Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Monday, December 14, 2020
New York Tribune, December 14, 1920: Our neighboring borough of the Bronx is very anxious for the advertising of organized baseball and is anxious to “jimmy” its way into the National Association of Professional Baseball Clubs.
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A delegation from the Bronx announced yesterday it would pay $150,000 for any franchise of the (then) New International League, would expend another $150,000 on grounds and guarantee to split up more money with visiting clubs than any rival could give.
Just hang on a bit, Bronx. You’ll get your baseball team.
Elsewhere in the news 100 years ago today, Notre Dame football player George Gipp has passed away after a short illness.
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1. Jefferson Manship (Dan Lee) Posted: December 14, 2020 at 08:07 AM (#5993998)C: Jerry May (5.3 WAR)
1B: Scott Hatteberg (10.0 WAR)
2B: Craig Biggio (65.5 WAR)
3B: Bobby Adams (15.7 WAR)
SS: Les Bell (10.3 WAR)
LF: Bill Buckner (15.1 WAR)
CF: John Anderson (28.8 WAR)
RF: Dave Nilsson (10.6 WAR)
SP: Lefty Tyler (26.4 WAR)
SP: Ken Hill (23.3 WAR)
SP: Toothpick Sam Jones (18.2 WAR)
SP: Eddie Smith (17.3 WAR)
SP: Shaun Marcum (13.4 WAR)
RP: Bob Weiland (10.5 WAR)
RP: Billy Koch (5.4 WAR)
Fun names: Maurice Archdeacon, Rusty Peters
Manager: Ollie Caylor
Quarterback: Josh Fields
Gotta love the deadball era. 269.1 IP, 1 HR allowed. His HR/9 shows up a 0.0, leading the league.
Toothpick Sam was traded to the Giants at the start of the 1959 season after a 6.3-bWAR season with the Cardinals in which he went "only" 14-13 despite leading the NL in Ks, K/9, and fewest H/9 and finishing second in ERA.
He then proceeded to win 21 games for the Giants in '59 while leading the league in ERA and finishing second in Ks.
Still, the Cardinals didn't do so badly in the trade---the guy they got back finished his career with the highest lifetime slugging percentage (min. 5000 PA) for someone who never slugged .500 in a full season (.455). (technically, Mike Napoli could be considered to have the highest such career slugging pct (.475), but I'm going to count his 432-PA 2011 when he slugged .630 to be a "full season.")
The guy traded for Jones had nine full seasons in which he slugged between .451 and .491.
Alas, his 0.0 the prior year was only good for fourth best.
It always has puzzled me how the Tigers' farm system went from historically prolific in the 1970's to historically fruitless in the next two decades. Of course, I knew about Smoltz for Alexander. But, until two months ago, I didn't realize the Tigers signed Ken Hill - and then traded him for Mike Heath (gulp).
Those fun Three True Outcomes/no pitching Tigers' teams of the early 1990s would've looked much different with Smoltz and Hill atop their rotation. Alas...
Unbelievable fact (in the literal sense) that I learned about Koch: by baseball gauge's Win Shares, he had a more valuable age 27 season than any Hall of Fame reliever.
Koch 18.1
Smith 15.6
Sutter 15.3
Rivera 14.9
Fingers 14.0
Gossage 10.9
Hoffman 8.4
Wilhelm 0.0 (180 innings of 4.95 ERA in AAA)
I know that says far more about Win Shares than it says about Koch's 2002 season, but if you worded the question well you could win a lot of bets from this.
You can see why the Giants traded Bill White - they had a log jam at first base of historic proportions. White, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie McCovey, and White, coming off his age 24 season, was the oldest of the three.
Back-to-back NL Rookies of the Year ('58-'59), at the same position for the same team. In that '59 season, all three 1B hit over .300, with White and Cepeda making the NL All-Star teams and Cepeda and McCovey (who didn't debut until July 30) getting MVP votes; McCovey was ROTY despite only 219 PA.
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