of him.

Josh Hamilton likely caused his mother some consternation while constantly running afoul of the law and running with some unsavory types a few years ago. The story of his lost three years is well-known. There was no way this kid could miss being one of the elite in baseball if only he could straighten up his act and find someone who could set him once again on the straight and narrow.Tampa Bay in those days, were the laughing stock of baseball and could ill afford to waste a first round pick. Hamilton was going to be their savior and the first in a long line of great players who would lift the franchise not only to respectability, but to success.  Those hopes seemed dashed as Hamilton time after time became involved in criminal activities and seemed to be easily influenced by the wrong type of people. Hamilton turned things around in a big way.

Now, I don’t know if his mom or a motherly figure in his life helped turn him around. I know little of his personal life or his upbringing and I do know that even kids raised with dignity and respect can go bad. I do know that if he has a mom, she would have been secretly crying in her pillow at night and hoping against hope that Hamilton would one day pull himself together. Not for any baseball rewards, but simply for his own good.

We all know people, ordinary people like you and me, who have wasted any talent they might have had for whatever reason and fell into the depths of crime and/or addiction. Those of us who have kept our nose to the grindstone have usually had a mom who we hoped never to embarrass no matter if we were only the lowest level office worker or the most famous person on the planet. She always seemed proud of us as long as we were productive members of society and respected others and became responsible adults.

It was always important to my mom that if I made a commitment, I honored that commitment no matter how things were going at any particular time. You signed on and had to see it through, good times and bad.  That was part of being an adult.

Moms make the world go round. I lost mine in 1973 but I still hear her voice when I do something stupid, which, sadly, is a full time job for her. Love you mom– always.

What he did: Every so often, baseball gets a great hitter who debuts late. The 1920s had Lefty O’Doul failing as a pitcher with the Yankees, reinventing himself in the Pacific Coast League as a batter, and hitting .398 with the Phillies in 1929. Josh Hamilton might be O’Doul’s modern equivalent, following his selection as the first pick in 1999 draft with a descent into drug addiction. It took him until 2007 at 26 to reach the majors, and it will be interesting to see if, as it’s been with O’Doul, the lost seasons keep Hamilton from the Hall of Fame. This begs the question: What might Hamilton have done with those seasons?

Era he might have thrived in: A fellow baseball blogger, Bradley Ankrom of Baseball Prospectus tweeted something interesting a few days ago. Using the age 21 to 25 totals for players who had comparable stats to Hamilton between 26 and 30, Bradley (@BradleyAnkrom) came up with projected splits for Hamilton for 2002 to 2006. I took a look and have some stats of my own, which I’ll offer momentarily. While I doubt Hamilton would have been the second coming of Mickey Mantle had he debuted in 2002 with his draft team, Tampa Bay, he might have a better shot at Cooperstown.

Why: I went off Bradley’s idea, albeit with a few of my own wrinkles to adjust for different offensive conditions and ballpark effects that Hamilton’s statistical doppelgangers may have encountered. First, I looked at players who had close to a 135 OPS+ for their age 26 to 30 seasons, as Hamilton did. Then, I looked among this group for players who debuted at 21 and found Jim Rice, Darryl Strawberry, Kent Hrbek, and Scott Rolen. Here’s where this gets fun and, perhaps, a little unorthodox.

With the help of the Baseball-Reference.com stat converter, I ran numbers for Rice, Strawberry, Hrbek, and Rolen playing their age 21 to 25 seasons at Tropicana Field from 2002-2006, and I averaged their totals. I then multiplied the averages by .8974, the number of plate appearances the sometimes-brittle Hamilton had between ages 26 and 30 relative to them. When all was said and done, I got the following totals for Hamilton with Tampa Bay from 2002 to 2006:

	G	P	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG
2002	49	185	164	22	44	8	2	8	29	5	17	41	.268	.341	.488
2003	132	560	495	82	146	26	3	22	92	13	56	106	.295	.368	.493
2004	127	548	478	86	143	30	5	24	89	13	60	97	.299	.378	.533
2005	125	542	473	76	140	26	5	27	90	11	59	104	.296	.376	.543
2006	135	593	521	96	159	28	7	31	104	12	64	97	.305	.383	.564

(For those interested, here are the slash lines Bradley offered for Hamilton: 2002: 284/344/478, 2003: 281/345/483, 2004: 304/374/526, 2005: 294/365/507, 2006: 307/377/536. Bradley looked for players who were similar to Hamilton between ages 26 and 30, batting at least .300, with an OBP of .350, .530 slugging percentage, and 2500 plate appearances in this time. He then averaged those players’ age 21 to 25 seasons.)

Baseball statistical alchemy aside, this exercise requires a few assumptions. It requires belief, first of all, that Hamilton could have found a way to play 2002 to 2006. I don’t know if he was in any condition to compete those years, but if a few things had gone differently for him, he may have been. Isn’t that how life goes so often? For purposes of this scenario, I have Hamilton not getting injured early in his minor league career, not finding himself hanging around tattoo parlors, not dabbling in powder and, eventually, rock cocaine. I figure he might realistically be drinking in this scenario, no great thing for anyone with budding alcoholic tendencies, but a slower means of destruction minus hard drugs. Mantle stayed functional through his twenties in this way, as did many other greats.

Life has a way of working itself out. Hamilton has righted course and, at the moment, is leading the American League in all three Triple Crown categories, even hitting four homers earlier this week. The Tampa organization that had to rid itself of Hamilton after his early disaster has become a contender, while Hamilton’s Texas Rangers have done likewise. Provided he stays sober and healthy over the next eight or ten years, Hamilton may have a chance at the Hall of Fame. Still, who knows what might have been.

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

Others in this series: Al Kaline, Al Rosen, Al Simmons, Albert Pujols, Artie Wilson, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Cesar Cedeno, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Doug Glanville,Ed Walsh, Eddie Lopat, Elmer Flick, Eric Davis, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gary Carter, Gavvy Cravath, Gene Tenace, George W. Bush (as commissioner), George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jack Morris, Jackie Robinson, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Gibson, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Larry Walker, Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film),Mark Fidrych, Matt Nokes, Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Ollie Carnegie, Paul Derringer, Pedro Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax,  Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Spud Chandler, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Tony Phillips, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Wes Ferrell, Will Clark, Willie Mays

On May 6, Willie Mays celebrated his 81st birthday. During those 1950s years the baseball world couldn’t resolve the debate about who was New York’s best center fielder, Mickey, Willie or the Duke. As sports writer Red Smith said:

“Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. You could get a fat lip in any saloon by starting an argument as to which was best. One point was beyond argument, though. Willie was by all odds the most exciting.”

At the time, I lived in Los Angeles and didn’t qualify to have an opinion. In those days, major league baseball hadn’t yet arrived in California so my limited knowledge was based on stories I read in the great old Sports Magazine or in late newspaper box scores. I did, however, see May’s 1954 legendary World Series catch on a tiny black and white television screen. In the Series first game, Cleveland Indians’ Vic Wertz launched a tremendous shot to deep center field, Mays, looking over his shoulder, caught the ball and fired it back into the infield. (See it here.)

When the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, Mays began the second phase of his outstanding career. After Mays retired, the Giants erected a statue of him outside AT & T Park, the address of which is 24 Willie Mays Plaza.

Not until 1972 did I watch Mays in person. Mays had agreed to return to New York as a Mets at owner Joan Payson’s behest. Payson had grown up rooting for the New York Giants; Mays was her favorite player. The 41-year-old Mays was washed up but he agreed to go to New York lured by the prospect that Mets had at least an outside chance of winning the World Series, an achievement that had eluded him since 1954

For parts of two seasons, Mays played like the roster liability he was. His hitting was negligible, his fielding erratic and his speed gone. Nevertheless, on September 25, 1973 at Shea Stadium the Mets held “Willie Mays Night.” Traffic, worse than for any visiting Pope, president or foreign head of state, was backed up from Queens to Manhattan. The Mets flew in Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial to be part of the celebration during which he was given three cars, plane tickets, a snowmobile and a mink coat for his wife.

Mays’ birthday celebration was more subdued. In the bottom of the second inning, Giants’ fans stood to sing “Happy Birthday” to Mays. And from the KNBR radio booth, announcers Jon Miller and Dave Fleming presented Mays with a cake.

For the next few innings, Miller and Fleming exchanged Mays’ vignettes. Time and again the announcers returned to Milwaukee where on April 30, 1961 Mays put on one of baseball’s greatest performances. That Sunday afternoon, Mays hit four home runs, two off Lew Burdette and one each off Don McMahon and Seth Morehead, and drove in eight runners. One of Mays’ titanic homers went so far into the stands that as play-by-play man Russ Hodges made the call, he noted that Henry Aaron—playing out of position in center field—never made a move for the ball as it soared above his head.

When the game ended, a 14-4 Giants rout, Mays was in the on deck circle. By that time, County Stadium fans hoped to see Mays get a shot at his fifth homer. When Jim Davenport grounded out, he got a lusty round of booing from the disappointed crowd.

Today, in addition to his responsibilities as an assistant to the Giants’ president, Mays also serves on the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former major League, minor League, and Negro league players through financial and medical difficulties.

Six decades after the who-is-better Mays, Mantle or Snider argument began, most historians give Mays the edge.

An interesting footnote: the Giants’ winning pitcher was Billy Loes who tossed a complete game. Most have forgotten (I know I did) that Loes closed out his career with the Giants where he pitched respectably during 1961 and 1962 ( 63 games; 9-7, 4.50 ERA).

The impossible or at least the high baseball unlikely happened on Wednesday evening with 37-year-old vagabond pitcher Jeff Suppan winning his first game since 2010. Someone I follow on Twitter asked who must have felt worse, the Giants losing to Jim Bouton in 1978 or the Brewers falling to Suppan. I say the ’78 Giants. It was no great time to be a Giant then; Bouton was also playing just his second game back from an eight-year layoff after writing Ball Four when he combined with two others to three-hit the Giants on September 14, 1978.

I tweeted as much to my friend (@euqubud), who replied:

Probably. It makes me wonder who are the worst/unlikeliest pitchers to win a game. You’d think Bouton would be on it.

I did a few Play Index searches on Baseball-Reference.com, and for our purposes, Bouton comes nowhere close to infamy. Nor does Suppan, who managed to throw four-hit shutout ball over five innings. No, the men I’ll highlight did far worse.

Since 1918, 17 pitchers have won a game surrendering at least 10 earned runs apiece. Sixteen of these men did it in the days before use of relief pitchers was commonplace or sophisticated, when hurlers were expected to finish the games they started regardless of how they went. Then there’s Russ Ortiz, who got one of the ugliest wins ever on May 21, 2000, a landmark offensive season at the height of the Steroid Era.

A list of the 17 pitchers follows in chronological order:

This says nothing, of course, of the myriad of less physically-gifted pitchers who managed to win a game without getting torched. Surely in the distant annals of baseball history, some men who had no business pitching in the majors have won a game or two or more. As modern players continue to become better developed, the majors ever more densely packed with talent, I imagine their lesser pioneers will become ever more of bygone relics.

I’m not going too deep in my analysis here, though if anyone has any thoughts, please feel free to weigh in.

What he did: Playing for the 1987 Detroit Tigers, Matt Nokes batted .289, hit 32 home runs and made the All-Star team en route to finishing third in the AL Rookie of the Year voting. His career lasted through the 1995 season, but he would never again enjoy the kind of productivity he experienced as a rookie. He finished his career with a slash line of .254/.308/.441 and 136 HR in just under 3000 plate appearances. The 3.1 WAR he earned in 1987 were nearly 40 percent of his career total.

Era he would thrive in: When reading “Any Player/Any Era” postings on this website, I often think, maybe this player was particularly well suited to his era; transporting him to another time and place might only harm his legacy. Nokes is one such player; perhaps 1987 and Detroit were the perfect time and place.

Why: Nokes was just about an average ball player. More than a decade and a half after his retirement, it’s easy to look back and come away with the impression that Nokes’ rookie season was a fluke. But another way of viewing it is that Nokes’ uncharacteristic first-year productivity might have given him opportunities that would not have come his way otherwise. If he had played in another time and place and made less of a splash as a rookie, he most likely would have had a shorter, less noteworthy career.

The Rookie of the Year award recognizes the accomplishments of first-year players. It is not intended to predict future success. With the benefit of hindsight, a look at the careers of the American Leaguers who received ROY votes in 1987 is something of a Sesame Street experience (One of these things is not like the others). Mark McGwire (63.1 career WAR) won the award, followed by Kevin Seitzer (26.0), Nokes (8.1), Mike Greenwell (23.5) and Devon White (41.3).

Nokes was the only one of these five players whose career did not live up to the promise of his rookie season. It’s not that 1987 was Nokes’ only productive year; 1988 and 1991 were pretty good, too. But in the end Nokes’ flat years outnumbered his good ones.

At least three factors combined to make the 1987 Tigers uniquely suited to Nokes’ skillset.

First is the manager, Sparky Anderson. Catcher is a difficult position for a rookie. In addition to the typical worries about his bat and his glove, a catcher has the responsibility of shepherding the team’s pitching staff. A rookie catcher in the major leagues easily can find himself overwhelmed. Understandably, most managers will give a young catcher a year or two of part-time service before turning him loose as the team’s everyday starter.

Anderson struck a delicate balance between overplaying his rookie catcher and holding him back. He took advantage of the opportunities that came with having a pair of backstops who swung from opposite sides of the plate, Nokes from the left side and Mike Heath from the right. Anderson knew he needed to ease Nokes into the starting role, but Detroit was trying to win the division title, so he also wanted to keep his rookie’s productive bat in the lineup, especially against right-handed pitching. Nokes started 94 games at catcher and another 22 at DH and in the outfield. Heath started most games that the Tigers faced left-handers.

I can easily imagine another manager starting Nokes at catcher in 130 or more games, pushing the rookie to the point of exhaustion.

Second among the factors making the 1987 Tigers the perfect landing place for Nokes was Detroit’s veteran pitching staff. Experienced pitchers require less guidance from their catcher, and Detroit had three such veteran starters: staff ace Jack Morris, in his ninth year as a regular in the rotation; Dan Petry, another ninth-year starter who could well be thought of as co-ace with Morris; and 15-year starter Frank Tanana. Detroit’s other starters at the beginning of the 1987 season were Walt Terrell, in his fifth year as a starter, and rookie Jeff Robinson. The starting rotation grew even more experienced in mid-August when Doyle Alexander arrived from Atlanta in the now-famous trade for John Smoltz. Interestingly, while Nokes likely benefited from being paired with so many experienced pitchers, Anderson had no obvious aversion to using an all-rookie battery; Nokes was not routinely rested on days when Robinson started.

The third and most important component of the perfect storm of Matt Nokes’ rookie season was an interesting accident of history. Nokes arrived in the big leagues at just the right time. In 1987 there was a mysterious increase in home run productivity. Irrespective of why so many home runs were hit that year– the “juiced” ball is a prominent theory–Nokes’ rookie season was one unusually suited to the long ball. Both leagues saw HR numbers that spiked by more than 25 percent compared to the previous five years and the following five years.

Notably, the one eye-catching number on Nokes’ resume is 32, the number of home runs he hit in his rookie season. Nokes was a left-handed pull hitter playing in Tiger Stadium with its storied short porch in right field. It was the perfect recipe for Nokes to make a lasting first impression with his bat. If Nokes had broken in a year earlier or later, his rookie home run total would have been considerably lower.

Playing for the Yankees in 1991, Nokes had the second-highest home run total of his career, 24, or about the number he might have hit in 1987 if it had been a normal year for home runs. However, by this stage of his career, good numbers were the exception, not the rule.

By 1992, the 28 year-old Nokes was a replacement level player, yet he continued to receive opportunities to play. I can’t help but think that as Nokes’ career progressed, his 1987 performance was a compelling factor in his ability to continue to earn starts behind the plate. After all, it’s hard to bench a player who has shown the potential to hit 30 home runs.

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

Others in this series: Al Kaline, Al Rosen, Al Simmons, Albert Pujols, Artie Wilson, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Cesar Cedeno, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Doug Glanville, Ed Walsh, Eddie Lopat, Elmer Flick, Eric Davis, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gary Carter, Gavvy Cravath, Gene Tenace, George W. Bush (as commissioner), George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jack Morris, Jackie Robinson, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Gibson, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film),Mark Fidrych, Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Ollie Carnegie, Paul Derringer, Pedro Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax,  Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Spud Chandler, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Tony Phillips, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Wes Ferrell, Will Clark, Willie Mays

“Big Ed” Delahanty was the most successful of five siblings who played in the majors during the 1890s and into the early 20th Century. None of Delahanty’s brothers, Frank, Joe, Jim and Tom could match Ed’s prowess. But during the Deadball Era, no one else could either. From 1894 to 1896 Delahanty compiled astonishing batting marks, averaging a cumulative .402 and winning two batting titles during the span. In 1899, Delahanty hit four doubles in the same game and also collected hits in 10 consecutive at bats.

Delahanty, who collected three votes for left field in the BPP All Time Dream Project, toiled for the Philadelphia Quakers, Cleveland Infants, Philadelphia Phillies and Washington Senators. While the memory of Delahanty’s batting feats have understandably faded, to this day fans associate “Big Ed” with his mysterious death.

Rumors abound. In 1903 while the Senators were traveling between Buffalo, New York and Fort Erie, Delahanty died after being kicked of a train by the conductor for drunken and disorderly behavior. Was Delahanty’s death a suicide, an accident or murder? Delahanty had, according to some of his teammates, rambled incoherently about death in his last days. There were also reports of a stranger possibly bent on robbery who followed Delahanty as he walked across the International Bridge.

The Delahanty enigma is the first case analyzed in the new book, Mysteries from Baseball’s Past: Investigations of Nine Unsettled Questions edited by Angelo Louisa and David Cicotello.

In the days leading up to his death, Delahanty was tortured by heavy drinking, significant gambling debts, marital woes, contractual conflicts and, even though he had won the National League batting championship the previous year, declining baseball skills.

Beginning from the moment the search team discovered Delahanty’s “bloated and decomposed” corpse, contributor Jerrold Casway recreates in painstaking detail the tragic circumstances surrounding the ”King of Swatsville’s” untimely death. The author considers various scenarios about which there have been decades of speculation before coming to his well-researched (police reports, sworn testimony and numerous newspaper accounts) and indisputable conclusion that Del’s demise was a tragic accident.

Other unraveled mysteries include Chick Stahl’s suicide, the strange death of Harry Pulliam, the non-game that featured Wilbur Cooper and Pete Alexander, Eddie Cicotte and his “shine” ball (or not?), the O’Connell-Dolan scandal (or hoax?), the Cobb –Speaker hoax, Josh Gibson versus Satch and the Dodgers move to Los Angeles: was Walter O’Malley the victim, a bum or something else?

In 2007, I reviewed another outstanding book by the editors, Forbes Field: Essays and Memories of the Pirates Historic Ball Park, 1909-1971. Read my review here.