Notes and Essays, Week Ending 2/28

2/23 N1: The 1939 Yankees giving Frank Crosetti, who had a .233 average in a .286-non pitcher league, 152 starts in the leadoff position, reminds me of the 1930 New York Giants case, who faithfully made Hughie Critz their leadoff hitter despite his 58 OPS+. Outside of batting average, Crosetti did make modest but real contributions, leading the league in HBP for the fourth conseutive year, walking 65 times, and inching into double-digits in homers and steals. He was also coming off three seasons where he’d had a composite .370 OBP and scored an average of 126 runs, so figured to do a whole lot better than he did in 1939. Age-wise, 1939 signaled an early decline. But suffice it to say this was not contemporary use of the leadoff position.

I discussed Critz because the 108 runs he scored that year (including the 15 he had with the Reds) are the most ever for a player with an OBP under .300. Obviously this was made possible because it was National League 1930, and the Giants notched 959 runs (although the Reds just 665). Crosetti scored 109 runs in ‘39 for a legendary offensive team.

He is also in this conversation because I started with the list of sub-.230 hitters who had scored 100+ runs, and it was only true of Kyle Schwarbe, 2022 and 2023. Three fewer hits, and Crosetti would have been with him, although Schwarber hit just .197 in 2023, a full 36 points lower than Crow did, and scored just one fewer run.

2/23 N2: In Ted Williams’ early-career dominance (really only not fully sustained in the second half of his career because of injuries), I am reminded a bit of Mike Trout. Before any season, he was about the same bet to sweep the Triple Crown categories Tiger Woods might have been to win a major, or at least a regular golf tournament. Coming up in 1939, through the 1940s, he played eight seasons and won four batting titles, four home runs titles, and four RBI titles.

Who knows anything about Williams, 1942? The year before was when he hit .406. But he won the triple crown in ‘42. He took batting average by 25 points, home runs by 9, and RBI by 23. The Red Sox also won 93 games and had their first .600 winning percentage since 1915, by the way, but were no match for the Yankees.

It was not the same across-the-board runaway as in 1942, but Williams also won the Triple Crown in 1947, and with enough of an edge in every category you might say he was merely basking in applause over the final lap.

So what happened in 1946? This seems an interruption of the pattern, a check to the inevitability. That was the Red Sox one pennant when Williams was with them, of course, and his OPS+ was a silly 215, just one point off what he did in ‘42. The Triple Crown crucible was only so much at odds with these things, as Williams was second in all three categories. Mickey Vernon took the batting championship, while Hank Greenberg (44 and 127) was best in HR and RBI, the first by a healthy margin of 6.

Given Williams own time away, I know it’s a strange question, but since military duty deprived Greenberg of anything approaching a full season over the while ‘41-’45 period, this raises the question of to what extent Williams took advantage? Williams played full seasons in 1941 and 1942. Greenberg was no match for Williams in on-base percentage (only in 1939 and 1959 did he fail to better Hank’s career-best .438 of 1938), but in the Triple Crown categories, HR and RBI specifically, might Greenberg have altered the scenario?

I’m going to leave it more as a rhetorical question than try to project from Greenberg’s 1930s numbers, or anything like that. In Greenberg’s last full season before 1946, in 1940, he also did the HR/RBI double at 41 and 150, that also being a pennant-winning year for Detroit. Williams, meanwhile, had one of the so-so home run years he did occasionally, hitting just 23, and so was no factor in that race, or in the RBI race.

DiMaggio won the 1940 batting title at .352, with Williams at .344. He also romped to the 1939 batting title at .381, finishing 21 points ahead of Jimmie Foxx. It’s easy to make a general comparison of Williams and DiMaggio in 1941 (99 Rbat versus 63, etc.), to note that the hitting streak was by far DiMaggio’s strongest point for that year, to note that DiMaggio got MVP in 1947 with .315/20/97 while Williams won the Triple Crown, and jump right away to thinking that Williams was about the stats, DiMaggio about the myth and going beneath the surface to things like being right-handed in Yankee Stadium. But you can see that, early in his career, Williams wasn’t the only one posting some big conventional numbers. DiMaggio’s 125 RBI also paced the American League in 1941. Williams took batting average, of course, and home runs, too, but had just 120 RBI.

From a theoretical standpoint, Williams’ walks certainly hurt his RBI, not that one would know it from some of his totals. DiMaggio, also, was a low walker for an inner circle Hall of Famer. With a 147-76 difference in 1941, that played a bit less of a role that year than it normally did. Since DiMaggio had an edge of 16 plate appearances on Williams in 1941 despite playing four fewer games, I thought this reflected the Yankees turning over their lineup at greater speed than the Red Sox. But I actually found something different.

Williams only missed 12 games, but he was just a pinch hitter in ten others. He had a couple of periods in the season when he was evidently good for one at-bat off the bench, but not able to play in the field. He began 1941 this way, in fact, starting just 1 of the first 11 games. So this is why his plate appearances are lower than it seems they might have been.

A low point for Williams as a pinch hitter in 1941, by the way, was striking out on April 16 against Washington’s Venezuelan swingman Alex Carrasquel, who only struck out 252 over 861 innings (but there is someone to be said, surely for someone whose nephew played for the same team he did, the 1950 White Sox, just a year after he himself suited up for them)! A high point was a three-run home run off the Browns’ Johnny Niggeling to spoil the latter’s shutout bid in the 9th inning on July 20, although this was one of those padding home runs I detest, as the Red Sox were down 6-0 at the time of the shot.

I certainly simplified a bit in saying that Williams entered as the odds-on favorite to win any individual Triple Crown category through 1949, as long as he was healthy. Clearly, it’s not a coincidence 1940 in particular was a season of 24 AB-per-HR for him, and clearly he did not reach his stride until 1941. He struck out 64 times in 1939; he was learning; he never was there again.

But where did he rank overall over 1939-1940? I think of DiMaggio in 1936. DiMaggio was the story and the new flavor, but 1936 was really all about Lou Gehrig (1.174 OPS over — you guessed it — a full schedule). DiMaggio was the heir apparent.

Williams wasn’t behind anybody as clearly as that over 1939-1940. It was more one of those cases where your sneaky suspicion had to be that he was already the league’s best hitter. The big batting averages of DiMaggio and Foxx in 1939 came with game totals under 125, while Williams hit just .327 but played 149 games. A .325 career hitter, where Foxx was likely helped in batting average rank through his forced time off, things were made more difficult for him in home runs, and Jimmie still led the league with 35. But Williams topped everybody in total bases by 20, and was one off Red Rolfe for the most times on base. Williams had a 1.045 OPS, right with Greenberg’s 1.042. Foxx and DiMaggio took the top two spots in OPS.

2/24 N1: Although still just 27 in 1946, Ted Williams didn’t attempt to steal a base. Although stolen bases per game in the junior circuit reached a lowest ever rate that year, this was still an anomaly, for a player not to attempt to steal at all: sorting by games, one has to go down to Russ Derry, with just 69 games, to find the next player with no steal atempts. Eighty-two players played 70 or more games.

It is interesting to contemplate stubbornness in this, to think that Williams never tried to steal as part of the same philosophy that led to his absolutely never tipping his cap and absolutely never swinging at the first pitch. But that doesn’t quite hold up, as Williams’ attempts ranged from 3-8 in his four years before the war. 1947 showed the same trend as 1946, with Ted trying just one steal, but then he had the normal sprinkling of a non-base stealer’s attempts in the few years after that. He tried to steal only 6 times over his final 7 seasons (826 games), but we can rather imagine an elderly injury-prone superstar led foot being granted a formal pass from participating at that point.

Of Russ Derry, who didn’t attempt a steal in 1946….I guessed he was a catcher, and that catchers belonged in a special category, but he was not. He was an outfielder (48% career starts in left, 31% in center, 22% in right), and in fact there were 10 primary catchers among those players with more games than Derry in 1946, all by definition attempting to steal a base.

Not getting his chance until he was nearly 28 in 1944, Derry might be said to be a guy left over in the majors from war-time baseball. Perhaps the real upset in his 1946 stat line wasn’t that he didn’t attempt a steal, but that he didn’t hit a home run. As the year before, he’d hit 13 for the Yankees in 253 at-bats.

That was actually more impressive than it sounds, because no one was hitting home runs that year. The Yankees led the league with 93, the pennant-winning Tigers hit 77, and the average AL team hit 54 (!) Among players in the league with 100 at-bats, only Yankee Charlie Keller, returning from service in August, had a better rate of AB/HR than Derry. Derry even beat Hank Greenberg, like Keller a returnee mid-season. Greenberg hit the same 13 home runs as Derry, but in 270 at-bats.

One difference was that Greenberg had one of the better averages in the league at .311 and had a league-best 120.2 RBI per 625 PA. Derry hit just .225, but his 98.3 RBI per 625 PA was still the 4th-best rate in the league among players with 100 at-bats. We can explain his RBI rate by his overall power, lots of opportunity per PA (Yankees easily led the league in runs), and a couple of grand slams that he hit.

Derry was also not competing on an even playing field against Greenberg because he was platooned in an extreme way we just don’t see today. 94% of his plate appearances came against right-handers. Add in his 1944, 1946 and 1949 seasons, his platoon percentage was still 94% (with the throwing arm of the opposing pitcher unknown for 12% of his PA). Derry spent that 1946 with Connie Mack and the 49-win Athletics, so two managers used him in this same way. I am reminded of my discovery of how Tris Speaker never, ever let Joe Evans see right-handers and turned his performance around, and perhaps we also see in Derry’s case the belief of major league managers that what made someone a longtime minor leaguer was that he couldn’t hit same-side pitchers.

For Derry was a longtime minor leaguer, by any definition. We know of nearly 6700 minor league plate appearances for him, and 294 home runs. Those spiked when he hit 40 for the 1939 Class B Newark Bears, and then 42 a decade later for AAA Rochester, where he also walked 134 times.

That dominant season earned him a final chance, the Cardinals bringing him up at the tail end of the season, improbably in the most heated of pennant races with the Dodgers. At his return on 9/29 the Cardinals were up a game, but they lost to the well-under .500 Pirates, while the Dodgers took down Spahn and Sain in a doubleheader to take first place. Derry got a pinch-hit at-bat and struck out on 9/29, then did the same the next day in a one-run loss to the Cubs, who were even worse than the Pirates. A final loss to the Cubs the next day, Derry not getting into the game, sealed the Red Birds’ fate.

Derry’s minor league batting averages were mediocre by the standards of an aspiring major leaguer, so his 1945 record gave a good indication of what he could realistically do. His record stands out today because he had a very long tenure with the Yankees as a minor leaguer, and then the same with the Cardinals. Other than 59 plate appearances with Baltimore’s Texas League affiliate in 1954, his last season of professional play, he only played minor league ball with those organizations. I don’t know if the Yankees reallky had a farm system on the scale of the Cardinals, and maybe the end of Derry’s career was a bit after the heyday of the Branch Rickey stocking, but his career does seem to provide a good case study of the way in which players would get buried in the minor leagues.

2/24 N2: As I was tracking Ted Williams’ march to the Triple Crown in 1947, I noticed that Williams had finished up 1947 very well, while DiMaggio had tailed off a bit. Particularly from our modern vantage point, there is no comparison between the players; even through 7/31, Williams led DiMaggio by exactly 200 OPS points, and he had done that with 28 more plate appearances. But as far as the Triple Crown, DiMaggio was outhitting Williams by 8 points (.333 to .325), and had only 2 fewer RBI (69 to 71).

DiMaggio then went out and had one of his worst months ever: .244 with a .735 OPS. I thought there was quite a bit that was interesting around that month. DiMaggio did miss some time, playing just one of the nine games between 8/4 and 8/14, but still had 90 AB, compared to his average of 106 in the other four months. Despite a slump that was one of the worst of his career, DiMaggio struck out just twice in August, though. In the other four months, where his averages ranged from .310 to .373, he struck out either 7 or 8 times.

Maybe it’s just me, but strikeouts make up so much of the pie now, I have lost focus and greatly exaggerated the size of their role in true performance. DiMaggio’s case demonstrates that we should not be doing this for hitters just as we do for pitchers. For even in his non-August months, when he had some strikeouts to account for, his batting average was going to go as his BAbip went. He only struck out 32 times on the year. He hit .315, but that would have been only .333 if he had never struck out. Take out his strikeouts and his 20 homers, figure his BAbip in other words, and that average of .307. In August of 1947, DiMaggio hit 2 home runs, when 3.7 would have expected from his rate per at-bat for the rest of the year. His lower strikeouts more than offset the difference, but the difference (74 points) between his August BAbip (.233) and his season BAbip (.307) was still hardly more than the difference (71 points) between his August average (.244) and his season average (.315). Particularly in the case of a low-strikeout hitter, of which there were many before my lifteime, saying that one was right where he needed to be except for his BAbip is very much like asking Mrs. Lincoln how the play was.

A second point is that, breaking it down into pieces, I tried to recapitulate the saga of DiMaggio’s slump, just as I had Williams’ triple crown run. But when I looked at DiMaggio’s game logs for August 1947, it was a deceptive slump, subtle. It was hard to pick out, both looking at his indvidual game logs and the accompanying running tally of his year’s statistics.

I finally realized that the difficulty was that DiMaggio had an odd (and ironic) mix of games. His pattern was the opposite of the formula needed for a hitting streak. DiMaggio “hit” in only 12 of his 23 games, but had 22 hits in all. When he did have a hit, he had 1.83 per game, with eight 2-hit games. By comparsion, in his 56-game hitting streak, he had just 1.63 hits per game.

The difference was that he got a hit in all of them. Not a small matter.

In this August period, DiMaggio had just three single-hit games. So his ratio of two-hit games to one-hit games was 2.67-1. The ratio for all non-pitchers in the 1947 AL was flipped: 1988 two-hit games, 4175 one-hit games (0.48 ratio). Another irony is having a high ratio of two-hit games to one-hit games is probably usually a characteristic of a hitter who gets a lot of hits. For his career, DiMaggio’s ratio was 0.58, better than the 1947 AL average. Yet in August of 1947, he had a mediocre month, yet had an exceptional ratio.

I can’t defend the selection of DiMaggio as the MVP. Certainly, voters did wrestle with this, as the vote was 202-201 DiMaggio. The Red Sox were coming off the 1946 pennant, and so were a disappointment in 1947. 1947 was not only a pennant-winning year for the Yankees, but their first for an uncharacteristic four years, and redemption for DiMaggio after not personally winning a pennant for five years and after three years in the service. The draw of the narrative was strong.

Then, not only had DiMaggio played a bit better in the first half than overall and Williams a little worse, but the Yankees had won over two-thirds of their game heading into August when DiMaggio also had been rolling. They were 12 games ahead of the Red Sox. The season was effectively over. Someone like Tommy Henrich (numbers through July just a hair off DiMaggio’s) could also have been recognized, but DiMaggio had played very well.

2/25 N1: In my opinion, comprehensive rundowns of the ABS deployments per game do not make for good reading. I’d rather hear about the players. Maybe something like analysis of the kinds of pitches that are tricking participants would be of interest. But most of the current reporting I encounter is tedious.

2/25 N2: Apparently we shouldn’t let the fact that Sean Casey’s son Jake was a 15th-round pick last year fool us, as Baseball America has him on the Blue Jays top-30 prospects list. Casey is in the New York Post for hitting a spring training home run Tuesday. Casey (.281/.439/.531) made out like Bobby Abreu in 19 minor league starts last year. He was a standout at Kent State last year and had a very deep stat line. He had 41 extra-base hits in 56 games, 37 walks, 20 steals, and 23 hit-by-pitch. Certainly worth noting that the entire Kent State team had a .430 OBP, and the overall MAC OPS was .838. But it still sounds pretty good to me.

Casey’s HBP total didn’t measure up to Toledo shortstop’s Charlie Scholvin, who was hit 34 times in 219 plate appearances. Scholvin took them for the team, but not everyone on the team took one: Cole Cahill was not hit in 230 plate appearances. For a college player, that’s shocking. With just 3 home runs and a .730 OPS, Cahill wasn’t exactly in the Ted Williams position of not needing to do the little things.

Back to Casey, he was caught stealing 8 times in college last year, but get that waddling Detroit Sean Casey out of your mind — Baseball America gives him a 60 riun grade. I do appreciate BA’s description of characteristic “jailbreaks to first.” Apparently he knows that the whole world is watching, not just his old man.

2/25 N3: Even though I had referred to Nolan Ryan earlier in a piece, I thought that Ryan was a common enough name that keeping the “Nolan” for the second mention when referring to him again might be advisable. So, on a lark, I checked to see how crowded the Ryan pitching waters have in fact been.

It would appear from this check that it is more a simple name than a common one. In fact, my first look at the complete list and stats of Ryans gave me the idea that maybe the only two notable ones ever were Nolan and today’s Joe (as a reminder, he is with the Twins; why was I certain he had once been a Rays MLBer, too? I guess it was those 183 ks vs. only 77 H Allowed in 2019 as a Rays farmhand that seemed like they should qualify him). It is true that Joe’s 46 career wins have him behind not just Nolan but Red (53 wins, 1923-1932) and Rosy (51 wins, 1919-1933), but Joe will hopefully go past those numbers this year, and the accumulation of wins has never been slower going. Rosy as well showed just 1.5 career bWAR, so didn’t seem a significant pitcher. Upon closer review, I saw that I was very much overlooking B.J., though, a name that rang a bell, and with the trademark stats of the nasty reliever (117 career saves; a deficit of more than 100 hits to inning, and a surplus of almost 100 SO to innings).

It’s certainly fair to say that Nolan could have made anyone forget about these much lesser lights, but hopefully you won’t begrudge me my fun, or their relatives a brief examination. (By the way, isn’t it odd that that “forgetting” concept doesn’t also extend to meaning we can never notice anyone of the same name in the future? It does seem that the normal paradigm would mean B.J. and Joe would be spared the same mythical fate as Red and Rosy).

Rosy led the National League in E.R.A. in 1922. Probably more unlikely than the fact that he did this and has just career 1.5 bWAR is that his bWAR in that season was just 2.6. Starting 22 games and relieving in 24, he pitched just 191.2 innings.

In addition to his E.R.A., his win total was also sharp, 17, and I thought maybe per start that worked out to something impressive. But in fact, Ryan went just 10-9 as a starter, 7-3 as a reliever.

This goes against what I have found for other relievers of this era. If the model was that the starter was kept in the game as long as he had the lead, relievers weren’t getting a lot of wins. So, for instance, I found that Garland Braxton, who had a 145 ERA+ as the 1926 Yankees most-used reliever, appeared in losses in two-thirds of his relief appearances, including in his final 11 games.

Ryan was with the World Series champion Giants (manager McGraw, of course). So how was he deployed so that he got 7 relief wins? (In fairness, although his teams usually lost, Braxton was credited with 5 relief wins himself in 1926.)

The first suspicion was that these were “vulture” wins. That Rosy was on the other end of what we see in the low minor leagues today, where pitchers don’t go five innings, and the second guy in simply needs to hold the lead to get credit for the win.

Ryan did in fact get wins on two occasions by entering in the ripe innings of the 3rd and 4th. He also won one game when Giants starter Jack Scott was knocked out in the 1st. The Cardinals had 3 runs in and runners on 1st and 3rd when Ryan came in. With the help of a caught stealing, Ryan got out of the inning without further damage, and he and the Giants went on to win the game.

What stood out was that the one out Scott recorded in that inning was of Rogers Hornsby, by way of a sacrifice bunt. A journeyman, McGraw had a quick hook with him in this game for a reason, and Scott certainly didn’t have his stuff on this particular day. Moreover, this wasn’t just any Hornsby who was batting in this game, but a Hornsby in late August of a year when he’d hit .400 for the first time and win the Triple Crown. It is his “Micro League Baseball year.”

So I guess in those days, there was no shame in bunting. A lot more bunting in baseball than crying, you might say.

To account for Ryan’s other relief wins, from a distance they look very solid. He came in in the 8th for two wins, in the 10th for another, and in the 14th for one.

That was apparently a classic, the Giants not winning until the 18th. Ryan lasted until the end, but got some help, the future three-time-pennant-winning manager Charlie Grimm committing perhaps a truer sin than Hornsby’s bunt: he doubled to draw the Pirates within a run, but was thrown out at third on the hit. So he made the third out at third base. He was just 23 years old at the time.

Ryan’s low WAR total is not only burnished with the discovery that he had better individual seasons, but he was a clutch World Series performer. I didn’t take the time to establish if he was a star or even a hero, but he had the required record (2-0) and E.R.A. for those categories. By contrast, his WHIP (1.53) was certainly less pretty. From the basic statistics, the Giants perhaps used him as their prime reliever in the 1922-1924 World Series. He pitched 17 innings, but these were all in relief.

Almost an exact peer of Rosy’s, Red Ryan also was on perennial pennant winners. I don’t think our current Negro League statistics generally allow for even comparison of everyone in a league, but as things stand now, Ryan just could not quite get black type. He didn’t pitch in 1928, and his 1925 was truncated, but he was highly consistent. He was 2nd in bWAR in 1923, 3rd in 1924, 5th in 1926, 3rd in 1927, and 7th in 1929. WHIP gives the same feedback: in those years, Ryan ranked 2nd, 4th, 6th, 4th, and 5th. Giving us a better sense of his game, his strikeout rates were consistently a bit below league average. He was with Hilldale in the Eastern Colored League, and they won the pennant in his first four years with them. When the ECL became the American Negro League in 1929, Ryan began with Hilldale and then moved to the Baltimore Black Sox, who went 55-25 and won the pennant.

B.J. Ryan was a 6’6” lefty, and listed at 230 lb., so I would guess heavier. We analysts always have a soft spot for pitchers who never start a single game, as they make the database pulls easier. So Ryan was a reliever, no two ways about it, but would have been unusual today because his rookie year came when he was young — his age-24 season (2000).

At first, from statistics, he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. Very wild. But with the Orioles and Blue Jays from 2004-2006, he was brilliant.

After missing a year from Tommy John, he saved 32 games for the ‘08 Jays, but these were sort of his reward for the previous good work. He was no longer overpowering. That was his tack-on Pro Bowl, if we think of it in football terms.

On the front end, logically, he had only 3 saves in 2004, even though that was when he was ready for high-leverage work. Baltimore closer Jorge Julio went 0-7 with a 4.57 E.R.A. and a 4.92 FIP, so the spot was theoretically open, but one typically needs to log the hours and establish trust to get the job.

In any event, I know you are disdainful of saves in the first place, so we can look at Ryan’s three-year 2004-2006 total without being bothered that his 77 saves bear the effect of largely missing 2004. Offenses were potent, but he had a composite 2.04 E.R.A. and a .193 batting average allowed. He struck out just over a third of his batters faced. To my surprise, his 308 strikeouts were actually well surpassed by someone else, at least if we include the National League — Brad Lidge, with 364. But Ryan ranked 3rd with those 308.

Francisco Rodriguez saved his 62 games in 2008, but I would nominate 2004-2006 as his peak as well. But comparing peak to peak, it’s almost a dead heat between the two, between Ryan and Rodriguez. The closeness in their numbers is eerie, in fact. Like Lidge, Rodriguez bested Ryan in strikeouts, but only by 4. He had a 2.05 E.R.A, to Ryan’s 2.04. As he gave up 4 more home runs and walked 12 more in 5.1 fewer innings, the verdict ultimately falls on Ryan’s side.

Who would have thought Ryan would be put over the top by his control, given where it was early on?

2/27 N1: As an example of how championship seasons tend to push much else about a player to the background, I had no idea that Dick McAuliffe, Detroit’s 1968 starting second baseman, actually played 69% as many games over his career at shortstop. He also was the American League starting shortstop in the All-Star game in 1965 and 1966, the latter when he posted an OBP of .373 and a SLG of .509 for the season.

That McAuliffe would have been moved off shortstop for the notoriously bad hitter Ray Oyler seems curious, and certainly suggests his defense was not up to snuff, despite the All-Star nods. Defensive Runs Saved doesn’t confirm this and has his defense at shortstop in the average range. He had fielding percentages at short of .956 in 1965 and .964 in 1966, and those appear to be fine. He actually struggled defensively after making the move to second in 1967, leading the AL with 21 errors there.

2/27 N2: As you might know, the White Sox had a shortstop worth remembering every year from 1931-1970. This includes not only 20 years of Luke Appling (who ranks 49th in career walks, 57th in career hits, 70th in career plate appearances, and had a .310 career average) and nine seasons of Luis Aparicio (five straight Gold Gloves and AL steals titles from 1958-1962) across two different intervals, but also Chico Carrasquel (1950-1955) and Ron Hansen (1963-1967). They should not be overlooked.

Appling and Carrasquel overlapped in 1950, Appling mostly coming off the bench and playing some first, while Carrasquel played short and posted a .368 OBP and finished 12th in MVP. Carrasquel evidently got hurt at the end of the year, and with the White Sox far under .500, Appling started at short for the final seven games. Suggesting there was a Jeter-like ending would be an exaggeration; despite three Gus Zernial home runs, the White Sox lost the final game 10-6. But Appling did single in his final at-bat. He was 43.

The kind of shortstop Carrasquel was is reflected in the four All-Star teams he made in the six years (1950 not among them). He also had an average Rfield value of +12 in those years. Offensively, he was merely a contributor, with his .282 average in 1950 his best. After hitting just 9 home runs over 1950-1953, he discovered some power in 1954 and 1955, hitting 12 and then 11 home runs. Comiskey held him back. While with Chicago, his road batting average was 35 points better than his home batting average, and 21 of his 32 home runs came away.

He was a significant enough player I can’t say it was his main contribution, but based on Aparicio’s SABR Bio (done by Leonte Landino), the White Sox would never have signed Aparico if not for Carrasquel. Of course it is not a coincidence that both were Venezuelan. The White Sox might have traded Carrasquel anyway if not for the option of Aparicio, but I guess it could be said that Carrasquel orchestrated his own demise in Chicago. Carrasquel is described as being “a father figure” for the Aparicio in the SABR Bio.

Hansen is certainly the forgotten man in the era of special White Sox shortstops. He and Aparicio were swapped as part of a true blockbuster, the White Sox actually making out very well with Hoyt Wilhelm, Pete Ward, and batter strikeout king Dave Nicholson accompanying Hansen. Hansen led the AL in Defensive War in 1963 and 1964. The .239 he hit for Chicago may have robbed him of the respect he deserved, but in his four seasons as the White Sox starting shortstop, he averaged 69 walks and 13 home runs, which topped out when he mashed 20 in 1964.

Despite 7.7 bWAR that year, he still did not make the All-Star team, nor did he in any other season with Chicago. He was passed over in those years for Aparicio (naturally), 1965 MVP Zoillo Versalles, Jim Fregosi, Dick McAuliffe, and Eddie Bressoud. Three seasons of MVP mentions do tell a bit of a different story.

While the return of Aparicio in 1968 marked the end of Hansen’s tenure, they were not traded for another a second time (alas, as that would have made for a cool story). The White Sox did trade Hansen before that year, but he was obviously held in great esteem by the organization, because they reaquired him later in the year. He became a utility infielder, a role he held again with the White Sox in 1969.

Aparicio, meanwhile, was in his mid-30s, but still very effective all around and improved at bat. His hitting value for his career needs to unfortunately be recognized as regrettably slanted towards singles, but in this second go-round with the team, he had a .285 average and .341 OBP, marks 27 and 36 points better than those he’d sported for his career up to that point. His .313 average in 1970 placed him 4th in the AL.

The White Sox tried to strike shortstop gold again before 1971, once more trading Aparico. On paper, Mike Andrews, nine years younger and, next to Rod Carew, the best-hitting second baseman of 1969 in the AL, seemed like a fair return, but the White Sox also got Luis Alvarado, who wasn’t yet 22. But at least from a statistical standpoint, Alvarado’s performance with teh White Sox was decidedly miserable, making it easy for the team to move on from him in quick fashion.

The White Sox finally found something of a solution when Bucky Dent became the regular in mid-August of 1973. Dent was about as everyday as as a shortstop could be from 1974-1976, starting an average of almost 155 games. He got three first-place Rookie of the Year votes in 1974 (George Brett, playing 133 games, got two), then was a seemingly rather random All-Star in 1975.

Despite these successes, I have to imagine that the outrage that greeted his trade to the Yankees on the cusp of the 1977 season didn’t quite match the indignation attending the Aparico trades. Lamarr Hoyt and Oscar Gamble coming back, the Sox continued the tradition of getting fair value for their shortstops.

2/27 N3: Of course, there are distinct things I know about Minnie Minoso and Larry Doby. Minoso was Cuban, and he’s the guy who made cameos in 1976 and 1980. Doby was the first American League Black player. But they were born only two weeks apart (to the day), had similarities in their games, and both had a dizzying number of comings and goings to and from the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians. So you can forgive me if my understanding of them is not as individual as it should be.

For some reason, I was under the impression that, despite his later Hall of Fame election, Minoso is the better-regarded player by the sabermetrics community. I was in fact under the impression Joe Posnanski had chosen Minoso as one of his 100 — in fact, this is not true Minoso was a particular personal favorite of Bill James, if I recall, but in 2001, Jamed rated Minoso the 10th-best left fielder of all time, Doby the 11th-best center fielder.

That seems about right. I failed to find really anything that substantiates a higher ranking of Minoso than Doby.

Their career slashes are similar. For Minoso, .299/.387/.461; for Doby, .288/.389/.489. Minoso was mostly a White Sox player, Doby mostly an Indian, and while I found that Chico Carrasquel did much better on the road than at home, that does not apply to Minoso: indeed, for their careers, Doby had an .876 OPS on the road, Minoso an .826.

A close look at the career slash lines tells a lot of truths. Minoso drew walks, but not the way Doby did, who had five straight years of 90+, and had two seasons over 100. The greater isolated power also correctly identifies that Doby as the more serious home run hitter — although he only hit 32 in both years, he led the AL in 1952 and 1954.

Minoso was the more accomplished player in batting average, though, something you might not clearly know from the career slashes. Minoso remarkably produced a .300 average seven times in eight years, when hitting .300 was a pretty hard thing to do. Doby hit .326 in 1950, stealing the offensive show that year even as the Red Sox scored 1027 runs, but otherwise Doby only topped .300 one other time, excepting an excellent Negro League season.

Although he was a left fielder, Minoso was likely more speed, certainly more triples, than Doby. This again is not adequately captured by the respective 8 and 7 triples per 162 games their Baseball Reference lines show. Minoso hit as many as 18 triples and led the AL three times; Doby is credited with 10 for the Newark Eagles of the NNL in 1946, but only was over five twice in the American League.

While Minoso won three Gold Gloves and Doby didn’t win any, Minoso’s mere 8-run edge in Rfield for their careers does not say that superior defense should absolutely make Minoso the choice as the greater player. Doby was a center fielder, too, starting only seven games in a corner from 1951-1958.

To return to the players’ comparative ties to Cleveland and Chicago, I struggle to simplify this. Perhaps the reason is because it is qualitative comparison not quantitative. Doby got an earlier start in MLB and was with the Indians straight off after he left the Newark Eagles. He famously debuted in 1947, but that was for only 5 hits, so it’s better to think of him building up the stats for the first time in 1948. He knew no team other than Cleveland until he was traded to the White Sox for Carrasquel and a replacement center fielder (Jim Busby) after 1955.

Minoso had a brief trial with Cleveland in 1949 but spent 1950 for Cleveland’s AAA affiliate before going to the White Sox late the next April. He just missed out to a Yankee for Rookie of the Year, but that was Gil McDougald, not Mickey Mantle. He remained with the White Sox until they traded him to Cleveland after 1957.

If you followed the history, Minoso and Doby then played together in 1956 and 1957, and the union/reunion (however one wants to see it) was continued in 1958, when the Indians got Doby (again) in a separate trade. Minoso and Doby were teammates twice with Cleveland and once with Chicago, but spent more of their careers apart than together.

I also place the Indians and White Sox together because they were both at times the province of Bill Veeck, but I would describe his role in making these teams the homes of Doby and Minoso partial. He is not simply the puppet master behind the scenes. He signed both players, then was gone when when the Indians ill-advisedly sent Minoso to Chicago in 1951. Yet to be mentioned, after buying the White Sox in 1959, he did reacquire Doby, assuring that Larry retired a White Sox player. Doby failed to homer in a 21-game stint, though, striking out against Milt Pappas in his final at-bat, so his final career home run came with the Indians. Veeck then did also get Minoso again as White Sox poobha, with Minnie leading the AL in hits in 1960. And, of course, there were the stunts with Minoso in 1976 and 1980, which was actually another reincarnation of Veeck White Sox ownership.

Another outfielder of the period linked to both teams was Al Smith. Coming up with Cleveland in 1953, he and Early Wynn were traded for Minoso and Fred Hatfield after 1957. For all intents and purposes, Doby is an Indian, and Minoso a White Sox. In Smith’s case, he was a more conscientious parent, retiring with 2859 plate appearances with the Indians, 2843 with the White Sox, and so favoring neither team.