Ya know…I can’t even think of the best player I never heard of.
Bill Nicholson is the best player I had never heard of.
I recently came across Willis Hudlin and his Hall Rating of 49. That led me to wonder who the best players were that I had never heard of. By “never heard of”, I mean I couldn’t tell you either the general era they played in or their position just by looking at their name. For example, I don’t know much about Murry Dickson, but I knew he was a pitcher. So, he counts as “someone I’ve heard of”.
So, Nicholson was the best player I had never heard of. That kind of surprises me, as he was pretty valuable. With 39.9 WAR and a Hall Rating of 74, he had a pretty great career.
...Nicholson’s list of similar players starts with Hall of Famer Earle Combs and includes Dolph Camilli, Darryl Strawberry, David Justice, Ken Williams, and Kent Hrbek. That gives you an idea of the type of player he was.
So, why haven’t I heard of him? It’s probably because all of his accomplishments pointed out in the list above took place during World War II, when many stars were overseas. Nicholson was not—and he dominated.
I know I have seen Nicholson’s name before. But I think I subconsciously associated him with Dave Nicholson, the TTO (Three True Outcomes) legend. I think because I’m so familiar with Dave (relatively speaking, compared to his actual body of work), I assumed that he and Bill were the same person. I was wrong—and I’ve been missing out on a pretty good player.
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Meh, I'd heard of both of them
using WAR, the best player I cannot recall having heard of was:
Art Fletcher (I paused on Jimmy Sheckard but I thunk I'd heard the name...)
Fletcher was an SS, and BBREF WAR loves his defense, I think WAR fielding runs for Fletcher's era are quite speculative... so perhaps Larry Gardner, a 3B from the same era- as a hitter Gardner was pretty much Pie Traynor- in fact you could stick his post prime 1920-21 statlines into Traynor's and they would not look out of place- but Gardner spend the bulk of his carer and his prime in the teens when offense was VERY low
Traynor also had the great glove rep (I have no idea what Gardner's rep was, never heard of him before afterall)- but WAR likes Gardner's glove a bit better (but doesn't love or hate either man's dee)
WAR gives Gardner a 10 WAR advantage over Traynor, but neither man is close to the HOM's 60 WAR line
Strat-O-Matic, which does a lot of research into its fielding ratings, rates him a "2" in 1911, and a "1" (the highest rating) in 1920.
Nicholson I knew about, of course, because my father was a 13-year-old Cub fan in 1943. I also know about Lennie Merullo, and Lou Novikoff, the Mad Russian.
I'm actually just glad that the greatest player I'd never heard of isn't active. I probably know more ballplayers from the 1940s than I do from the 2010s. Certainly I know more from the 1960s and 70s.
That's me, too. I memorized the entire baseball encyclopedia through the mid-1970s. (And that's not much of an exaggeration.) Then I graduated from high school, and real life, school, marriage, kids, career etc. rudely made their presence known.
As for Roy Thomas, somebody buy him a first Ed. Bjhba
Please tell me you were like 12 years old? Because if you were around 16-17, I would have to assume you didn't get laid much...
So if he were 12 you'd assume he was getting laid all the time?
Apparently you could have one and still not know.
I'm bad with pre 1920's baseball. I didn't have to get very far down on the WAR leader list. I couldn't tell you anything about Eddie Plank or Roger Connor.
20th century division, it's White Sox pitching great and 7-time All-Star Billy Pierce.
But I know them now.
(well actually, I do understand, but it's a shame that the nickname was used up on Bill)
"Swish II" just doesn't flow
Now, among good players that played in my lifetime, the one I was most uninformed about was Ralph Garr. I knew he was an outfielder and played for the Braves and hit for big averages a few times, but until he popped up near the top of Carl Crawford's comp list a couple years ago, I didn't know much about him. Hanging around very nerdy baseball guys, I don't think he's *ever* come up in a conversation I've been privy to.
Roadrunner. Hit an inside-the-park home run in the very first game I attended, when his fly ball resulted in a famously violent collision between Don Hahn and George Theodore.
On what basis? Certainly not on similarity scores.
They were left-handed hitting outfielders?
What am I missing?
On the pitching side, I am clueless about the gentleman named "Charlie Buffinton" (56th). He sounds like he might be from the 1800s, just because of that rich-sounding last name.
Fellow Primates, this is no exaggeration whatsoever. Steve T has a downright chilling recall of every player in that era. September callups, benchwarmers on last place teams, one hit wonders, various cups of coffee -- the man knows em ALL.
One of the more obscure guys near the top of the list is George Uhle. Part of that is because he has 11.5 batting WAR. Which is why I know about him, he's on all the lists of the best hitting pitchers.
I have only the vaguest memory of my running across his name before, and the same is true of Wilbur Cooper. Their names are so generic that I'm discounting them and calling Lonny Frey my first miss.
On the pitcher's side, Charlie Buffinton got me as well, #56 (not counting the fact that I read it a few times in this thread before perusing the WAR list).
Oh, you mean William Beck Nicholson.
interesting gaggle...
Nicholson is similar to Roy Thomas in that both were good outfielders who had little power, but who hit for average and took their walks. Actually, Thomas had NO power at all, even for the dead ball era. Nicholson did have a little power.
Bobby Wallace was a hot-glove Hall shortstop who could hit some, but whose memory is lost due to being an almost exact contemporary of Honus Wagner. Sort of like Bill Dahlen, except that Dahlen was probably a better hitter but a slightly weaker glove than Wallace, and not so exact a contemporary of Honus. Dahlen is not in the Hall, but could be. He has a pretty decent case.
Buffinton was at least a Hall of Very Good pitcher from the 19th century; you could make a case for the Hall of Fame, but it probably would not fly. Bobby Mathews is, essentially, Pud Galvin lite. Like Galvin, he pitched a huge number of innings for his time period (he goes back to the National Association in 1871), but didn't pitch at a high rate.
Billy Herman is in the Hall of Fame. He was a second baseman, a good singles hitter and a good glove. He was the kid that the Cubs found that led them to quit trying to get one more year out of Rogers Hornsby. According to reports, he hated Hornsby, and Hornsby hated him, although that's not unusual with Hornsby, particularly for some kid who is taking his job and forcing him to confront his mortality.
Jack Glasscock was a very good SS in the 19th century. Bid McPhee is possibly the best second baseman of the 19th century, and was recently inducted into the Hall of Fame, the first player to get in whose career has lots of seasons in the American Association. He was not the best player in the AA, but he has better confirming stats in his years in the NL than any other AA player, even Harry Stovey.
Billy Pierce was a small lefty pitcher who threw very hard. I think he's in the Hall of Merit. I remember seeing him in All-Star games in the 1950s. Dick McAuliffe was a glove wizard who could not really hit, from about the same time period as Pierce. You should be able to find footage of them playing without too much effort.
- Brock Hanke (who has had to work up the 19th century three times: the Baseball Maniacs, a magazine called Gravengood's, and the Hall of Merit)
I also have several baseball trivia books. Without consulting PI or Google, can anyone tell me who holds the rookie record for doubles in a season? Its one that very few people know, and the player is somewhat obscure.
?? McAuliffe was a fine hitter. He has a career OPS of 109 and one year went as high as 148. He had power for a 2nd baseman and excellent strikezone judgement, walking over 100 times twice.
One thing about McAuliffe is he had perhaps the weirdest batting stance I had ever seen. His stance was way open, sort of like Brian Downing, and he leaned way back on his rear foot, so far that his front foot was barely touching the ground. And his bat was nearly parallel to the ground. Really strange stance.
I think that 3B Jerry Denny was, technically, the last man to play the field without wearing a glove, although Denny might have become a benchwarmer before McPhee put on a glove. McPhee was the last 2B to play barehanded, but not the last player at any position. - Brock
Edit: Coke
Yeah, when I was about 9, I got Ethan Allen's "All-Star Baseball" for a birthday and played it relentlessly with my friends (truly...I think some stopped coming over to the house because it was all I would do). Ended up coding it onto our first computer (a 6800-based system) as my first program. Because it had no defense/pitching elements, I spent many, many hours coming the various Encyclopedias I could borrow from the library to find the best "times on base" players (MacMillan didn't have OBP, so I had been hand-calculating it without knowing it had a name). Led me to know many, many players (e.g., Erv Brame, Jack Stivetts, etc.) that are otherwise quite obscure to people.
Anyway, means that the first few players about whom I couldn't tell you more than their position are pitchers from the 1880s and '90s --- the aforementioned Buffinton and Ted Breitenstein --- and the first player I am unfamiliar with *by name* is Larry Gardner...someone of whom I have heard, but not linked the player with the name. (Almost thought Mike Smith was next, but his .398 OBP led to him being one of the bench options in the version of my game I wrote as a capstone project as an undergrad --- got to update it for the 6809!)
So, first guy I know nothing about and don't recall anything even after seeing his page is Sadie McMahon... Yep, seems I need to go read up on the pitching staffs of the 1880s and 1890s!
Link: http://tinyurl.com/azbg488 (Not hyperlinked because that's a giant pain from my tablet.)
When I first saw the name "Bill Nicholson" my first three thoughts were: nicknamed "Swish", played for the White Sox in the '60s, struck out a ridiculous amount. Of course, the latter two are DAVE Nicholson, not Bill. And to add to the confusion, I confused Bill Melton and Dave Nicholson and thought that Bill "Swish" Nicholson was a thirdbaseman for the 1960s-era White Sox who struck out crazy amounts with pretty good HR power. So, I guess technically, the best player I'd never heard of was probably the same as the author here: the real Bill Nicholson.
That's an interesting limitation to try. I headed down the position-player WAR list and though I initially hesitated over a few, I seemed to summon up subliminal knowledge that is actually a bit distressing. E.g. I got to John Romano and blanked, and then a little voice said to me "American League catcher of the 1960s" and damn if it wasn't right.
I do confess to getting the Valentins mixed up, not to mention the Alex Gonzalezes, but at least I know there are two of each and roughly what the two of them did, if not immediately who was who.
The first postwar position player I drew nothing at all on was Bob Nieman, a journeyman slugger who was a little before my time (played mostly in the 1950s). On the pitching side, it's Gerry Staley, who pitched for the Cardinals in the early 50s while Nieman was playing crosstown for the Browns. Come to find that Staley became a top reliever for the 1959 White Sox, but I was in my infancy, listening to the air-raid sirens, when they won the pennant.
And yet another guy whose autograph I sent off for & received (albeit on a photo) way back when, though he was active then, unlike Nicholson & Combs (& Stan Coveleski, who gets mentioned in the thread, too) ... & I think even Bob Nieman.
I didn't realize a) that he struck out so little by the standards of our time (a guy takes crap for 80 K per 162 games?? definitely a different era), or b) that he could be placed on a level with Strawberry, Justice, or (according to B-R) J.D. Drew and Larry Doby. Although of course there's a huge wartime adjustment that needs to be made here, that is nonetheless interesting.
Although I'm extremely reluctant to think that players should be elected to the Hall of Fame on the basis of "fame" per se, I still gotta think that this discussion is damning to the HOF case of Bobby Wallace. I mean, jeez.
I'm going to say that my best hitter I never heard of by WAR is Ed Konetchy. I have heard the name, but I could not tell you a single thing about him. And yup, the immortal Buffinton on the pitcher side.
Rants - Yeah. It was confusion with Aurelio Rodriguez. I don't know why that happens, but I've gotten the two names confused more than once over several decades. You'd think I'd have a flag in my head whenever I see either name, telling me to stop and look the guy up before I ran my mouth, but not so far. I do tend to merge the 1950s and the 1960s together in my head, because that's when I was growing up and getting started following the game. In my memory, McAuliffe and Pierce were more or less contemporaries, although in any detail that's wrong. At least, I have no chance of confusing Dick Schofield with anyone other than his father or his son, depending on which Dick Schofield you're talking about.
On Nicholson, I'm going to stand my ground. Yes, he led the league in homers two years: 1943 and 1944. In Wrigley Field. He did have a few good (20+) homer seasons aside from those, but he also had seasons in the single digits, although they tend to not have as many PAs as the 20+ years do. Still, his 29 and 33 during the war were his best power seasons, and he spent his career in a good homer park. Remember, I was speculating on how he could come up in a list of comps to Roy Thomas, who was a dead ball era CF pretty similar to Billy Hamilton, although not nearly as good. Thomas had no power at all, but hit for average, fueled by bunts, and took walks. Nicholson, aside from the war years, had more weak power years than strong power years. I think you can have a good debate over whether Bill was a middle-order guy or a leadoff man. As a leadoff man, he's, I guess, as similar to Thomas as anyone other than guys like Dode Paskert, Billy Hamilton, and Richie Ashburn. But I wasn't trying to put Bill in a comp list for Roy; I was trying to speculate on why anyone would. Me? I'd put the three guys I listed in a list of comps to Thomas, rather than Bill. But if Bill is in there, I was trying to think through why.
Tom - Are you aware that there's a Yahoo group about All-Star Baseball? Like you, I got introduced to the game when I was a kid, but in my case, it was by an older kid who was always willing to play. Over the years, I've managed to accumulate all the discs Cadaco ever issued, except for the 1952B set. A lot of the guys in the group do things like you do - make computer simulations with pitcher rankings and such. I still play the game like I did when I was 10 or so, because when I was 19, that friend who intro'd me to the game died in a car accident, on the way home from his honeymoon. I've kept up with the game ever since, and play his team in a league, as my way of honoring his memory. There's even an annual magazine about the game, with lots of computer-generated discs, articles and disc photocopies, published by a man named John Rose. If you weren't aware of the group, you should check it out.
When you're looking up 19th c. pitchers, it's very helpful to keep in mind that the 1880s are sort of the adolescence of professional baseball. Players at the time had no idea how many league IP their arms could handle, so you get guys pitching a great 500+ IP season, followed by a 300 IP season of no great quality, and then back to 500 good IP, Worse, they also did not know that the IP limit was decreasing steadily, as overhand pitching and multiple pitches became the norm. So, you've got guys ending up with a 10-12 year career with as many IP as a modern starter gets in 18 years, and zero consistency. The 1870s aren't like that, because the schedules aren't long enough to overpower a pitcher's arm at the time. The 1890s, at least after 1892, are a completely different game for pitchers. But when dealing with the 1880s, it's usually best to deal with career totals, rather than trying to figure out how to compare Hoss Radbourne's 1884 to any season after about 1889.
And Tom, you finally got me. I have no idea who Erv Brame is, and am pretty sure I've never run across the name, except maybe in the Baseball Maniacs' Big Project. - Brock
Oddly, both the NL and AL records for doubles in a season by a rookie are held by guys with two first names. (Noted the guy with two first names.)
so did Fred Lynn
So he wasn't a flamboyant homosexual?
Eventually improving on your effort, four years ago I led an online project where we ranked the top 500 players: The Collaboration Game.
Also, I'm about to retract just about everything I've said about Bill Nicholson. Thank you all for giving me enough grief to make me do this. I'd never thought about Nicholson much before. I checked BB-Ref, and Nicholson and Roy Thomas have COMPLETELY different similar player lists. Comment #24 says that the claim that they are similar comes from the article, so I read that and it's true. I have no idea what the article writer was smoking.
As I said, I've never looked seriously at Nicholson before, but I checked the New Historical Abstract entry, only to find out that Nicholson claimed that Wrigley Field was hard to hit in because of all the white shirts on the fans in the center field seats. James notes that Bill hit significantly more homers on the road than at home, and that his WWII stats should be treated as legit, because the balata ball just about counters the lack of stars who were in the army. I yield to the evidence. Bill Nicholson was at least a guy with mid-range power. I was making a Wrigley deduction that was, in Nicholson's time, completely undeserved. Nicholson is also not comparable in any way that I can see to Roy Thomas. This started with me trying to think what there might be about Bill that was similar to Roy, and I didn't do a good job, because the answer is "nothing." I should also shamefacedly admit that most of what I thought I knew about Nicholson comes from one Cadaco All-Star Baseball disc that he had. The disc gives him mid-range power. I should have listened to it.
Sorry, Brock
No need to apologize to yourself, Brock.
Now there's a guy I'd never heard of. And I know a lot of old players, because I have a Strat-O-Matic solitaire league with about 8,000 players in it (MLB, NPB, Negro Leagues, AAGBL, etc.), all of them hand picked, so I've gone through the encyclopedias with a fine-toothed comb. But this guy escaped me. And looking at BR, that lifetime .306/.326/.429 batting line has to be one of the all-time best for a pitcher, doesn't it?
//self-deprecating age joke
badgers are mean, cranky sumb8tches.
you should be proud
Brock Landers is another Brock who was seriously involved in theater. And a lot of other ####.
And mine would be "God is My Judge Bailiff." How ... not very interesting.
Yes. Even better.
How could you possibly whiff?
For pitchers, it's much higher on that list, as it's #59 John Matlack (36.3 WAR).
Both of them are before I really started watching baseball, or made a name for themselves in the NL (and I usually only saw AL games).
For this my answers are Bill Doran and Steve Farr.
In fact Bill Doran really stands out with 30.6 WAR. Above Jack Clark, BJ Surhoff, Keith Hernandez, Edgar Renteria. Who the hell is Bill Doran?
The next highest unknown player is Johnny Ray with 21.6. Apparently I need to read up more on second basemen taken by the Astros in the 1979 draft.
The best match I found was this game, which Ray won with his third hit in the 15th inning.
I remember Bill North mostly for his 1973 Topps baseball card showing him with an airbrushed A's hat while wearing a Cubs jersey.
My parents had one of the most bitter arguments I've ever heard - over Dick McAuliffe's batting stance ("He holds his bat like this." "No he doesn't, you moron, he holds it this way"). I was 9 years old at the time and it was the first time that I was aware that there was apparently trouble in paradise and that Happily Ever After...wasn't. Not surprising they split up not too long after that.
At least my wife and I don't argue over silly things like a player's batting stance. We find much more reasonable things to have arguments about, like the DH.
Doran
Biggio
Doran
Biggio
I don't buy it.
Which app is that?
Candaele, by the way, is one of my all-time favorite ballplayers. I'm fully aware of his shortcomings (of which there were many), but I can't help but love a guy who went undrafted, made his MiLB debut at 22, scratched and clawed his way to the majors, played seven positions, fought back from a .170/.228/.238 age 27 season and a full year in the minors at age 28 to be part of a pennant-winner at age 36, and played in the minors until he was nearly 40.
I know the term "scrappy" is generally only used for white utility infielders, but Candaele deserved the title. By sheer force of will, he spent nearly 20 years in pro ball.
OK, that's what I get for posting before looking anything up. He was NOT a doubles machine (only hit as many as 30 once) but I still maintain he was scrappy. And then he put up his career-best OPS+ (135) at age 32, and then had two middling seasons as a more-or-less regular after that...
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