THT: Treder: Daddy Wags

Buy Your Wags at The Hardball Rag...as Steve Treder looks back at Leon Wagner.

Deployed in a strict platoon role (fewer than 10 percent of his 241 plate appearances were against left-handed pitching) in left field by the Giants for the rest of the season, Wagner hit a blistering .317 with 13 homers. But the impression he made as a defender was less positive. Here was the summary report on Wagner in that year’s Dell Sports Baseball annual: “Raw, crude and deficient afield but has such tremendous power that he’s sure to get further examination.”

Along with ragged defense, the “raw and crude” impression may have been a function of Wagner’s approach at the plate, which featured an exaggerated high front-leg kick, á la Mel Ott or Sadaharu Oh. Such a hitting style always has been extremely unusual. I’d like to be able to give younger fans who never saw Wagner play a comparison to a modern-day hitter with a similar approach, but I can’t think of one, and in an informal poll of the THT staff, no one else can either. Both Darryl Strawberry and Kirby Puckett (not all that modern-day anymore, I know, I know) had big kicks, but not as big as Wagner’s. It was a singular style, to be sure.