A question popped into my head as I edited Ryan Blake’s column on the Nationals Friday morning. In the piece, shortly after noting that James Wood ranked third in the majors with a 170 wRC+, Ryan mentioned that Wood’s teammate, CJ Abrams, was sixth with a mark of 168. Upon reading this, I pulled up our leaderboards to see if the Nationals were the only team to have two players in the top 10. Turns out that, yes, they are. I thought about that for all of two seconds before something else caught my eye. Just below Abrams on the list was Mike Trout, who also had a 168 wRC+. This prompted me to wonder: Can Trout return to form? Can he both stay healthy and produce this year?
I’m hardly the only one who spent the bulk of the 2020s dreaming on a fully healthy season from Trout, just as I’m not alone in having abandoned that hope as the injuries piled up. But after watching him blast home run after home run last week from the Yankee Stadium pressbox, I felt the pull of the past encroach upon the present, and perhaps against my better judgment, I started dreaming again. He sure looked as healthy as ever as his broad body barreled up baseballs and roamed center field. The best way to describe the way Trout moves — really, the way he has always moved — is that he lumbers and boulders; for all of his natural athleticism and breathtaking blend of speed and strength, he does not glide gracefully. I put that dream of a Trout renaissance on ice when the Angels left town, only for it to come back a week later. This time, though, I considered whether, at 34, he still has one more MVP season in him. He entered this weekend slashing .239/.417/.557 with eight home runs, and has posted 1.2 WAR in 25 games. He’s walking more than he’s striking out, and he’s already stolen four bases. His BABIP is a mere .228, 111 points below his career mark, so we should expect his batting average to see some positive regression. (Even if we know batting average isn’t all that indicative of player performance, it still matters for MVP voters.) His .483 xwOBA is second in the majors and 62 points above his wOBA. His defense has been below average so far, but if Trout keeps hitting like this, his glove won’t matter much for his MVP case. The narrative would certainly be in his favor.
I just answered two of my own questions from Friday in this mailbag, so I guess it’s time to get to yours. What if the Astros blow it all up? How might the Pirates benefit from a Houston fire sale? Why don’t teams develop bench players to be knuckleballers? What the heck was Austin Warren doing in the game with the bases loaded in the Mets’ 12th straight loss? We answer all these questions and more in this week’s mailbag. Plus, Jay Jaffe remembers Garret Anderson. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
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Hi there,
Long-suffering Bucs fan here. I saw Ben Clemens mention that he thought the Astros might blow it up, but was ambivalent about whether they should. Say they did. Wouldn’t the Pirates grabbing Carlos Correa and maybe an upside reliever like Bryan King instantly turn them into a pretty complete team aside from catcher, which is bleh across the league? How many games does that team win?
Best,
Matt
There are a few ways to answer your question, Matt. But before I do, I should mention that I do not think the Pirates are going to trade for Correa and King, even though I would really, really love to see it happen. Correa makes too much money for the Pirates to be interested in taking on his contract, and I don’t think he’s good enough at this stage in his career for them to give up the prospect capital it would take to get the Astros to eat the bulk of his salary. Even if Pittsburgh were comfortable adding more than $30 million to its payroll in each of the next two seasons after this one — and that doesn’t include the vesting options that could net him another $70 million for four more years — I think the franchise would be much better off allocating its financial resources elsewhere.
Having said that, I like where your head is at here. The Astros may very well blow it up, but I think that trading with the Pirates would be a smart way to sell this year without committing to a long rebuild. Both teams would be trading from a position of strength. Pittsburgh has plenty of young, talented pitchers who would greatly improve Houston’s outlook in the short-term future, if not this year; meanwhile, the Astros have a surplus of quality infielders and the Pirates have a major hole at third base. If the Pirates didn’t play their home games at PNC Park, I would recommend that they trade for the more-affordable Isaac Paredes, but Paredes’ lift-and-pull production would be greatly diminished in Pittsburgh. (Statcast estimates that he would have 59 career home runs playing his games at PNC Park, rather than his actual total of 94.) So, financial commitment notwithstanding, Correa remains the better fit.
I asked Dan Szymborski to run ZiPS to see how many games the Pirates would win with both Correa and King in the fold. For comparison, let’s begin with the actual ZiPS projected NL Central standings entering play Friday:
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago Cubs | 89 | 73 | — | .549 | 46.8% | 23.0% | 69.7% | 6.4% |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 86 | 76 | 3 | .531 | 28.6% | 25.8% | 54.4% | 3.9% |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 81 | 81 | 8 | .500 | 10.5% | 17.9% | 28.4% | 1.2% |
| Cincinnati Reds | 81 | 81 | 8 | .500 | 8.8% | 17.7% | 26.5% | 0.7% |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 78 | 84 | 11 | .481 | 5.3% | 12.6% | 17.9% | 0.5% |
And here are the ZiPS projected NL Central standings if the Pirates were to acquire both Correa and King ahead of Friday’s game:
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago Cubs | 89 | 73 | — | .549 | 43.4% | 24.4% | 67.8% | 6.0% |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 86 | 76 | 3 | .531 | 26.3% | 25.8% | 52.2% | 3.6% |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 84 | 78 | 5 | .519 | 17.8% | 23.8% | 41.6% | 2.6% |
| Cincinnati Reds | 80 | 82 | 9 | .494 | 7.8% | 16.8% | 24.6% | 0.6% |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 78 | 84 | 11 | .481 | 4.7% | 11.8% | 16.5% | 0.4% |
You’ll notice that the combo of Correa and King wouldn’t really make much of a difference for the Pirates, and any impact they would have would be less than the three additional wins projected above. Remember, these are the projections if the Pirates acquired Correa and King right now, not three months from now in the weeks leading up to the trade deadline, when a major trade would be more likely to occur.
When I asked about these results, Dan reminded me that the Pirates would not be getting peak Correa from a few years ago, but the injury-prone, power-sapped veteran of today. Dan also said, “King is just a good reliever,” meaning the impact of acquiring him would be minimal, at least as far as the projections are concerned.
Another thing to consider: ZiPS is much lower on the Pirates than the FanGraphs projections are. Entering play Friday, our Playoff Odds give the Pirates a 25.9% shot to win the NL Central and a 55.7% chance to reach the postseason, with a projected win total of 84.7. Based on those odds, adding three wins — either by acquiring Correa and King, or through other moves — could prove to be consequential in the playoff race.
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Hey!
Really enjoy the mailbag, as well as David Laurila’s fantastic Sunday Notes column. This week, he featured some nice detail on knuckleballers among various Tigers position players. I love the knuckleball (who doesn’t?), but I also understand it’s not going to be prioritized as teams develop high-spin, high-velocity monsters. However, I also know the Tigers aren’t the only team who has position players who fiddle around with the knuckler. So why — especially for marginal players, bench types, fourth-outfielders, and third catchers — why don’t teams take a few decent backlot knuckleball fiddlers, and turn them into actual situational pitchers? Someone who can come in, face three batters now and again to mess up timing, and go back to the pine (or right field for that matter). It seems like a reasonable way to get more than 13 pitchers on the staff, and use position players in more than just hopeless (if entertaining) mopup duty.
Thanks, and long live the knuckleball!
JD
Ben Clemens: I love knuckleballs. I’m convinced that every baseball fan does. So it gives me no joy to tell you that I don’t think this plan would work. But let’s get into the specifics of why, because going through all the details is always a worthwhile exercise. First, we’d have to consider how good these knuckleballers would be. Laurila’s article is a great place to start. Jake Rogers said he throws a knuckleball that he learned as a kid, and Colt Keith mentioned that Rogers has the best knuckleball on the team, though he too has dabbled with the pitch.
Rogers has thrown one knuckleball this year in a game He threw five last year. He’s one of 10 position players to throw a knuckleball in the last four years, comprising 94 knucklers total. Those pitches have been awful! Opponents almost never swing and miss against them. When they put the ball in play, they’re hitting .391 with a .522 slugging percentage. More than half of their batted balls are hit 95 mph or harder. The results are the equivalent of an ERA in the high 8.00s or low 9.00s. If you expand the sample to the entire Statcast era, the result hardly changes; few whiffs, plenty of hard contact, an expected ERA that would get a pitcher DFA’d in a heartbeat.
Actual pitchers who throw knuckleballs – Matt Waldron and Adrian Morejon are the only two to hit double digits in the last four years – throw far superior knuckleballs. They have more velocity (like, 15-20 mph more velocity), better movement, and better location. They produce far better results; half the hard-hit rate of position player knuckleballs, more or less, and double the whiff rate, too. Hitters throwing knuckleballs have gotten shelled; the few knuckleballers good enough to do it as a primary job have been perfectly reasonable.
No one’s using a position player with a true talent 8.50 ERA as a situational pitcher. But let’s assume, for the sake of this question, that these guys could train themselves up to a near-Waldron level. That’s uncharitable to Waldron, obviously – he’s a full-time pitcher who has worked his whole life at throwing knuckleballs, not a catcher tossing the ball around on his off day. But whatever, we’re looking for fun, not realism. Assume a team could train three or four position players to be Matt Waldron equivalents on the mound. How would they use those skills?
There are rules around when teams can deploy position players on the mound. To deploy a position player as a pitcher, one of three conditions must be satisfied: a game in extra innings, an eight-run deficit, or a double-digit lead in the ninth inning. Those aren’t particularly interesting options for deploying a replacement-level reliever, though. The score-based ones cover the ways that teams already use position players on the mound. It doesn’t really matter how good your knuckleball is if you’re up by a dozen or down by nine. And extra innings are high-leverage spots; with the game on the line, teams want to use their best relievers, at least so long as those guys are still available.
There’s a workaround for this situation, naturally – the so-called Shohei Ohtani Rule. Teams can designate players as two-way if they meet some playing time minimums. Specifically, the player must have a season, either one of the past two completed seasons or the current one, where they pitch 20 major league innings and also start at least 20 major league games as a position player or DH, accumulating three or more plate appearances in each of those games.
Twenty innings is a lot of innings pitched. Given that you can only get a position player into the game as a pitcher under very specific circumstances, you’d basically have to lean on that guy whenever it’s permitted. By my math, the Tigers only pitched 33 such innings last year. That math might be off slightly – it was back of the envelope, basically – but the point is that it’s really hard to find 20 innings to qualify your position player as a two-way player in the first place.
The only way to make this happen would be to designate the player as a pitcher, using up one of the 13 allowable pitcher slots on a roster, and then just have them hit anyway until they accrued the necessary 20 starts in the field and 20 innings pitched. That’s an awful plan, really, because it specifically limits pitcher flexibility in pursuit of a marginal boost to pitcher utility in the future. Try selling the Tigers on playing down a pitcher for three months so that they can eventually mix in the odd Jake Rogers knuckleball in key spots, and you’d get laughed out of the room.
So to answer your question, no, this plan wouldn’t work. But I wish it could. All we need is a radically different training paradigm that makes position players so good at throwing knuckleballs that we want to use them, plus a bunch of rules changes. Something to hope for, I suppose.
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Dearest FanGraphs Crew,
It is no fun to be a Mets fan these days. In the top of the ninth in Tuesday’s Mets game, Devin Williams walked three and allowed two runs to give the Twins a 5-3 lead. The Mets yanked him and brought in Austin Warren with the bases loaded and no outs.
I admit I’d never heard of the 30-year-old Warren, despite his 7-0 record and 2.91 ERA over 58 2/3 career innings when he entered on Tuesday. Since he struck out the next three batters after I started writing this email, I guess it would be fun to learn if Warren’s ratio of wins to innings pitched is anything special. (He certainly didn’t pick up a win in this game, as the Mets lost their 12th in a row.)
The real reason I’m writing is to understand what happened before Warren threw his first pitch: He stepped off the rubber and gestured to the first-base umpire to let him know he’d be pitching from the stretch. Gary Cohen said he was required to do so.
Huh? Is a bases-loaded situation special? Are there any other circumstances where a pitcher must disclose his stretch-versus-windup intentions? What’s the rationale behind this rule?
Thanks and keep up the great work.
SDS
Michael Baumann: Matt gave me this question because he thought I’d like the opportunity to needle the Mets and their fans, and frankly, I’m insulted by the implication. Not only am I a professional, I’m of the opinion that what unites Mets fans and Phillies fans is greater than what divides us. We’re not so different, you and I.
In fact, in a world not too different from our own, I would be a Mets fan myself. I, like most American men of a certain age, was introduced to baseball by my father, who grew up a Mets fan. If I ever have kids, I am going to straitjacket them into all-sport Philadelphia fandom, but my father was of a more liberal mind. He was only a casual fan, and the Phillies made the World Series the year I discovered baseball, so he let me choose my own path. It’s the greatest kindness he ever did me.
OK, that’s a bit of a needle toward Mets fans.
I’ll answer your Austin Warren question anyway, both because it’s a simple stat query and because I’m genuinely interested in the answer to this fascinating bit of esoterica. Taking all pitchers in the AL and NL since 1901, and setting minimums of five career wins and 20 career innings, we get a population of 4,799 individual pitchers.
All-time greats clock in at around 15 innings per win; among the 17 pitchers on the list with at least 300 career wins, the average is 14.81 innings per win.
The lowest ratio of all time, given those minimums, belongs to Caleb Baragar, who won seven games in just 45 1/3 innings pitched across two seasons for the Giants, a ratio of 6.48 innings per win. (Speaking of esoterica: I actually covered Baragar’s college career when he was at Indiana University. Lots of tall pitchers on those Indiana teams.)
It will surprise no one to learn that the 32 pitchers with 10 or fewer innings per win skew heavily toward relievers and recent or active pitchers. Given the minimums I set, Warren is 12th all-time, with a ratio of 8.52 innings per win.
Lists of active players and relievers aren’t fun, so let’s goose the minimums again, to double-digit wins and 100 or more innings.
| Name | IP/W | W | IP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eddie Yuhas | 8.36 | 12 | 100 1/3 |
| Adrian Morejon | 8.96 | 25 | 224 |
| Alex Reyes | 9.06 | 16 | 145 |
| Robert Suarez | 9.15 | 24 | 219 2/3 |
| Colin Poche | 9.46 | 23 | 217 2/3 |
| Orion Kerkering | 9.48 | 14 | 132 2/3 |
| Devin Williams | 9.81 | 31 | 304 |
| Keone Kela | 9.88 | 23 | 227 1/3 |
| Andrew Nardi | 9.92 | 13 | 129 |
| Jose Arredondo | 10.00 | 22 | 220 |
Shout out Eddie Yuhas of the 1952-53 St. Louis Cardinals. I had totally heard of him before now. Yuhas went 12-2 with six saves out of the bullpen as a rookie, but had his sophomore campaign truncated to just one inning, as he suffered an arm injury that ended his career. Yuhas’ Wikipedia page features a fun fact: He, Joe DiMaggio, and Ted Williams are the only three players to receive MVP votes in every year of their big league career but one.
That’s an obscure fact, I wonder what the citation is…oh, it’s Effectively Wild episode 1035. Of course it is. Let’s increase the minimum innings threshold to 500 and see if we can get some more interesting names.
| Name | IP/W | W | IP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johnny Murphy | 11.24 | 93 | 1045 |
| Al Hrabosky | 11.28 | 64 | 722 |
| Mark Clear | 11.33 | 71 | 804 1/3 |
| Paul Shuey | 11.78 | 45 | 530 |
| Jesse Crain | 11.82 | 45 | 532 |
| Max Fried | 11.84 | 94 | 1113 |
| Julio Urías | 11.95 | 60 | 717 |
| Joe Wood | 12.28 | 117 | 1436 1/3 |
| Chien-Ming Wang | 12.44 | 68 | 845 2/3 |
| Bob Grim | 12.45 | 61 | 759 2/3 |
Hey, a Smoky Joe Wood sighting! That’s about as fun a name as you’ll find. For a career of any reasonable length, the minimum innings-to-wins ratio seems to be about 12. Under very specific circumstances (very good middle relievers, 21st century starting pitchers who don’t throw huge volume and only play for very good teams), it’s possible to sneak under.
But in between 12 and 13 innings per win, you’ll start to find guys who had low ratios because they were just really good: Christy Mathewson, Gerrit Cole, Clayton Kershaw, Pedro Martínez, Andy Pettitte, Babe Ruth. Mordecai Brown is at 13.00; Stephen Strasburg is 13.01.
Now, for the question about the stretch. One thing I love about baseball is how it has so many inane rules, you can watch hundreds or thousands of games and still not quite clock everything that’s going on. Like, I’m not 100% certain that I could accurately describe the balk rule if my life depended on it.
I went back and watched the clip in question; it’s actually Ron Darling who says Warren has to declare that he’s pitching from the stretch with the bases loaded. We don’t see the whole exchange, but Warren holds his glove up to his ear when addressing the first base umpire, so the umpire might’ve been the one who initiated the conversation, not the pitcher.
The rule that governs pitcher deliveries is 5.07(a). Rule 5.07(a)(1) establishes the Windup Position, in which the pitcher’s back foot must be in contact with the rubber, and both hands in front of his body. The front foot can be placed wherever the pitcher likes, and move in any direction of his choosing. Rule 5.07(a)(2) establishes the Set Position, which is back foot on the rubber, front foot out ahead of the rubber, both hands in front of the body. This is what we know colloquially as pitching from the stretch, though the rule defines “the stretch” as an example of “any natural preliminary motion” that takes place before the pitcher comes set.
Far be it for me to gainsay Ron Darling, who, in addition to being one of the best color commentators in the game, has 2,360 1/3 more innings in the majors than I do. But I think he misspoke. I’ll quote from the rulebook comment under 5.07(a)(2):
“With a runner or runners on base, a pitcher will be presumed to be pitching from the Set Position if he stands with his pivot foot in contact with and parallel to the pitcher’s plate, and his other foot in front of the pitcher’s plate, unless he notifies the umpire that he will be pitching from the Windup Position under such circumstances prior to the beginning of an at-bat.”
Warren’s delivery is extremely compact. I thought he was going to pitch from the stretch, not just because Darling said he was pitching from the stretch, but because he came to the Set Position on the rubber.
Here’s Warren pitching from the stretch last week against the Dodgers, with a runner on second: a legitimate stolen base opportunity.
Now watch him earlier in that inning with the bases empty.
Same starting position, substantially the same windup and delivery, but there’s a little step back. Here’s Warren’s first pitch from Tuesday night.
He does the little step, as you can see. Not only is he legally allowed to make that step, it makes tactical sense, since with the bases loaded the runners aren’t going to try to steal. If Warren’s full-windup delivery started with his feet in a different posture, he wouldn’t have to declare anything, but because his motion starts at the set position, he has to warn the umpire he’s going to keep using that motion when there are runners on base — otherwise he can be called for a balk.
So there you go, Rule 5.07(a)(2): Make sure you talk to the umpire.
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Hey mailbag team,
So Garret Anderson, one of my favorite Angels ever, unfortunately died on April 16. I will always remember him as having one of the sweetest lefty swings, a silent professional killer who helped the Angels win it all in 2002. He was, of course, super influential in Angels history, a fan favorite and by all accounts, a great man.
But when I first started getting into baseball stats, his comparatively paltry total WAR always shocked me. Considering he has a lot of counting stat records for the Angels, I was wondering – who are the players who have been key parts of a team’s history (e.g. has a good chunk of team records), but have similarly low career WAR totals? Is GA one of the few to have a long, influential career with such a low career WAR?
May he rest in peace,
dr. plantwrench
Jay Jaffe: Anderson had a long, distinguished career that looms large in Angels history. A Southern California native who helped the franchise win its only World Series to date, in 2002, he maintained a strong relationship with the organization in retirement and bonded with much of the current team. Though Mike Trout may surpass him eventually, until then Anderson owns the franchise records for games (2,013), plate appearances (8,408), hits (2,368), doubles (489), runs (1,024) and RBI (1,292) from his 15-season run with the team (1994–2008) before moving on to the Braves and Dodgers, spending one year with each.
Drafted by the Angels in the fourth round in 1990 out of John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, California, Anderson debuted in the majors on July 27, 1994, beginning a five-game cup of coffee shortly before the players’ strike. In his first game, he went 2-for-4 with a pair of singles off the A’s Ron Darling. The next year, he hit .321/.352/.505 (121 OPS+) with 16 home runs in 106 games and narrowly missed winning AL Rookie of the Year honors. Both he and Twins outfielder Marty Cordova received 13 first-place votes, but Cordova — who hit .277/.352/.486 with 24 homers and 20 steals that season — had the edge in points, 105-99. Aside from a solid 1996 season, it was mostly downhill for Cordova’s career from there, while Anderson proved to have much more staying power.
Despite his strong rookie season, it wasn’t until Anderson’s late 20s and early 30s that he emerged as a star. He was at the top of his game in 2002, hitting .306/.332/.539 with a league-leading 56 doubles to go with his 29 homers and 123 RBI, making his first All-Star team, and helping the Angels to a Wild Card berth and a World Series title. His third-inning bases-loaded double off Livan Hernandez accounted for the margin of victory in the Angels’ 4-1 win over the Giants in Game 7 of the World Series.
For better or for worse, what I remember most about Anderson (beyond watching him struggle on a dysfunctional 2010 Dodgers team) is his unwitting role as a lightning rod in old school/new school debates over value between traditionalists and statheads. Thanks to his great bat-to-ball skills, he had a knack for hitting for high averages, topping .300 six times, and he was considered “clutch” for his high RBI totals (four times with at least 100). Bill James and his acolytes at Baseball Prospectus and beyond did a lot to show that those achievement weren’t as valuable as they were traditionally considered to be, particularly in high-offense environments and eras, pointing out instead that high on-base percentages were a key driver of success. Thus, Anderson’s unremarkable OBPs and his aversion to talking a walk stood in stark contrast to the Angels’ top rivals of the day, the Moneyball-vintage A’s. He walked in just 4.7% of his plate appearances for his career, and reached 30 bases on balls in a season only five times (two with exactly 30). His .324 career OBP was 15 points below the park-adjusted league average for his time, so his overall .293/.324/.461 slash line, compiled in a very high-offense era, equates to just a 102 OPS+. Most of that was as a left fielder, and so he was quite often a drag on a team’s offense. When you combine that with his defense (+24 runs overall including TotalZone, but -28 from 2003 onward based on Defensive Runs Saved), he had limited value: 23.9 fWAR and 25.7 bWAR. He’s 94th in JAWS (24.2) based on the latter, tied with Carlos González, a former batting champion who made three All-Star teams and won three Gold Gloves while playing in over 800 fewer games.
Anderson’s WAR is comparatively paltry, to use your words. Indeed, it makes him stick out among the loftier company in which his counting stats and high batting averages place him. Even without knowing the exact WAR figure, I thought about this immediately when I stumbled over these lines in Tom Verducci’s warm tribute to Anderson at SI.com: “He is one of only 15 outfielders with 2,500 hits, 500 doubles and a .293 career batting average. All the others are in the Hall of Fame except PED scofflaws Barry Bonds and Manny Ramirez.” Those arbitrary cutoffs in counting stats across vastly different playing environments make for a junk-drawer collection rather than a coherent comparison. Draw up a WAR table of the outfielders meeting those criteria (I get 18, not 15) and you’ll find that Anderson’s 25.7 bWAR — the version I’m going to stick with for the rest of this answer — is 18.0 behind the second-lowest total, that of Al Oliver, and 137.1 behind Bonds. That’s not even in the same ballpark.
To get to your question regarding low-WAR players who loom large in franchise histories, one who immediately came to mind for me — perhaps not surprisingly given the roots of my fandom — as being so important in a team’s historical context is the Dodgers’ Steve Garvey. Stripping away the public persona stuff ranging from his apple pie image to his well-publicized divorce and paternity suits, and instead just sticking to the numbers, Garvey was a player who excelled in the same areas as Anderson. He hit .300 seven times, drove in 100 or more runs five times, topped 30 home runs once and 20 homers five additional times (compared one 30-homer season and four others with at least 20 for Anderson). Garvey hit .294/.329/.446, but in a pitchers’ park and in a lower-offense era, that was good for a pretty solid 117 OPS+, and he was much more decorated, making 10 All-Star teams and winning four Gold Gloves and an MVP award. Garvey left his mark in Dodgers history for all of that, as well as his play on four pennant winners and one championship team, but he totaled just 38.1 WAR and 33.4 JAWS (52nd among first basemen), more than Anderson but certainly not enough to merit his endless recycling as a Hall of Fame candidate.
Another Anderson-like player who comes to mind is Michael Young, who leads the Rangers in games played (1,803), as well as plate appearances (8,047), hits (2,230), runs (1,085), and doubles (415). A seven-time All-Star who hit .300 seven times (winning a batting title in 2005), Young slashed .300/.346/.441 for his career (2000–2013) while helping the Rangers to four playoff appearances and the first two pennants in franchise history. But in a high-offense environment, that snazzy slash line was good for just a 104 OPS+, and by the metrics, his defense was brutal (-152 fielding runs above average), so he totaled just 24.7 WAR. Still, he was considered important enough to the Rangers that they retired his no. 10 jersey in 2019.
I also thought of two Hall of Famers who aren’t done any favors by WAR or JAWS, but who carved such sizable niches in the history of their respective franchises that their numbers are retired. The Cardinals’ Lou Brock held the single-season and career stolen base records before Rickey Henderson came along, and reached 3,000 hits. He was an entertaining-as-hell player who starred in three World Series, but he totaled just 45.3 WAR and 38.6 JAWS, with the latter the second-lowest mark of any AL/NL left fielder in the Hall. Recently deceased Pirates legend Bill Mazeroski, who ended the 1960 World Series with one of the most famous (and unlikely) home runs of all time, was a defensive whiz but not much of a hitter. That homer obviously stands out in Pirates lore, and he wouldn’t be in Cooperstown without it, but he totaled just 36.3 WAR and 31.3 JAWS, the latter of which ranks last among enshrined second basemen.
Outside the Hall, Ryan Zimmerman holds franchise leads in games played, plate appearances, hits, and home runs, whether or not you include the Nationals’ previous existence in Montreal and the contributions of future Hall of Famers who departed for greener pastures (Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Vladimir Guerrero, Tim Raines, Larry Walker). The Royals’ Salvador Perez won’t catch George Brett for the franchise lead in most categories besides home runs (and games caught, of course), but thanks to his 16-year tenure and his role on the 2014–15 teams, he deservedly holds a special spot in team history. He could even wind up in the Hall despite my strong reservations and his low WAR and JAWS (35.7 and 30.1 without framing, respectively, and much lower in a framing-inclusive version). Former Royal Frank White, who put up Mazeroski-like numbers while playing alongside Brett on those 1970s and ’80s playoff teams (including the 1985 championship club) that legitimized the franchise, surely belongs in this category, as well.
Doubtless there are others who might fit this bill, too. Their WAR totals may be nothing to write home about, and they may or may not be in Cooperstown, but those are hardly the only yardsticks by which they should be measured. They left their marks on their franchises and in the hearts of fans. Anderson certainly did.
* This article was originally published here
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