I don’t know if this will work, but lets try.
The following graph represents a unique career statistic.
Which player? Which Stat? and What makes it unique?
Update:
Congrats to Josh who identified the stat and Ed who identified the player as Hal Lee. Lee is the only player since 1916 with at least 2500 PA with at least 50% coming from the 6th slot in the batting order.
It wasn’t whether I would have batted him sixth, I was just brainstorming on my commute home for someone who would have been good enough to be a middle of the order bat but maybe the 3rd or 4th best hitter on the team and not be someone who would be at the top of the order. Obviously, the logic failed as I was way off.
One of the more irritating thing about advanced stats is how they make it too easy to pass judgment on the performance of players the stat hunter is not very familiar with. Which catcher finished in the top ten in his league the most times in HR and RBI? Bench? No. Piazza? No. Carter? No. Fisk? No way. Berra? Yep. In other words, playing against his contemporaries, and he couldn’t play against anyone else’s, he outperformed all these more recent backstoppers in two essential batting categories, and no one prior to him, Cochrane, Hartnett, Dickey, or his NL contemporary Campanella,… Read more »
I’m not sure I understand your point. I never questioned whether Berra was a great hitter or not. But the guy also probably played with a lot more great players than most people (or at least players having great seasons), playing with guys like Mantle, Maris, DiMaggio. In his time with the Yankees, he won 3 MVPs, but also played with 8 (Mantle 3, Maris 2, DiMaggio 1, Rizzuto 1, Howard 1), so there were a lot of times he may have been the 3rd, 4th or 5th best hitter on the team. Also, Fangraphs has his as the 5th… Read more »
Incidentally, “top-10-in-league” comparisons are always skewed towards pre-expansion players. Bench and Carter played in a 12-team league; Fisk 12-14 teams; Piazza 14-16 teams.
All of Yogi’s “top 10” rankings came in an 8-team league. Which is not intended to denigrate him at all; it’s just a fact.
Yogi was a great hitting catcher. I don’t think he was the equal of Piazza or Bench.
Replies: Josh—My point had nothing to do with yours, actually. I just stuck it in this thread at this point as a follow up to my previous comment. Ed and JA—I wasn’t trying to overvalue Yogi; I was simply suggesting that he was actually a force to be contended with in his time, something that seems to be unclear anymore to too many people. Batting cleanup on the most successful pennant run of them all while playing behind the plate at a superior level is meaningful generally and specifically, even if it was done by a short squat ugly-looking guy… Read more »
During Berra’s early years, 1947 to 1958, the Yankees won 10 pennants in 12 years. Credit for that success is usually attributed to DiMaggio, Mantle, Rizzuto, Raschi, Reynolds, Lopat, Ford and Berra. However there were other teams in the AL who had outstanding outfielders, shortstops and pitchers. The one position that separated the Yankees from the others was behind the plate. Berra was far and away the best of the catchers, giving the Yankees a strength where every other AL team was weak. His stats show him to be light years ahead of all the other catchers. He had more… Read more »
Thanks, RC, I just saw that about Yogi, too. In fact, he was only 30 RBI or so away from also leading his decade in runs batted in. Only Hodges and Snider bested him in the ’50s.
I’ve got to admit, now that I look at it further Berra’s accomplishment may be a tad more impressive than Bench’s because almost all of Yogi’s games in the ’50s were as a catcher. Bench at least got some “days off” from catching by playing in the outfield or at first every fifth day.
bstar @33 — Yogi did have about 500 more defensive innings behind the plate in the ’50s than Bench had in the ’70s. He really was even more of an iron man back there than Bench, which is saying something. But cutting to the chase: – Bench had 89% of his RBI and 90% of his HRs in the ’70s as a catcher. – Yogi had 90% of his RBI and 89% of his HRs in the ’50s as a catcher. – As a catcher, Bench had 2 more RBI and 32 more HRs in his decade. So, in my… Read more »
Richard @29 — I’m 100% for giving Yogi a big slice of the credit for those 10 Yankee pennants from 1947-58. And the dearth of other good AL catchers in that period is quite interesting. Still … To say that other AL teams had outstanding outfielders really glosses over the dominance of Mickey Mantle, no? Mantle had 4 of the top 9 AL WAR seasons in that period and was 2nd in total AL WAR (with 12 more than Berra) — even though he only played in 8 of the 12 seasons. In those 8 seasons, the difference between Mantle… Read more »
@36 John A – I have to disagree that Berra was more of an iron man than Bench. By starting Bench’s clock at 1970, you’ve cut out ’68 and ’69, the years Bench caught the most. If instead you compare Bench’s 10 year peak of 68-77 to Berra’s peak of 50-59, Bench actually caught more innings (11405 to 11280). Granted, Bench had the advantage of playing when there were 8 more games a year. If you adjust for that then Berra probably has an advantage, but it’s a slight one at best.
11405 11280
I can’t shut up today. As to there being a dearth of good AL catchers in the fifties, that wasn’t so apparent at the time. 1) There was still a hangover of the view that catching wasn’t a hitting position, so Jim Hegan got a lot of press for handling the monster Cleveland rotations—Feller, Lemon, Wynn, Garcia, Score, with Mossi and Narleski in the bullpen. 2) Sherm Lollar actually had a pretty fair career. 3) Clint Courtney was impossible not to like. He wore glasses under the mask, but was so tough and pugnacious that he had two nicknames, Scrap… Read more »
One way to look at dominance in a position is to measure how long a player was the career leader in a stat. Looking at WAR, here’s how it goes for catchers. John Clapp........1883-1884.. 2 years Charlie Bennett...1885-1913..29 years Roger Bresnahan...1914-1927..14 years Wally Schang......1928-1933.. 6 years Mickey Cochrane...1934-1938.. 5 years Gabby Hartnett....1939-1942.. 4 years Bill Dickey.......1943-1959..17 years Yogi Berra........1960-1976..17 years Johnny Bench......1977-????..36+ years Currently, the WAR leader among active catchers is Joe Mauer at 37 WAR, a bit over half of Bench’s 72.3 total. Would seem Johnny is destined to hold his crown for quite a few more years to… Read more »
@36 JA It looks like I was fooled by the amount of games played at a position other than catcher by Bench in the early seventies without realizing that a lot of those games he may have just pinch-hit and played an inning or two non-squatting instead of full starts out there. I’ll have to look at it again. I HAD spent the night pondering some of nsb’s thoughts that Yogi may have been Bench’s equal. Also, the raw totals of RBI for these two catchers in those two different decades were almost identical: Yogi 997, Bench 1013 if memory… Read more »
One more comment re: Bench. He led his league in both HR and RBI for two separate years. Has any other catcher in MLB history led his league in both categories even once? It doesn’t appear so.
Bench also owns the single-seasons RBI record for catchers with his 148 total in 1970. Roy Campanella had 142 in 90 fewer at-bats in ’53.
#25/Josh, Yogi Berra the 5th best catcher ever? I’m not buying it – almost every single serious ranking I’ve seen has either Bench or Berra at #1,and the other one at #2. Granted, commonly accepted MLB positional ratings can sometimes be quite wrong – witness Pie Traynor as the best third baseman 40-50-60 years ago, and George Sisler’s high ranking at first, behind just Gehrig/Foxx until 25/30 years ago. As for his ranking as a hitter with the Yankees – all-time greats DiMaggio or Mantle were on the team the _entire time_ Berra was, so it’s no disgrace being 3rd-best… Read more »
Looks like it’s Hal Lee. Never heard of him before.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=leeha01&year=Career&t=b
Some interesting stuff re: batting order:
1) Charlie Grimm has the most career PAs for both the 6th and the 7th spot!
2) Harry Heilmann has the most PAs in the 5th spot and it’s not even close. Heilmann batted fifth 5,493 times; Ernie Banks is second with 4,068.
3) Active players don’t appear anywhere near the top of the leaderboard for positions 4-9. Here’s the highest ranking for each of those positions by an active player:
4th: Carlos Lee (38th)
5th: Torii Hunter (51st)
6th: Pierzynski (44th)
7th: Alex Gonzalez (67th)
8th: Henry Blanco (56th)
9th: Brandon Inge (36th)
“Twinkletoes!” Of all the batters with 1,000 (searchable) PAs in the 6th spot, George Selkirk has the highest tOPS+ (i.e., ratio of OPS in that spot to career OPS). Selkirk, an excellent hitter from 1934-40, batted .326/1.022 when hitting 6th (which he did in 1/3 of his career PAs), compared to .290/.883 overall, for a 131 tOPS+. In any given year, he never batted 6th more than 68% of his PAs, but he almost always hit better there. In 1939, Selkirk (148 OPS+), DiMaggio (184) and Keller (143) formed one of 6 outfields in modern history that all had OPS+… Read more »
Taking a slight tangent, looking at the stats of an all-time great like Berra really puts into perspective how great of a season Buster Posey had last year. Posey’s triple slash line of .336/.408/.549 was better than Berra’s best on every count, and Berra only once hit more total bases than Posey’s 291. All this while playing in the league’s worst park for hitters. Only 8 more World Series titles and 13 years of sustained excellence to go!
Check out Jackie Robinson’s voice in this clip at 02:04. I’d never heard his voice before, he has a peculiar, nasal, non-existent accent. What a great man he was, and great ball player.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzOWIqqaU7o
