1982 by position

C - Gary Carter
1B - Eddie Murray
2B - Joe Morgan
SS - Robin Yount
3B - Mike Schmidt
LF - Lonnie Smith
CF - Dale Murphy
RF - Pedro Guerrero

P - Steve Rogers, Joe Niekro, Dave Stieb, Mario Soto, Rick Sutcliffe
RP - Bob Stanley

This is the year I first started paying attention to baseball. Brewers vs. Cardinals in the World Series and Cal Ripken Jr. winning the Rookie of the Year are some of my earliest MLB memories.

Couple names I forgot as being that good - Sixto Lezcano and Dickie Thon.

Also forgot Bob Stanley was ever good, I only remember him as blowing the '86 WS and being kinda crappy in the late 80s.

Harvey’s Wallbangers lose to Whitey’s Cardinals in a more typical season.

Typical of what?

The game of baseball was more in flux during the 80s than it had been in a long time. In the 1970s you had two sets of minor dynasties in each division (Pirates/Phillies, Reds/Dodgers, Orioles/Yankees, As/Royals); in the 80s things became very different, as teams rose and fell year-over-year, with no particular rhyme or reason to the flow.

-- MWE

EDIT: Cardinals' winning percentages year by year in the 1980s, just for the sake of the discussion: .457, .578, .568 (won WS), .488, .519, .623 (lost WS), .491, .586 (lost WS), .469, .531.

I was kind of surprised Reggie Jackson wasn't on the list. Then I see that in 1982 he had 5.0 oWAR (good for 10th in the AL) and -2.4 dWAR. Yowsa.

More typical schedule than 1981.

I started following baseball around the 86/87 season. I think I'll be fascinated to learn what happened in the few years before then -- I'm looking forward to these discussions. Thanks, all of those who participate!

I think I attended my first MLB game in 1984

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1984/B08140MIN1984.htm

1982 prelim

1) Robin Yount - by a lot
2) Gary Carter
3) Mike Schmidt
4) Pedro Guerrero
5) Doug DeCinces
6) Steve Rogers
7) Joe Niekro
8) Dale Murphy
9) Dave Stieb
10) Mario Soto
11) Eddie Murray
12) Sixto Lezcano
13) Dickie Thon

14-20) Terry Kennedy, Buddy Bell, Andre Dawson, Joe Morgan, Rick Sutcliffe, Toby Harrah, Dwight Evans
21-24) Cecil Cooper, Lonnie Smith, George Brett, Ozzie Smith

I have Joe Niekro narrowly as the best pitcher but Rogers edges him with his bat.

He's not on the shortlist above, and isn't in my top 20, but John Lowenstein had
a remarkable 1982 season. (I have to admit that I have no recollection of him.):

176 OPS+, higher than any qualified player, achieved via a

181 OPS+ in 376 PA against RHP and a
-15 OPS+ in 8 PA against LHP.

in the 80s things became very different, as teams rose and fell year-over-year, with no particular rhyme or reason to the flow.

AL East in particular. From 1981-1986, 6 different teams won the division.

AL East in particular. From 1981-1986, 6 different teams won the division.

And IIRC, the Yankees had more wins than any AL team in the 80s, and had zero division titles (unless you count the first half 1981 division title) to show for it.

And IIRC, the Yankees had more wins than any AL team in the 80s, and had zero division titles (unless you count the first half 1981 division title) to show for it.

1980, but your general point about parity is valid.

He's not on the shortlist above, and isn't in my top 20, but John Lowenstein had
a remarkable 1982 season. (I have to admit that I have no recollection of him.):

176 OPS+, higher than any qualified player, achieved via a

181 OPS+ in 376 PA against RHP and a
-15 OPS+ in 8 PA against LHP.

John Lowenstein and Gary Roenicke were one of the alltime great platoons. In 1982, Orioles left fielders batted a combined .283/.378/.545, with 36 HRs and 104 RBIs. If that had been done by one player, he'd have placed 4th in the AL in OPS, 4th in HRs, and 9th in RBIs. In 1983, Orioles LF batted .295/.368/.525, 34 HRs, 113 RBIs, which would have placed 5th in OPS, 4th in HRs, and 5th in RBIs.

By position

SP: Rogers
C: Carter
1B: Murray
2B: Morgan
3B: Schmidt
SS: Yount
LF: Henderson, Rickey
CF: Murphy, Dale
RF: Evans, Dwight
DH: McRae. Best DH season in a while; won't make my top 13.
RP: Minton (or Quiz or Scurry or Spillner or Stanley)

1. Yount, Robin
2. Schmidt, Mike
3. Murphy, Dale
4. Carter, Gary
5. Dave Stieb
6. Steve Rogers
7. Mario Soto
8. Evans, Dwight
9. Henderson, Rickey
10. Guerrero, Pedro
11. Molitor, Paul
12. Harrah, Toby
13. Joe Niekro

Ah, 1982. A big year in my baseball fandom. (And in my life, as it saw the birth of my first child.) 1982 was the year I first read a Bill James Baseball Abstract. I had lived in Madison, WI from about 1977 through 1981 and had become familiar with the Brewer team. (Am I remembering correctly that the injury that turned Larry Hisle from a star to a footnote was a rotator cuff?) But I had moved to Austin, TX, and that brought me back a little closer to my original Oklahoma-based Cardinal fandom. I think you could even once in a while pick up KMOX directly on a car radio in or near Austin. So yes, I was paying attention when the Brewers met the Cardinals in the WS.

That WS matchup poured a lot of attention onto the massive multiplayer trade between the two teams a year and a half earlier. To be honest, from the perspective of 1982, the Brewers seemed to have been getting the better part of the deal. Several of the players the Cardinals received were worth more as assets in trade than they were directly. As for David Green, the superstar of the future that would balance all the accounts in the end - 1982 was too soon for him, but even after that, his time never really came. On the Brewers side: Fingers was still Fingers, although he didn't have the freaky ERA that he'd had in 1981. (I remember my comment of the time: was Fingers as good as his 1981 ERA? No, because no one is is that good.) Simmons had been a disappointment. One of the reactions to Simmons was, "How could anyone bat cleanup in that lineup and not drive in 100 runs?" But part of the reason was that he only played a catcherly 137 games (121 at C). Getting a 112 OPS+ from your principal catcher is worth quite a lot. (Whether he, rather than Gorman Thomas, should have batted cleanup? Whatever.) And Pete Vuckovich won the Cy Young in 1982. OK, OK, that wasn't exactly a shining moment of clarity for CYA voters, and I don't really expect to see Vuckovich getting many votes in this election.

That trade had been driven by a lot of things. One was the fact that Whitey had been pursuing parallel negotiations aimed at acquiring both Bruce Sutter and Rollie Fingers and both negotiations came through. But how could any one team have really used both Sutter and Fingers? One of them had to move on. Sutter had been acquired for Leon Durham and Ken Reitz. I'm guessing Whitey didn't see that much future for Durham in his system, but he positively had to get rid of Reitz. Sabermetric fans of this generation may be flabbergasted to hear that Reitz was ever thought of as a star - but he was. And Whitey was having none of it. Fingers was acquired for Terry Kennedy. Now Kennedy was a good player, but Whitey was already fixated, for whatever reason, on wanting Darrell Porter as his catcher. Which left Kennedy nowhere to play in St. Louis, and which also eventually led to the need to package Simmons in a trade. bjhanke will tell you that Whitey couldn't get both Simmons and Hernandez to agree to have Simmons play 1B and Hernandez play LF. I find it hard to believe that that would ever have happened.

What really made that 1982 Cardinal team wasn't so much the big Brewer trade (although without that, the whole picture would be very different) but four trades that happened after that:

1. Garry Templeton and Sixto Lezcano for Ozzie Smith. Something of a "challenge trade", SS for SS, with Lezcano (from the Brewer trade) thrown in to supplement the value of what could have been viewed as damaged goods in Templeton. Widely viewed in Cardinal land as a behaviorally motivated talent dump, the exciting and dynamic Templeton for the all-glove-no-bat Smith. And everyone who thought that would eventually be proved very, very wrong. I think that without Ozzie, there would have been no pennant-wining 80's Cardinal teams.

2. Bob Sykes for Willie McGee. Which was rooted in a Yankee roster management screwup. But which also made Tony Scott totally expendable.

3. Tony Scott for Joaquin Andujar.

4. Lary Sorensen (another piece of the Brewer trade) for Lonnie Smith. (Actually a 3-way trade, but this is reporting it from the Cardinal point of view.)

#3 and #4 make an interesting pair: base-stealing outfielder for pitcher, pitcher for base-stealing outfielder. Not quite an exact A for B, B for A because Scott was a CF and Lonnie wasn't, but close enough. What's striking is that both Andujar and Lonnie were being underutilized by the teams that had them, and both had picked up something of a head case reputation. Given his chance, Andujar turned out quite a bit better than Sorensen would have been. Scott was a fast, base-stealing CF whose problem was that he couldn't actually hit. Trading him into the Astrodome didn't do his career any good. Whereas Smith, given a chance to play full time, had a year that matched anything Lou Brock could do at Brock's peak.

Two quick notes on the Brewers (and it would be nice to see Harveys Wallbangers come and say something about his namesake):

Paul Molitor had a reputation for being fragile and injury prone. In 1982 he was totally, 100% healthy. And he scored 136 runs.

Robin Yount's 1982 season is quite strongly parallel to Alex Rodriquez's 1996 season in all respects except age. Yount was 27 years old, reaching the peak of a long climb of improvement from where he was as a teenage major leaguer. Rodriguez was 20 in 1996.

Don't know whether I'll vote this year - sometimes I have more fun just commenting - but if I do, I'm pretty sure Yount is in the #1 spot.

Relief pitching still in the Fireman mode, although the using of LOOGY's and 8th-inning guys are beginning to spread. First sighting of Lee Smith.

Is this our first Quisenberry sighting as well? I always think of him as the next great reliever after Sutter and Goose (chronologically).

Is it just me or did a lot of the top players move around defensively this season? In the AL, I've got partial CF credit for Rickey Henderson and Willie Wilson, plus George Brett spending some time in LF. And in the NL, things are even more unusual with Pedro Guerrero playing all over the place (as he does often throughout his career), plus Leon Durham and Dale Murphy splitting time between corner positions and center field. There's usually one guy splitting positions (like Toby Harrah flipping between SS and 3B in earlier years) but I don't remember this many in one year.

1982 Prelim- Position Players Only

1. Robin Yount, SS, Milwaukee Brewers: easy #1, 1st in OPS+ and RC with +8 fielding
2. Gary Carter, C, Montreal Expos: huge year at the plate (146 OPS+) and behind it (+14 fielding)
3. Mike Schmidt, 3B, Philadelphia Phillies: a credible follow-up to his MMP year of '81, 1st in NL OPS+, 2nd in RC
4. Doug DeCinces, 3B, California Angels: another ex-Oriole finds success on the West Coast, 149 OPS+ and +13 fielding
5. Dwight Evans, RF, Boston Red Sox: a bit of a drop off offensively (149 OPS+ after 163) and defensively (+2 fielding after +14) but that only shows how good Dewey was in '81
6. Toby Harrah, 3B, Cleveland Indians: a last hurrah for Harrah with a 143 OPS+ and 123 Runs Created
7. Pedro Guerrero, RF/CF/3B, Los Angeles Dodgers: a butcher wherever he played but a bat (156 OPS+0 that demanded he play somewhere
8. Eddie Murray, 1B, Baltimore Orioles: a 156 OPS+ and +4 fielding
9. George Brett, 3B, Kansas City Royals: would have been behind Murray whether or not he spent any time in left
10. Dale Murphy, CF/LF, Atlanta Braves: a 142 OPS+ and 118 Runs Created though he probably won't make the ballot by the time I add in the pitchers
11. Andre Dawson, CF, Montreal Expos: a 132 OPS+ and +18 fielding
12. Al Oliver, 1B, Montreal Expos
13. Cecil Cooper, 1B, Milwaukee Brewers
14. Paul Molitor, 3B, Milwaukee Brewers: the third Expo on the list followed by the second and third Brewer
15. Bill Madlock, 3B, Pittsburgh Pirates: beats out teammate Jason Thompson for 15th among position players

Is this our first Quisenberry sighting as well?

Quisenberry got one vote - from me - in the 1980 MMP balloting.

1982 Prelim- Pitchers Included

1. Robin Yount, SS, Milwaukee Brewers: easy #1, 1st in OPS+ and RC with +8 fielding
2. Gary Carter, C, Montreal Expos: huge year at the plate (146 OPS+) and behind it (+14 fielding)
3. Mike Schmidt, 3B, Philadelphia Phillies: a credible follow-up to his MMP year of '81, 1st in NL OPS+, 2nd in RC
4. Doug DeCinces, 3B, California Angels: another ex-Oriole finds success on the West Coast, 149 OPS+ and +13 fielding
5. Steve Rogers, P, Montreal Expos: best pitcher in the NL by a wide margin, 152 ERA+ in 277 innings
6. Dwight Evans, RF, Boston Red Sox: a bit of a drop off offensively (149 OPS+ after 163) and defensively (+2 fielding after +14) but that only shows how good Dewey was in '81
7. Toby Harrah, 3B, Cleveland Indians: a last hurrah for Harrah with a 143 OPS+ and 123 Runs Created
8. Dave Stieb, P, Toronto Blue Jays: best pitcher in the AL by a even bigger margin, 138 ERA+ in 288 innings
9. Joaquin Andujar, P, St. Louis Cardinals: 148 ERA= in 265 innings
10. Pedro Guerrero, RF/CF/3B, Los Angeles Dodgers: a butcher wherever he played but a bat (156 OPS+0 that demanded he play somewhere
11. Eddie Murray, 1B, Baltimore Orioles: a 156 OPS+ and +4 fielding
12. George Brett, 3B, Kansas City Royals: would have been behind Murray whether or not he spent any time in left
13. Joe Niekro, P, Houston Astros: 135 ERA+ in 270 innings to narrowly beat out Murphy for the last spot


14. Dale Murphy, CF/LF, Atlanta Braves: a 142 OPS+ and 118 Runs Created and closer to the ballot than I expected before I ran the pitchers
15. Steve Carlton, P, Philadelphia Phillies
16. Andre Dawson, CF, Montreal Expos: a 132 OPS+ and +18 fielding
17. Al Oliver, 1B, Montreal Expos
18. Fernando Valenzuela, P, Los Angeles Dodgers
19. Cecil Cooper, 1B, Milwaukee Brewers
20. Paul Molitor, 3B, Milwaukee Brewers: the third Expo on the list followed by the second and third Brewer

None of the relievers were able to crack my top 20 this season though I am impressed by Bob Stanley- he qualified for the ERA title (and finished 2nd) with 168 innings in relief.

Is this our first Quisenberry sighting as well?

Quis was on the RP leaders lists in 1980 and 1981.

Relief pitching still in the Fireman mode, although the using of LOOGY's and 8th-inning guys are beginning to spread.

They were nothing close to prevalent, though. Ed Vande Berg (who finished fourth in the AL RoY balloting) was the only reliever in either league to pitch less than one inning per outing, and even then more than half of his appearances lasted at least one inning. In 1982, there were 389 holds as opposed to 932 saves; compare that to 2012, where there were nearly twice as many holds (2343) as saves (1261). There were some guys being used as something akin to setup guys, true - Steve Bedrosian being one, at least in 1982 - but there weren't a lot of them, and most of them were being used more as second closers than as true setup men (like Bedrosian, who picked up 11 saves backing up Gene Garber).

Tony LaRussa gets blamed a lot for the changes wrought in pitcher usage, but to give the devil his due, he was out in front of the curve on the use of LOOGYs - Rick Honeycutt was the closest thing we have to a true prototype, although you had the occasional guy like Bill Henry in the 60s, or Vande Berg later on, who would occasionally be used in that fashion.

-- MWE

Yes, bjhanke will tell you that Whitey had troubles getting Hernandez and Simmons to move to get Simmons out from behind the plate. However, this is not bjhanke's own analysis. He's quoting from the newspapers and broadcasters of the day. I (bjhanke) would have had to be in the front office to know that without media exposure.

One thing that people forget about the Tempelton / Ozzie trade was that it was a trade of two problem children, not one of those and a saint. Ozzie had been having salary squabbles with Padre management, and had gone so far as to offer his services mowing lawns - in the San Diego newspaper - to bring attention to what he thought was a deep and insulting salary offer. The odd thing about the trade is that both players stopped being problems pretty much as soon as they got traded. Tempelton never was the same player, but he quit being a problem child. And Ozzie became Ozzie.

You are also right that David Green was supposed to be the key to the trade that brought him to STL. However, if the info I have is right, and I have several sources for it, what happened was that Green was an incurable alcoholic who simply drank himself out of the league.

Whitey's obsession about bringing Darryl Porter in as catcher is actually quite a common thing for managers and GMs to do. I first noted it when Syd Thrift went from the Chisox front office to Pittsburgh, and promptly looted the Sox for Bobby Bonilla, who the Chisox could not find a defensive position for. Just in recent Cardinal history, Whitey brought in Porter. Shortly thereafter, he looted the Mets, for whom he had once worked, for Jose Oquendo. Joe Torre, who followed Whitey, had been broadcasting for the Angels and tried really hard to get the Cards to trade for Devon White. He didn't get his way, but White had his best years right after that. Joe had just seen something that the Angels hadn't. When Tony La Russa came in, he insisted on bringing this huge first baseman named McGwire with him from Oakland (although it wasn't as though Oakland's front office didn't know that Mac could play). And if you think about it, that makes sense. If you're with one team, you know the players, and who you think the organization has undervalued. When you change teams. one of the first things you should want to do is liberate your former team's underused player. I'd do it, if someone was dumb enough to make me a GM. It would probably be the only thing I'd do right. - Brock Hanke

Ruminations on roster construction:

OK, in this age, in all questions of roster construction, we should bow down to the expertise of Earl Weaver, who knew what he wanted and knew how he'd use it. (See Lowenstein/Roenicke comments above, for instance.)

But getting back to mere mortals: who would you like to see on your bench? Would you rather have young guys who could possibly step in and do a whole job if given a chance, or would you rather have people, most likely veterans, who are only ever going to do part of a job, but will do that much reasonably reliably? No one ever answers that question 100% this way or 100% that way, but there are tendencies.

The team that Whitey inherited had three players floating around that I'd put in the first category: young guys with the chance of being good regulars. Those three were Terry Kennedy, Leon Durham, and Tom Herr. Whitey moved Kennedy in the Fingers trade and he moved Durham in the Sutter trade (as I said, I suspect that Durham simply didn't fit Whitey's ideal model of an outfielder, and there was never going to be room for him at 1B). But with Reitz cleared out of the way and Oberkfell settled at 3B, he could then install Herr as the regular 2B. Whitey's bench was full of guys like Dane Iorg, Steve Braun, and an end-of-career Gene Tenace, very much in the second category of veterans with defined roles.

Any any talk of great defensive infields starts with the Orioles of Robinson, Belanger, and Grich. But the 1982 Cardinals had quite a respectable defensive infield, with Oberkfell, Ozzie, Herr, and Hernandez. Two all-time greats at their own positions, and the other two weren't liabilities.

1982 prelim. Yount is an easy number 1. I'm now weighing BBRef WAR more heavily,
with WS/WAR about 75/25 instead of 90/10, to better capture some of the defensive information
in WAR. Catcher bonuses help put 3 catchers on my ballot, probably more than most
others will have, but they are all worthy MMP contenders. Lots of notable seasons in
the 14-20 range in this tight ballot.

1. Robin Yount
2. Gary Carter
3. Mike Schmidt- He keeps doing it year after year
4. Steve Rogers
5. Dave Stieb- He pitched the first MLB game I ever attended.
6. Dwight Evans
7. Lance Parrish
8. Dale Murphy
9. Joquin Andujar
10. Terry Kennedy
11. Joe Morgan- Great comeback season by a great player; ballot-worthy in spite of
only playing 134 G.
12. Pedro Guerrero
13. Eddie Murray
14-20: Paul Molitor, Cecil Cooper, Rickey Henderson (regrets), Sixto Lezcano,
Doug DeCinces, Joe Niekro, Mario Soto

Win values for 1982 -- my estimate for the number of wins each starting pitcher contributed to his team compared to a league average starter based upon a game-by-game analysis of the runs support and runs allowed in each of his starts in the season:

NL
--
1. Steve Rogers 5.1
2. Joe Niekro 4.4
3. Steve Carlton 4.1
4. Joaquin Andujar 3.7
5. Fernando Valenzuela 3.1
6. Tim Lollar 2.9
7. John Candelaria 2.7
8. Mario Soto 2.6
9. Bob Forsch 2.4
10. Bruce Berenyi 2.1

AL
--
1. Dave Stieb 4.0
2. Jim Palmer 3.3
3. Rick Sutcliffe 3.1
4. Jim Clancy 3.0
5. Luis Leal 2.9
6. Dan Petry 2.3
7. Dennis Eckersley 2.1
8. Geoff Zahn 1.8
9. Ron Guidry 1.7
10. Pete Vuckovich 1.6

Is this an unusually weak season for AL pitchers or does it drop off that quickly every year?

Yes, this is a weak year for AL starting pitchers.

Weak year. I had a huge drop-off between Stieb and the #2 pitcher (his teammate Clancy, I think). Nobody else was even close to the ballot.

Here's my prelim, presumably the final ballot will be the same.
no post season bonus given; 10% catcher bonus given.
Uses 6 different systems and from that I generate my numbers.

1 10000 Yount, Robin
2 8443 Carter, Gary
3 8171 Schmidt, Mike
4 6781 DeCinces, Doug
5 6738 Guerrero, Pedro
6 6685 Murphy, Dale
7 6676 Evans, Dwight
8 6663 Rogers, Steve
9 6573 Carlton, Steve
10 6391 Soto, Mario
11 6385 Stieb, Dave
12 6325 Dawson, Andre
13 6315 Molitor, Paul

14 6245 Murray, Eddie
15 6220 Henderson, Rickey
16 6028 Lezcano, Sixto
17 6026 Cooper, Cecil
18 5979 Harrah, Toby
19 5789 Bell, Buddy
20 5758 Parrish, Lance

Yount runs away with it.
I've got a few pitchers jumbled up from 8-11 with Rogers on top.
And a special shout out to Dave Stieb who I am, in some distant way I don't remember, related to via marriage.
(And by distant I mean I don't know the guy and don't know the family he married into... somewhere I've got it written down).

1982 Preliminary. Same method to calculate Wins above Reduced Replacement

1. Robin Yount: 9.2 WARR Head, shoulders and maybe armpits above anyone else
2. Gary Carter: 7.07 WARR
3. Dave Stieb 6.97 WARR Only AL pitcher that is even a consideration for a ballot slot
4. Steve Rogers: 6.5 WARR
5. Doug DeCinces 6.39 WARR
6. Andre Dawson: 6.38 WARR
7. Mario Soto 6.24 WARR
8. Bill Madlock 5.95 WARR Value added runs higher than linear weights runs, relative to other hitters, such as Mike Schmidt
9. Dwight Evans 5.71 WARR
10. Hal McRae 5.66 WARR Offensive year good enough to overcome position adjustment for being a DH
11. Pedro Guerrero 5.65 WARR
12. Ricky Henderson 5.62 WARR
13. Dale Murphy 5.49 WARR

Rest of the top 20:
Steve Carlton
Cecil Cooper
Gary Roenicke
Lonnie Smith
Mike Schmidt
Eddie Murray
Dwayne Murphy

1982 Combined league all star team

C. Carter
1B Cooper
2B Morgan
3B DeCinces
SS Yount
LF Henderson
CF Dawson
RF Evans
DH McRae

Starters: Stieb, Rogers, Soto, Carlton
Reliever: Stanley

OCF and bjhanke: Thanks! Fond memories. I was a 15-year old Cardinal fan in 1982, and that season made a big impact. I'd been listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon since the mid 70's, and from my young Cardinal fan perspective, getting into the World Series, let alone winning it, was something other teams did. And then Silent George and Keith made it happen! I wasn't sabermetrically savvy enough to realize it was really the Smiths doing the heavy lifting.

Nice to revisit those memories, and to get your more-informed perspective of the Whitey-ball era.

A few words about Harvey's Wallbangers.

(The team, not the BTF poster, although he's welcome to weigh in.)

The Brewers led the AL in runs scored by about 80. What gets lost in that is that County Stadium was actually a pretty serious pitchers park, one of the three strongest pitchers parks in the league. (Milwaukee, Oakland, and Texas all had park factors of about 94. The most extreme hitters park was Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.)

What if you adjust runs scored per team by dividing by offensive park factor (and also adjust for varying numbers of games played)? Here's the list:



All compared to an average of 727. So with the park factor adjustment, the Brewers weren't leading in runs scored by 80 - they were leading in runs scored by 130. They were off on an island by themselves in terms of offense. At the same time, they allowed a park-adjusted 766 runs, which was 40 runs worse than league average. Counting just the earned runs, that's a team ERA+ of 96. So this was very much an offense-first team. (And yes, Pete Vuckovich winning the CYA for 223 IP of ERA+ 114 was just silly.)

The defense was pretty much average. The pitching was, as noted, a little worse than average. This team got it done on offense, and in particular, they got it done with power. The team OBP wasn't all that far from league average; the team SLG was that far from league average. The usual first 6 batters in the lineup hit 19, 29, 32, 23, 34, and 39 HR., and Don Money, who had about half a lineup slot as a utility player, added another 16.

Things have been written - indeed, Bill James was writing this at the time - about the effects on a team of alternating between hardass and relaxed managers, with Kuenn being the relaxed version. I have nothing intelligent to add there, so I'll leave those comments to someone else.

I always say that there is nothing at all wrong with a team having its best hitter batting in the #2 spot, and my usual go-to example of how well such a #2 hitter could work out is the 1982 Brewers. Of course, if you're going to set this up, it helps to have a deep offense with the other roles well filled. And Yount may have stayed in the #2 spot (rather than moving to #3) largely out of inertia. Cecil Cooper was occupying the #3 spot, was coming off a year in which he hit .350, and was having another good year. No reason to disturb Cooper. And Molitor was certainly taking care of leadoff. As I said, Molitor was known as an injury prone player, but in 1982, he played 160 games and had 751 PA. His OBP of .366 was nowhere near Henderson/Raines levels. But his combination of high BA, medium power, superb baserunning, and all those PA, made it a memorable leadoff year. Of course, if you want to score 136 runs, it also helps to have Yount (and the other Wallbangers) bat behind you.

Gorman Thomas was my introduction to the notion of a TTO hitter (before I knew that name and acronym for the phenomenon). And I realized even then that he was quite a valuable hitter, even if his BA was only .245 and he had all those strikeouts. If there's one thing I would have done differently with the Brewer offense (not that it makes all that much difference), it's that I would have batted Thomas cleanup and dropped Simmons to #6 in the order. One of the advantages of being a TTO hitter: you don't ground into double plays. Simmons: only 40 SO, but 20 GIDP. Thomas: 143 SO, but only 10 GIDP in more PA than Simmons. OK, some of that is speed. I don't know how fast Thomas was, but the team did let him play CF, while Simmons was a catcher with a decade+ of squatting behind the plate. But Simmons was a switch hitter who therefore batted lefty most of the time - that makes that a whole lot of GIDP, in context. (For contrast, Cooper, another high-contact hitter, had only 4 GIDP, presumably mostly because he batted left.)

A few years later, the Brewers came up with another TTO hitter, not as good as Thomas: Rob Deer. Deer's opportunity mostly came when he left Milwaukee and went to Detroit, which was running an experiment in just how many such hitters could all go into the same lineup.

Charlie Moore played a fairly odd role. He was basically a backup catcher, but he wound up playing so much RF that he's listed as the regular there.

One striking thing about the 1982 Brewers: they were an old team. Bill James commented on them not feeling like an old team because they had so many late bloomers, guys who were having their best years in their 30's. Ted Simmons had been a major leaguer and a star forever, so it was understood that he was an old ballplayer. But Cooper, Ogilvie, and Thomas were all just about as old as Simmons. You just hadn't been hearing about them for as long. And Yount had been around forever, and was still one of just two guys still in their mid 20's. That's what happens when you start as a teenager.

Speaking of Thomas, one of my fondest memories of this World Series is watching the last out of the last game. It's Bruce Sutter vs. Gorman Thomas. Sutter is throwing splitter after splitter, and Thomas is fouling them off. Essentially, Thomas, not normally known for bat accuracy, is swinging about 8 inches below where the ball looks like it's going to go, because that's where Sutter's splitter went. After several of these, Sutter and/or Porter and/or Whitey gambled. Sutter threw his actual fastball, which didn't move hardly at all, and was certainly not hot enough to keep Thomas from sending it 500 feet the other way. But sure enough, Gorman swung about 8 inches below where that nice, straight fastball went, and stuck out. Really instructive, to me at the time, as to how the splitter worked and why it was so effective. A hitter could adjust to either the splitter or the normal fastball, but not both at the same time, so Bruce could use either one to set the other one up. When sliders first came into the game, I imagine they had the same effect. Batters were used to curve balls being much slower than fastballs. Sliders didn't break as much as curves, but they were much closer to fastball speed. The fast forkball that is the splitter is, essentially, the slider taken to the next degree. - Brock Hanke

Mike's comment #4 is certainly instructive about Whitey's Cardinals, who were not consistent during the decade. But, if I remember right, they WERE successful in dominating the way the game was played in that division. My memory is that, in the entire decade of the 1980s, the winner of whatever division the Cards were in was the team with the highest on-base percentage. Whitey essentially forced teams to play his game, by setting an offensive standard. His team was going to get on base a lot. If you wanted to beat them, you had to match that. It was the 1980s. You weren't going to win with just power, and the Cards had the most speed and defense. You had to get your men on base to win that division. When the Phillies won, they had Morgan and Schmidt. The Mets had great pitching (or at least great Gooden pitching) for a couple of years, plus they had Strawberry and Hernandez, both of whom got on base. - Brock

Back in the 1981 thread, in the music section at the end, Monty asked me a question about Gary Numan. It took a few days for me to get time together, but I did answer it back in the 1981 discussion thread. - Brock

Postseason credit 1982 NLCS

Player G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS SB CS
LoSmith 3 11 1 3 0 0 0 1 0 1 .273 .308 .273 .580 0 0
OzSmith 3 9 0 5 0 0 0 3 3 0 .556 .615 .556 1.171 1 0

DaMurphy 3 11 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 2 .273 .273 .273 .545 1 1

Pitcher G GS ERA W L SV CG IP H ER BB SO WHIP
Andujar 1 1 2.70 1 0 0 0 6.2 6 2 2 4 1.200

1982 ALCS

Player G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS SB CS
Cooper 5 20 1 3 2 0 0 4 0 6 .150 .150 .250 .400 0 0
Molitor 5 19 4 6 1 0 2 5 2 3 .316 .381 .684 1.065 1 1
RYount 5 16 1 4 0 0 0 0 5 0 .250 .429 .250 .679 0 0

DeCinces 5 19 5 6 2 0 0 0 1 5 .316 .350 .421 .771 0 1
FreLynn 5 18 4 11 2 0 1 5 2 3 .611 .650 .889 1.539 0 0
Downing 5 19 4 3 1 0 0 0 3 2 .158 .273 .211 .483 0 0

1982 World Series

Player G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS SB CS
LoSmith 7 28 6 9 4 1 0 1 1 5 .321 .345 .536 .881 2 2
OzSmith 7 24 3 5 0 0 0 1 3 0 .208 .296 .208 .505 1 0

Cooper 7 28 3 8 1 0 1 6 1 1 .286 .300 .429 .729 0 0
Molitor 7 31 5 11 0 0 0 3 2 4 .355 .394 .355 .749 1 1
RYount 7 29 6 12 3 0 1 6 2 2 .414 .452 .621 1.072 0 0

Pitcher G GS ERA W L SV CG IP H ER BB SO WHIP
Andujar 2 2 1.35 2 0 0 0 13.1 10 2 1 4 0.825

1. Jack Morris
2. Jack Morris
3-15. Jack Morris

Signed,
Murray Chass

Back in the 1981 thread, in the music section at the end, Monty asked me a question about Gary Numan. It took a few days for me to get time together, but I did answer it back in the 1981 discussion thread. - Brock

Yay!

RA+ equivalent pitching for 1982

Stieb 21-12
Sutcliffe 15-9
Leal 16-11
Hoyt 15-12
Bannister 15-12
Vuckovich 13-12 (Not much of a CYA season)
Stanley 13-6; 15-8 with inherited runner adjustment
Caudill 8-2; 13-5 with inherited runner adjustment
Gossage 8-2; 10-4 with inherited runner adjustment
Fingers 6-3; 8-4 with inherited runner adjustment

Rogers 21-10
Andujar 19-10
J. Niekro 19-11 (bad hitter)
Soto 18-11
Carlton 19-14 (decent hitter)
Valenzuela 18-13
Minton 10-3; 13-6 with inherited runner adjustment
Bedrosian 11-4; 14-7 with inherited runner adjustment
Tekulve 9-6; 14-7 with inherited runner adjustment
Sutter 7-5; 10-6 with inherited runner adjustment

Just to keep tabs on the results of Cardinal trades, I checked Lary Sorensen: 7-14 for him. So L. Smith + Andujar compared to T. Scott + Sorensen is a lopsided comparison.

Looks like I'd probably take Rogers as the pitcher of the year, followed by Stieb. In the fireman model, the top relief pitchers, such as Caudill, Stanley, Minton and Bedrosian, can compete with starters for value.

And while Mario Soto didn't have a particularly long career and seems little-remembered now, he was, at his best, an awfully good pitcher.

Two very important players of the 80s made their debut in 1982 (well I guess technically one of them had a brief look in 1981). Neither of them factor into the ballot in 1982, but both played well enough to foreshadow the stars they would become, starting in 1983. Of course you know that I speak of a not so young 3B, Wade Boggs and a young 3b/SS, Cal Ripken. it will be interesting to see how many ballots the two of them will make in the rest of the 80s.

1982 was also the rookie season for Ryne Sandberg and Tony Gwynn as well as a good number of players with solid careers (Steve Sax, Willie McGee, Chili Davis, Kent Hrbek, Brett Butler, etc.)

But I wanted to post about my favorite albums of the year:
1- Plastic Surgery Disasters- The Dead Kennedys
2- They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles- The Television Personalities
3- Strawberries- The Damned
4- English Settlement- XTC
5- Pop Goes Art- The Times

My preliminary ballot. As usual, I use my own player won-lost records: equal weights to those tied to team wins and context-neutral, equal weights to wins above average and above replacement level, weight postseason games the same as regular-season games, bonus weight to catchers (and relief pitchers, although even with that, none of them get very close to the ballot).

(numbers shown are pWins-pLosses, pWOPA, pWORL, and include postseason games)

1. Robin Yount, 26.4 - 19.0, 4.7, 6.8 - one of the best seasons of the past 60 years as I calculate it
2. Steve Carlton, 21.8 - 15.4, 4.5, 5.8 - he looks a lot better in pWins than eWins pretty much across his career; this was his last really great season.
3. Dale Murphy, 24.9 - 18.7, 2.6, 4.6 - he looks better in eWins than pWins; I could make a case for him deserving both of his '82-'83 MVPs.
4. Gary Carter, 19.2 - 15.5, 2.0, 3.6 - catcher bonus pushes him up this high.
5. Andre Dawson, 24.1 - 16.9, 3.2, 5.0 - tremendous balance, well above-average at everything: batting, baserunning, fielding.
6. Dwight Evans, 24.1 - 19.3, 2.0, 4.0 - a step back from 1981 but still a tremendous season, best corner outfielder in MLB.
7. Fernando Valenzuela, 19.4 - 15.4, 2.9, 4.5 - I think my Player won-lost records like Valenzuela better than some other systems.
8. Mike Schmidt, 22.1 - 15.9, 2.6, 4.3 - ho-hum, typical season for the best 3B in baseball history.
9. Steve Rogers, 17.8 - 13.1, 3.1, 4.5 - 3 Expos in my top 9, but a huge talent drop-off after that and only 3rd place in the NL East.
10. Doug DeCinces, 21.5 - 16.8, 2.2, 3.9 - best 3B in the AL, best player on a division winner.
11. Paul Molitor, 24.2 - 19.0, 2.4, 4.4 - pretty much a tossup between him and DeCinces.
12. Pedro Guerrero, 23.5 - 19.0, 1.6, 3.6 - great hitter, surprisingly non-terrible (but still below-avg) fielding numbers in my system.
13. Lou Whitaker, 19.2 - 15.5, 2.3, 3.9 - best 2B in MLB gives him the last ballot slot over at least 6 other guys who have a solid case for a ballot slot.

Honorable mention (not necessarily in order): Lance Parrish, Jack Clark, Toby Harrah, Joe Morgan, Eddie Murray, Lonnie Smith

MUSIC

MY TOP 20 of 1982:

1 - Rock The Casbah - Clash
2 - Radio - Members
3 - Billie Jean - MJ
4 - I Ran (So Far Away) - A Flock of Seagulls
5 - Situation - Yaz
6 - 1999 - Prince
7 - That Harder They Come - Rockers Revenge
8 - Morse Code of Love - Capris
9 - The Message - GM Flash
10 - Town Called Malice - The Jam
11 - Bang The Drum All Day - Todd Rundgren
12 - Goody Two Shoes - Adam Ant (UK Version)
13 - She Has A Way - Bobby O
14 - Wot - Captain Sensible
15 - You Dropped A Bomb on Me - Gap Band
16 - Babe We're Gonna Love Tonight - Lime
17 - Let's Go Dancin' - Kool & the Gang
18 - Mexican Radio - Wall of Voodoo
19 - Goodbye To You - Scandal
20 - Bad To The Bone - George Thorogood

Also good.....

Little Red Corvette, Prince
Never Say Never, Romeo Void
Atomic Dog, George Clinton
Senses Working Overtime, XTC
Come On Eileen, Dexy's Midnight Runners
We Gotta Get Out of This Place/Don't Bring Me Down/It's My Life, David Johansen
Love Plus One, Haircut One Hundred
Promised You a Miracle, Simple Minds
Everywhere That I'm Not, Translator
Someday, Someway, Marshall Crenshaw
Poison Arrow, ABC
Don't Go, Yaz
Should I Stay or Should I Go, The Clash
Love My Way, The Psychedelic Furs
Red Skies, The Fixx
Save it for Later, The English Beat
I Melt With You, Modern English
Christmas Wrapping, The Waitresses
Pass the Dutchie, Musical Youth

My prelim ballot for 1982:

1. Robin Yount: By a fair distance, actually. Maybe the best hitting season, coupled with good defence at shortstop.
2. Dwight Evans
3. Paul Molitor: I think of Molitor mostly as a DH, so it always surprises me a bit when I look back at these seasons when he was mostly a fielder.
4. Gary Carter: Catcher bonus pushes him pretty close to the non-Yount top, but Evans and Molitor just edge him out. NL MMP
5. Dale Murphy: I chose Carter, but Murphy wasn't a bad MVP choice. Best ML centerfielder.
6. Pedro Guerrero
7. Doug DeCinces
8. Joe Morgan: I was unaware Morgan still had this kind of season in him. Best ML second baseman.
9. Andre Dawson
10. Toby Harrah
11. Mike Schmidt
12. Lonnie Smith
13. Gorman Thomas

Honourable mention: Steve Carlton (best ML pitcher), Cecil Cooper, Rickey Henderson, Al Oliver, Jason Thompson.

Bad year for pitching in general; Carlton just misses my ballot. Stieb is the best AL pitcher, but there's not much else in the junior circuit.

Yardape, you mention Carlton and Stieb. How did Steve Rogers rate for you? Most- though not all- voters had him as the top pitcher this year.

Rogers is the only pitcher on every ballot so far.

Rogers is my #2 MLB pitcher, about half a win behind Carlton. It's basically even with Lou Whitaker and Eddie Murray around #22.

Music favorites 1982

Mission of Burma - Vs.
X - Under the Big Black Sun
Cabaret Voltaire - 2x45
Prince - 1999
Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out / Press Eject and Give Me the Tape
Violent Femmes - S/T
The Clash - Combat Rock
Devo - Oh No! It's Devo
Minutemen - Bean Spill
Black Flag - TV Party
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour
The Birthday Party - Junkyard
The Replacements - Stink
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
Michael Jackson - Thriller
George Clinton - Computer Games
Nurse With Wound - Homotopy to Marie
Descendents - Milo Goes to College