Baseball: Past and Present

A reader emailed me an interesting post this past weekend. John Bowen of DugoutCentral.com offered a lineup of players who were left off their league’s All Star team in a year they thrived. I went a step further with this idea and crafted a lineup of the best players I could find who never made an All Star team. The only requirements were that the players needed to be active sometime since 1933, the year of the first All Star game and have at least one good season.

My batting order is as follows:

1 – Tony Phillips (2B): I considered Rogers Hornsby, perhaps the greatest second baseman ever, who did his best work in the 1920s and was washed up by the time the All Star tradition began in 1933. Phillips would have been more than a token selection, though and looked deserving for his 1993 season, where he hit .313 with a .443 OBP for the Tigers and 1995 when he had 27 home runs and 61 RBI and helped the Angels come within one game of the playoffs.

2 – Lyman Bostock (OF): Bostock’s career ended tragically in September 1978 when he was murdered at 27. But even with just four years in the majors, Bostock had one season that should have gotten him an All Star nod: 1977, where he was finished second in the American League with a .336 batting average and posted an OPS+ of 144, 6.5 WAR, and a .508 slugging percentage, impressive for a contact hitter.

3 – Hal Trosky (1B): Hank Greenberg recounted in The Glory of Their Times, “There are great ballplayers nowadays, of course. But you know, I played in an era of super-great ballplayers, especially first basemen. Just think of the competition I had at first base in the American League: Hal Trosky, Zeke Bonura, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and Rudy York.” Trosky and Bonura never were All Stars, and I favor Trosky for peak offensive value. In 1936, he hit .343 with 42 home runs and his MLB-best 162 RBI.

4 – Tim Salmon (OF): Bowen mentioned Salmon in his post, calling him a notoriously slow starter. Nonetheless, Salmon’s final numbers for the ’95 Angels of 34 home runs, 105 RBI and a .330 batting average, not to mention his OPS+ of 165, could have at least gotten him an All Star selection the following year.

5 – Kirk Gibson (OF): Gibson didn’t even make the All Star team in 1988 when he was National League MVP, though he led the league in WAR with 7.3. It seems odd Gibson’s iconic home run in the 1988 World Series wasn’t enough to get him voted onto the 1989 All Star squad.

6 – Hank Thompson (3B): Thompson was part of the first generation of black players in the majors. In those days, only the most popular black players like Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, and Satchel Paige generally received All Star bids. Less-known blacks with maybe one All Star-caliber season, primarily former Negro Leaguers with relatively short careers in the majors, went unacknowledged. These men included Joe Black, Luke Easter, Sam Jethroe, and Thompson, who stepped up for the Giants in 1953 when Mays was out all year in the army.

7 – Spud Davis (C): Proof that voters were often very wrong in latter day baseball, Davis hit .349 in 1933 and lost out on a catcher spot on the National League squad to Jimmie Wilson, who hit .255 and Woody English, who hit .261. And even if it wasn’t a figment of any voter’s imagination back then, Davis’s WAR in 1933 of 3.7 was better than Wilson and English combined.

8 – Eddie Lake (SS): I figured I could find many players for this list by examining stats that weren’t valued in earlier generations. Lake led the American League with a .412 on-base percentage in 1945, and his WAR of 5.7 and 136 OPS+ topped the AL All Star shortstop selections that year, Vern Stephens, who had better slugging numbers and Lou Boudreau, who got on for being named Lou Boudreau. No All Star game was played in 1945 because of World War II, and Lake never had another season approaching All Star status, retiring in 1950 with a .231 career batting average and a lifetime OPS+ of 91.

9 – Waite Hoyt (P): Many aging, future Hall of Famers never played in an All Star game in the 1930s because their best years were behind them by then, from Rogers Hornsby to Rabbit Maranville to Dazzy Vance. Hoyt is the only Cooperstown member I know of who could have been an All Star selection on playing merit but never was. In 1934, a few years after he bottomed off the Yankees, Hoyt went 15-6 with a 2.93 ERA and 142 ERA+ for the Pirates.

Imagine the following. You are a general manager. Your task is to release one of two players. The first is disappointing but talented, able to play several positions and shine, at least defensively in all of them. The other man can play two positions and is labeled a great defensive player simply because he cannot hit big league pitching. To put it another way, you are the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and you have to choose between Andy LaRoche and Andy Marte.

Ask any owner or general manager, and they’ll tell you: Having a highly competent and knowledgeable GM is key to assembling a successful team. This is what makes LaRoche’s recent release by Pittsburgh, as well as most any other decision the Pirates’ front office has made in the past 15 years, puzzling. Granted, perhaps scouts were wrong when they formerly labeled LaRoche a can’t-miss star. But replacing him with Marte, who is at least as weak offensively and doesn’t even have an opportunity in Pittsburgh as a utility player, seems to make little baseball sense.

The Washington Nationals just splurged on an outfielder who is injury-prone, will be too old in the last few years of his contract to give the Nationals anything close to a $20-million performance, and will probably play center field instead of right. In a few years, Jayson Werth will be a hindrance more than much-needed help. Werth is solid offensively and defensively– he just isn’t a franchise player. The Nationals play in a tough hitter’s park, too, and Werth won’t be surrounded by the same offensive juggernaut as he was with the Phillies. The Nationals, whose farm system is beginning to produce some very interesting position players, need pitching and more pitching to contend. Twenty million dollars buys a lot of good young pitching.

Then there are the Seattle Mariners. Seattle had an idea last winter: If pitching and defense are that important to winning games, let’s see if all pitching and defense can get you into the World Series. Problem was, after Cy Young-winner Felix Hernandez, all that pitching didn’t amount to much, and a player such as Chone Figgins was changed from a Gold Glove third baseman to a fish-out-of-water second baseman, leaving a hole at both positions. Combine the Mariners’ defensive woes with an offense that only Ichiro was able to contribute much to, and the reasons behind the 2010 Mariners 101-loss season become painfully obvious.

Now, Seattle is dangling its star closer, David Aardsma, as bait for a game-changing offensive player. The only pure slugger on the free agent market, Adam Dunn signed with the White Sox. Very few, if any genuine home run threats would consider Seattle anyway– it’s simply too tough to hit the ball out of Safeco Field. The Mariners seem likely to repeat their poor 2010 season again and again.

Major League Baseball is littered with teams who were unsuccessful and will continue to be unsuccessful. But the model of how to run a competitive franchise season after season is there. It shouldn’t be too difficult to see.

During the 1950s decade Carl Erskine, the right-handed starting pitcher who played his entire career for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, pitched two of the league’s seven no hitters. Erskine’s gems came on June 19, 1952 against the Chicago Cubs and on May 12, 1956 against the New York Giants.

For curious historians, the others were Vern Bickford, 8-11-1950, Boston Braves over the Dodgers, 7-0; Cliff Chambers, 5-6-1951, Pittsburgh Pirates over the Braves, 3-0; Jim Wilson, 6-12-1954, Milwaukee Braves over the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-0; “Sad” Sam Jones, 5-12-1955, Chicago Cubs over the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-0 and Sal Maglie, 9-25-1956, Dodgers over the Phillies, 5-0.

Erskine also pitched nine innings of no hit ball during his 1952 World Series win over the New York Yankees. In what must be one of the most unusual pitching performances of all time, on October 5 1952 Erskine held the Yankees hitless for nine of his eleven inning 6-5 complete game five win.

In the fourth inning, Mickey Mantle reached first base on a bunt single. Then in the fifth, the Yankees erupted for five runs on four more hits including a three run home run by Johnny Mize. From then on, the Yankees got nothing.

Erskine had lost the second game to Vic Raschi. 7-1. In game five, he faced Ewell “the Whip” Blackwell.

Recounting game five to Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer author, he said:

I had first class stuff, not much pain. The curve was sharp. We go into the fifth inning ahead by four runs. Do you remember the date? It was October 5. That was my fifth wedding anniversary. My control slips. A walk, some hits. Mize rips me. I am behind 5-4 and here comes Dressen.

I’m thinking, Oh no. I got good stuff. I look at Dressen coming closer and I think, the numbers are against me: October 5, my fifth wedding anniversary, the fifth inning and I have just given the Yankees five runs. Five must be my unlucky number. Charlie says to give him the ball.

Erskine continued:

You weren’t allowed to talk when he came out. He was afraid you might argue with him into leaving you in, and you had to wait on the mound for the next pitcher, so you wish him luck. Now Charlie has the ball. I’m through. The five runs have done me in. Suddenly Dressen says, ‘Isn’t this your anniversary? Are you gonna take Betty out and celebrate tonight?’

Describing the situation, Erskine recalled:

I can’t believe it. There’s 70,000 people watching, as many as in all of Anderson, Indiana and he’s asking what I’m doing that night! I tell him yes, I was planning to take Betty someplace quiet. To which Dressen replies, ‘Well, then see if you can get this game over before it gets dark!’

With that, Dressen handed the ball back and Erskine who proceeded to get the next 19 batters out, the Dodgers won in 11, he took Betty out to dinner and they celebrated his first World Series victory.

Erskine was one of many Boys of Summer whose careers peaked in Brooklyn but who, by the time they reached Los Angeles, had little left in their tanks. Nevertheless, Erskine had the wonderful opportunity to play on the great Dodgers teams with his mates Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese and Carl Furillo. More than half the starting line- up is in the Hall of Fame.

“Oisk,” as he was known in Brooklyn, did himself proud. During his 12 season career (six of them pennant winning) from 1948 to 1959, Erskine posted a 122-78 mark with a .621 winning percentage and added two more victories in the 1952 and 1953 World Series—his best two years. In 1952, Erskine went 14-6 (2.70 ERA) and in 1953, 20-6 (3.54)

Erskine has led a admirable post-playing life. His fourth child Jimmy was born with Downs Syndrome; Erskine is active in the Special Olympics and volunteers at his local Hopewell Center for the developmentally disabled. He’s a member of the Baseball Advisory Committee dedicated to helping former players with financial and medical needs.

To commemorate Erskine’s accomplishments both as a Dodger and as a citizen, a 6-foot bronze statue of the pitcher stands in front of the Carl D. Erskine Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine Center in his native Anderson, Indiana. Also, Erskine donated part of his land to the Anderson Community School System to build a new school, appropriately named Erskine Elementary.

Erskine has written two autobiographical books: Tales from the Dodgers’ Dugout: Extra Innings and What I Learned from Jackie Robinson. In Brooklyn, fans can meet on Erskine Street, dedicated in 2002.

It’s Friday, which means a second week of links is upon us. It’s going to be hard to top my debut of this feature last week when I inadvertently linked to a one-time white rapper turned baseball memorabilia collector. Who knew SABR members could rap? Barring any of the following bloggers secretly being Vanilla Ice (and you never know online…) we should be in for a tamer week.

Without further adieu…

• The second installment of the “Baseball’s Best of the Worst” feature that Bill Miller and I are doing for his blog is live. I wrote this week’s post, and it’s on Boston Braves outfielder Wally Berger, a superb player on a horrific team if there ever was one.
• Speaking of Bill’s fine blog (which is in a similar vein to this site) he also had a great post Thursday on some of baseball’s most famously-hyped prospects over the years. Clint Hartung, we hardly knew ye.
• Fun with old sports cards
• I generally work hard to provide a decent baseball blog but there are a few I know of, and probably more, that usually dwarf my efforts here. The Platoon Advantage is one. I’m often amazed at the quality, detail, and expertise and how there is seemingly a never-ending supply of good content there. Here’s a Glory of Their Times-style post with a top draft pick discussing life in the minors.
• Baseball Prospectus looks at bargain free agent veterans. If I was a GM, I’d build the majority of my roster this way. I’d be Brian Sabean (with the exception of this off-season, where former bargain pickups are cashing in to re-up.)
• A reader alerted me to an interesting thread at Baseball Think Factory on an all non-Hall of Fame team, a topic that’s been gone over here for sure.
• Shameless self promotion: My recent interview with Josh Wilker rated a mention here.

What he did: When I launched this column in June, I considered featuring Ichiro right away. I initially envisioned him as a Deadball Era star with his excellent contact hitting, speed, defense, and rifle arm, but the idea never developed. A number of Hall of Famers might have excelled in baseball’s early days, Roberto Clemente for one, and I don’t know what would make Ichiro that much more spectacular or unique back then. But if Ichiro played a decade or two into the Live Ball Era, he might have been iconic.

Era he might have thrived in: Ichiro probably would thrive in any era. For our purposes, we’ll look at the “Gashouse Gang” St. Louis Cardinals in the early 1930s when general manager Branch Rickey could have made Ichiro baseball’s first Japanese player. Ichiro’s style of play would have been perfect for Rickey and St. Louis, and his presence in baseball may have changed history.

Why: The 1930s were an interesting time for US-Japanese relations. Despite World War II looming a decade beyond, Major League Baseball launched multiple goodwill tours of Japan. Lefty O’Doul visited with an American All-Star team in 1931 and told Lawrence Ritter in The Glory of Their Times that he returned the following year, taught baseball at six universities, and helped found its professional league. He even named the Tokyo Giants, who were originally going to be called The Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club.

Biographer Richard Leutzinger quoted O’Doul saying, “I’ll venture to say there are at least 20 players in Japan who are good enough fielders to play in the major leagues today. I remember that during our tour in 1931, Japanese outfielders made more spectacular catches in the 17 games than I had seen in any one year of major league baseball.” But O’Doul said Japanese players were so timid at the plate that he returned to coach hitting. And the majors of the 1930s, when hitters reigned supreme, had no place for an all-glove, no-bat outfielder.

Enter Ichiro, the Gold Glove standard in right field; he’d offer less power than most great 1930s hitters but on the right team, he might hit .400. The Baseball-Reference.com stat converter has Ichiro’s 2004 season translating to a .389 batting average with 267 hits for the 1935 Cardinals. And who knows how O’Doul’s tutelage would boost Ichiro’s natural abilities, seeing as the Father of Japanese Baseball made a hitter out of Dom DiMaggio in the Pacific Coast League.

Prejudice might hinder Ichiro playing stateside in the ’30s, but I doubt it would have been insurmountable. After all, no gentleman’s agreement kept Asians from the majors until Masanori Murakami debuted for the San Francisco Giants in 1964. I think it was more an issue of no all-around Japanese offensive player being available. I doubt one would have gotten past Rickey, who made Jackie Robinson baseball’s first black player in 1947. Interestingly, Rickey reportedly considered recruiting from Japanese internment camps during World War II.

I emailed Lee Lowenfish, who wrote a 2009 biography of Rickey. Lowenfish told me, “I do think that Rickey would have been enamored of Ichiro. He loved guys who could run because as he said it so trenchantly, speed helps you on both sides of the ball. Ichiro’s hitting down on the ball and covering a lot of ground in the outfield with a fine arm would definitely have appealed to Rickey. His last St. Louis team of 1942– the so-called St Louis Swifties– all could run like the wind.”

Lowenfish disagreed on Rickey being willing to sign Ichiro, saying the 1930s “would have been too early.” Still, I think Ichiro would have been worth a public relations risk. Could he have changed history? My friend Sarah, who shares an interest in history, said business was a major reason for war, that an oil embargo hurt Japanese interests. Perhaps conflict was unavoidable. I doubt Ichiro would have hurt matters, though. At worst, he would have been side-by-side O’Doul in the years after Hiroshima, helping promote goodwill and Japanese baseball once more.

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, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Dom DiMaggio, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, George Case, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty O’Doul, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays

I lied! Granted, I didn’t realize I was lying when I wrote in my recent blog about Bert Blyleven’s inevitable Hall of Fame election that I wasn’t going to get into a “lather” about it.

But now I realize that I’m at lather stage not only because of the inclusion of another unworthy player into the Hall, but also because his induction represents another step in the deterioration of a once great institution.

What got me “lathered” up was Joe Posnanski’s blog wherein he revealed that Bob Costas thinks the Hall of Fame is “too big,” my position exactly. According to Costas, again echoing my feelings, the Hall should be reserved for the “great” and not include the “very good” which Posnanski interpreted as a reference to Blyleven.

Posnanski further speculated that if Costas could do it without hurting anyone’s feelings, he’d cull several existing members from the Hall. Once again, Costas and I share the exact restrictionist philosophy.

Then, in a joking response to Costas, Posnanski created what he called the “Willie Mays Hall of Fame” that would use Mays as the standard for all future inductees. If a player didn’t compare to Mays, he wasn’t Hall material. By the time Posnanski completed his analysis, the Hall only had one member: Willie Mays.

If you’re willing to considering Costas’ (and my) approach, here’s a few things to keep in mind.

The first 1936 Hall of Fame class included the following: Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner. These players didn’t qualify: Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Rogers Hornsby and others with imposing stats. In 2008, 2009 and 2010, the Hall elected Andre Dawson, Jim Rice and Blyleven. Is there anyone out there that, no matter what convoluted sabermetrics you may use, wants to argue that that Ruth and Dawson are comparable players? Can anyone successfully debate that, regardless of the era they pitched in, that Blyleven is the equal to either Johnson or Mathewson?

Here’s something else. Tell me who doesn’t belong in this picture: Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Jim Palmer and Blyleven.

Yet despite the huge disparities in their skills and careers, at the end of the day, baseball fans can accurately make this all-inclusive observation: “Seaver, Gibson, Palmer and Blyleven are Hall of Fame pitchers.”

Unless you go into a long-winded breakdown of their careers, that simple statement puts them all on equal footing. That is, they’re all Hall of Famers.

That’s ludicrous!

Maybe you’re okay with Dawson, Rice and Blyleven. But if the current relaxed standards trend continues, as I sadly expect it will, the Hall will soon be seriously evaluating, for example, Bobby Abreu.

Like Blyleven, Abreu will have played for several teams including three with strong public relations machines, the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angeles, all of whom will work hard to advance his Hall case.

For that matter, Abreu has enough money to hire his own public relations firm or, like Blyleven, develop an influential Web site to do his own advocating. Then, perhaps most helpful of all to Abreu, he’ll stay on the Hall ballot for an interminable 15 years. Since Abreu will have made friends among the voting sportswriters, locally and nationally, eventually his train will come in. By the time the spin ends, Abreu will be as good as Roberto Clemente.

In the meantime, I’m finding comfort where I can. I have Costas and some readers as allies in my losing fight for a meaningful Hall. That’s good company to be in.

Late, great baseball union head Marvin Miller once explained that even if the owners thought they lost badly when free agency was granted, what the union really wanted was the right of arbitration. It’s the arbitration process that has driven baseball salaries through the roof much more quickly than free agency.

The legal parameters and procedures attached to the arbitration process would take up far too much time and space for anything less than a book or two, (there have been several books written on this subject). Such discussion would be well outside my realm of expertise and too dry a read for anyone not in the legal profession.

Instead, let’s consider a much more subjective approach—a dissection with a no more than gut level observation. A dissection from a baseball fan and a baseball writers’ casual observation.

Of course, the temptation with such an approach is to degenerate into a rant along the lines of: “He’s a lousy player—why does he make so much money—and why does he deserve a raise?” The arbitration system as it currently stands is not set up in this manner. It is there only to decide between what a player is asking for and what ownership has offered to pay. Nothing else.

This can allow a player to make an outrageous salary demand with the knowledge that should an arbitrator decide that the offer made to the player by the team– usually a raise depending on performance that past season– is insufficient, the player’s demand must be met.

Baseball owners have little or no recourse in dealing with those players who had a less successful or slightly better than unsuccessful season than previously. In the past, it was the players who had little or no recourse. Arbitration has taken the equation from the one extreme, now to another.

It has been suggested by some that the arbitrator should have the authority to choose a figure that he or she feels would be reasonable if neither submission seems fair. This has it’s drawbacks however. The most disagreeable although perhaps the most money saving for ownership would be in losing of  control of the decision on what a player might be worth.  It’s true that arbitration decides what a player will earn that season, but at the very least, owners have had their say with their proposal. Having an independent board decide on a figure other than those submitted by either party might take such control completely away.

This might lead to the precedence of strict statistical “legal” guidelines. A player who bats .240 is worth this amount of money, a player who bats .280 is worth this amount. A pitcher who wins 10 games will automatically receive less than on who wins 15. This might lead to individual stats being more important to a player than team wins or losses.

A manager would be under pressure from both players and management— the players would need to do whatever they could for their own benefit and no longer the benefit of their team. Upper management would insist on the benching of a player fearing another home run or base hit would cost them X amount of dollars. Benching a number one starting pitcher would hurt the team and the player but help the owner. Of course, it would also probably be illegal.

Who knows of a better solution?

With spring training fast approaching, I’m steeling myself for another (nineteenth consecutive) losing season by my hometown Pittsburgh Pirates.

Looking for comfort wherever I can find it, I recall that I have seen worse baseball, or at least as bad, as the Buccos of the last few seasons.

I lived in Seattle during the Mariners’ early years from 1977 to 1986 when the team was as painful to watch as the Pirates. During that ten-year period, the M’s average winning percentage was about .400

The M’s had some good players like Leon Roberts and former two-time All Star Richie Zisk. In 1982, Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry had a cup of coffee with the Mariners. Perry’s stop over was long enough for him to record his 300th career victory over the New York Yankees. I still have my ticket stub to prove that I was one of the 27, 369 fans in a stadium that held 59, 438. As an indication of fan indifference, two nights later the Mariners drew 36,716 for Funny Nose Glasses Night.

Most Mariner players however were rejects with limited skills. A good example is one-time Bucco shortstop Mario Mendoza whose batting ineptitude created the term “Mendoza Line,” a reference to hitting at least .200

The M’s bumbling play drove another Hall of Famer, manager Dick Williams, out of baseball. After managing the team in 1986, 1987 and half a season in 1988, Williams left baseball for good.

A more insurmountable problem for Seattle baseball fans than the Mariners’ pitiful play was the team’s venue, the awful Kingdome.

On beautiful Pacific Northwest summer evenings, when the sun didn’t set until 10:00 PM, a fan’s entertainment choice was between enjoying free of charge Puget Sound’s magnificence, complete with a panoramic Mt. Rainer view or pay to enter the gloomy, empty Kingdome to watch the M’s lose again.

For most of the Mariners’ first 18 years, their inept play (they didn’t have a winning season until 1991) combined with the Kingdome’s design, led to extremely low attendance. Most games I saw had less than 5,000 fans.

At one point the Mariners covered “the Tombs,” the right-center field seats in the upper decks, to make the stadium seem “less empty”. The Kingdome’s acoustics created problems for radio announcers Dave Niehaus and Bill Freehan who had to deal with significant echo issues.

At least Pirates fans don’t have to worry about ambiance when they go to PNC Park. While the Kingdome was the dreariest place I have ever watched baseball (with Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers and Cleveland’s Municipal Stadiums close behind), PNC is at the other end of spectrum.

Despite the Pirates’ epic struggles, a game at PNC—voted “America’s Best Ballpark”— is the best way to enjoy a summer afternoon or evening. Tour PNC Park here, then compare it the Kingdome here and tell me where you’d rather watch a losing team play baseball.