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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Monday, November 10, 2008
Question…How was it possible for scientists to suck the anti-Klotho gene out of Ray Oyler’s abandoning grayflesh and give it to Brandon Fahey, without anyone knowing about it?
Bill Bergen was a catcher for the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Superbas/Dodgers from 1901 to 1911. He played in a total of 947 games and had 3,028 at bats. His career OPS+ was 21 … that’s right, 21. The next lowest career OPS+ was the 49 posted by Hal Lanier. Hal Lanier’s lifetime slash stats (AVG/OBP/SLG) were .228/.255/.275. Bill Bergen was a far worse hitter than Hal Lanier. Bill Bergen’s BEST hitting year was 1903 when he went .227/.252/.266, which equates to an OPS+ of 41 and is worse than Lanier’s career numbers. He had four doubles, two triples and seven walks in 207 at bats.
It’s difficult for me, quite frankly, to find words that do justice to how bad those stats are and, again, that was Bergen’s best year. It was the only time in his eleven major league seasons that he managed to hit for an average above .200. In 1909 he hit .139 in 346 at bats. In 1911, his final year, he hit .132. He had four extra base hits and a slugging percentage of .154. His OPS+ was -1. I didn’t know it was possible to have a negative OPS.
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1. Gamingboy Posted: November 10, 2008 at 04:46 PM (#3006025)I'm guessing it's virtually impossible. Your average no bat, good glove backup catcher type has to put up an OPS+ in the 60-70 range, doesn't he?
Were catchers of Bergen's time worse hitters relative to other positions than they are today?
I was hoping for an article that used a projection system to say that, say, Brian Giles was the worst hitter of all time, and then for the author to appear in comments and defend himself strenuously. No such luck.
I just did a P-I search on B-Ref. 1900-1911, minimum 250 games at C.
You get 49 players. Bergen is dead last at 21 OPS+. You then have 4 guys in the 40's, 2 in the 50's, 10 in the 60's, 10 in the 70's, 9 in the 80's, 6 in the 90's, and 7 above 100 OPS+.
The same search for 1998-2008 has a similar distribution, but a little worse. 96 players, by OPS+ buckets: 40's 1, 50's 3, 60's 13, 70's 19, 80's 29, 90's 17, over 100 14.
So, even compared to his peers he was absolutely horrific, and his peers don't seem to be that much worse than modern C's.
Hmmm...there are seven Bas listed here.
Super Ba
Mediocre Ba
When I was a kid I wondered why the LA baseball team named themselves after dodgeball players.
I didn't get a lot of the team names - Expos, Astros, Mets, the "x" in Sox.
I'm pretty sure that it's Superb-as, not Super-bas. It'd would be like "Terrificas" or "Spectacularas" or "Fantasticas," all of which are equally stupid.
"Bridegrooms" was good too.
Looking over the B-R teams page, I also like the Newark Pepper, the Columbus Solons, and the Wilmington Quicksteps.
I might nominate "Boston Rustlers" for the Utah Jazz Least Appropriate Nickname for the City You're In Award.
the LA Lakers say hi
I thought it was, like many nicknames of the era, a product of the headline writers.
Or "Perfectos".
But successful on a personal level is your attempt to re-cast "Quixote" into something more Anglo.
It turns out that Mencken endorsed the spelling, but he didn't originate it. I stand corrected.
Cincinnati wasn't bad in 1903, though, when Bergen was a second-string catcher hitting .227. That was his career year ...
I blame the Red Sox & White Sox for being placed in the wrong spelling level in elementary school.
One of the words on the placement test was "socks". When the teacher called out the word for us to spell, I deliberated over the spelling for a long time. I initially thought it was "socks", but then I remembered that, not one, but two Major League baseball teams had it spelled "sox" on their uniforms. Surely no professional sports team would have a misspelled word on their uniform, would they?
I concluded that this was just one more of the many exceptions to English spelling rules and spelled the word s-o-x, confident that I had spelled it correctly.
WRONG...!!!
I was guessing Tony Pena Jr. when I saw the headline, BTW... although I knew about Bergen... just seemed more timely.
For all your rust-proofing needs.
So why did the Superbas purchase Bergen?
Buy low.
This assumes that we've determined how to quantify all catcher defense, which obviously isn't true. It is unlikely the range of abilities in catcher defense was the same then as now. Catcher defense was more important then than it is now, due to far more bunting and base stealing.
So even though his teams were often near the bottom in runs allowed, I think it's safe to say Bergen was worth 250-300 runs a year defensively.
Well, as Casey Stengel said, if you don't have a catcher you're going to have a lot of passed balls back there.
Always a Bridegroom, never a bride.
Making Jose Lima a very valuable commodity. I think Lima will stick around waiting for this inevitable rule change.
It is rare that I need to look up the definition of a team name, but "solon" was a new one to me. Thanks!
Sacramento's PCL team in the league's golden age was also the Solons.
I don't think we can have bridegrooms anymore, thanks to proposition 8.
Ricciardi says he'll back up Rod Barajas and see some time at DH against southpaws.
Best Regards
John
The Bergen question for WHOAT I would put up from the reference page is that, given the vastly different playing conditions of his day and the emphasis on catcher defense, how many of the other 15 clubs in MLB in his day put up with a Bergenesque hitter as their catcher for any length of time? As Dernier says, it's not like Bergen's outstanding defense lifted his clubs (Reds/Superbas) into pennant contention either.
A nice SABR project would be to compare Bill's press coverage during his career to that of other light hitters of our modern day -- the Laniers and Oylers and Tony Pena Jrs. How many columnists thundered that he should be run out of town, how many columnists thundered he should be kept as a defensive stopper, as a negative influence, positive influence, when and where was he subbed/PH for, did he have blackmail material on his manager, was there an ergot poisoning epidemic making the rounds? That kind of thing. I don't know if such a study exists.
Reminiscent of Charlie Brown's elimination in the first round of his school's spelling bee for hearing his word ("maze"), flashing on the Say Hey Kid and spelling it "M-A-Y-S". Wah wah wah wah-wah wah.
Not as good as "Los Hombres Muy Magnifico".
For years my latent dyslexia kicked in whenever I came across this nickname -- I always read it as "Superbras."
I think you're confused. Dyslexia isn't another name for testosterone.
Best Regards
John
Here's a list of contemporary catchers.
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/aUZw
That's where the nickname came from. There was a popular acrobatic troupe at the time which worked trapeze acts and tumbling into musical numbers and dramatic sketches (I guess you had to be there). The troupe was run by the six Hanlon Brothers, and their last production, in the 1890s, was called Superba.
Ned Hanlon was not related to the brothers, but someone got the bright idea of nicknaming his team after the Hanlons' act, and voila!, Brooklyn Superbas was born...
Windsor Spitfires
I'd like to see an Ice Bat go one-on-one with Adolf Galland.
Best. Nickname. Ever.
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